arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

For over two years, the Belgian and Dutch navy are carrying out missions in the Caribbean for the American Coastal Guard. And now it seems that the American army has been quite active before and during the revolt against President Chavez from Venezuela. For four years, the Belgian navy is supporting operations carried out by the American Coastal Guard in the Caribbean. The Belgian government has always been very secretive about these missions and has never allowed publication of the exact content of the agreements with the United States in this matter. The co-operation started in 1999 when a Belgian-Dutch navy-battalion joined in a military exercise near Puerto Rico. Minister of Defence Poncelet labeled the assignment as "detection and identification" for the benefit of the American anti-narcotics-operations. Who checks up on the American Coastal Guard-activities in this period in the Caribbean will however notice that they were actually hunting down and deporting illegal immigrants in eighty percent of their cases.

At the end of the same year, NATO started bombing the former Yugoslav Republic. In the aftermath of these bombings, the Belgian frigate "F912 Wandelaar" was send to the Adriatic Sea to join the anti-Yugoslav blockade.

Early 2000 the Belgian warship "Wielingen" entered the Caribbean to take part in a Nato-exercise with "an imaginary hurricane" on Puerto Rico as the main attraction. At that time, The "Wielingen" was part of the "STANDING NAVAL FORCE ATLANTIC" (STANAVFORLANT) of the Atlantic aggression treaty. The propaganda surrounding the exercise mentioned "rescue-operations," but in reality the "Wielingen" got involved in intelligence (read "espionage"), or was, as the Belgian army described it: "taking part in the construction of a surface- and aerial-image of the Caribbean. The sensors of our ships are optimized against fast and low flying aircraft but also against fast boats."

It was only at the beginning of the year 2001, that the Belgian government signed a multilateral agreement with the United States to cooperate in the "war against drug transportation in the Caribbean Sea." Already in 1999 there was talk about a "Memorandum of Understanding", but only in those cases where American custom-officers would be operating out of Belgian naval vessels. According to the documents we have in our possession however, this never happened.

At about the same time, the "F910 Wielingen" joined a Dutch and German squadron in the Caribbean.

Early 2001 however, the American crusade against "terror" messed up the routine. Belgium immediately became involved in the war against Afghanistan. Not only was the air force sending in C-130 airplanes (in April 2002, a Belgian-Portuguese battalion is shipped off to Pakistan to "provide supplies for the ISAF/International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan"), but also the navy was taking part in the war effort. The procedure is well known: While the American warships are operating in very close range, the Belgian ships are carrying out rear-tasks, at this moment in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea where they started monitoring and intercepting merchant vessels.

Because of this operation, the "drug enforcement" in the Caribbean turns out smaller than usual at the beginning of 2002. Early February, an Alouette-helicopter is shipped to the sea that separates the Eastern part of the United States with Cuba and the coastal areas of Venezuela and Colombia. The Alouette is to be working from the Dutch frigate "HNLMS Abraham van der Hulst. The Belgian and Dutch navy are carrying out American orders and are coordinating their actions with the American Intelligence service. This becomes quite clear when the "Bloys van Treslong," a Dutch frigate, is send to intercept a Panamese coastal vessel. The Panamese ship is smuggling cocaine. The Dutch frigate however, has got an American "Law Enforcement Detachment" aboard.

Conclusion: Within the framework of NATO, the Belgian and Dutch naval forces are handing out freebies to the American Coastal Guard (in a so called anti-drug effort in the Caribbean while it seems that the Coastal Guard is mainly concentrating on hunting down migrants) but when the United States is going to war (against the former Yugoslav Republic in 1999 or against Afghanistan near the end of 2001), they are quite happy to be assisting Uncle Sam with rear-tasks to enlighten the war efforts of the United States against a couple of so-called unruly nations.

Also the Venezuela of President Hugo Chavez is a country that apparently has to be thought a lesson, seeing that Chavez is not doing what he should be doing in his foreign politics nor in his internal policy. As President of the assembly of oil-exporting countries (OPEC) for instance, he is insisting that all the membership countries would respect the quota as set in the OPEC-meetings, an attitude that keeps oil-rates pretty high and thus increases the profits of the oil-producing countries. He also has broken down the forty year old economic blockade against Cuba and is making oil-contracts with Havana concerning the delivery of inexpensive oil-products.

Shortly after Chavez was elected President in 1998, the "prestigious" American media started a hate-campaign against the newly elected President and when in the spring of 2002 the upset to put the Venezuelan "master of masters" Carmona into power was drawing near, not only the American super-conspirators of the CIA came into action against Chavez but also the entire military apparatus.

A little note on the CIA: A couple of months before the coup, the American Intelligence Agency made sure that Carlos Ortega could win the trade union elections for the petroleum industry. Is it a coincidence that he was the second in command next to Carmona.

And in the days before the actual upset, several people have noticed a coming and going of right wing conspirators in and out of the American embassy in Caracas.

But as we said before: Also the American military became involved. To prove this thesis, NarcoNews quotes from a report that was made by the former official of the National Security Agency (NSA), Wayne Madsen: Under the cloak of a military exercise in the Caribbean Sea, the US Navy was giving "intelligence and communications jamming support" to the Venezuelan soldiers involved in the coup against Chavez. US Navy ships were monitoring the communication from and to the embassies of Cuba, Libya, Iran and Iraq in Caracas.

Employees of the National Security Agency in Key West-Florida, Sabana Seca-Puerto Rico en Medina-Texas were translating into or from Spanish and were also passing on secret information to the American General Headquarters and the Pentagon. "From eastern Colombia, CIA and US contract military personnel, ostensibly used for counter-narcotics operations, stood by to provide logistics support for the leading members of the coup. Their activities were centered at the Marandua airfield and along the border with Venezuela", according to Madsen.

But this wasn't the end of it. American intelligence airplanes were flown in from Ecuador as well as American Navy vessels who were said to be on an exercise near Puerto Rico and were send in to prepare the possible evacuation of American civilians. Among those the aircraft carrier USS George Washington and the destroyers USS Barry, Laboon, Mahan en Arthur W. Radford of which some of them are said to have carried NSA-units, specialized in passing on operational information to the American agents in the field who were in close contact with the Venezuelan mutineers.

Meanwhile, when all those intense and secretive activities were going on, Belgian and Dutch marines were still chasing drugs under the supervision of the American Coastal Guard, or in other words: while the American supercop was attending a home-jacking in the house of Hugo Chavez, "our boys" were guarding the surroundings. I suppose this is what they mean by "war against terror."