What can the Venezuelan opposition learn from Syria?

By: Luis Fleischman - 23/12/2024

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We have recently witnessed the collapse of Syria’s decades-long, oppressive regime.

There is room for the people of Venezuela and the U.S. administration to learn something from the Syrian experience and consider applying its lessons to the Maduro regime.

Syria’s quick collapse is widely attributed to the weakness of the powers that sustained the Bashar al-Assad regime and to the well-armed and well-organized opposition forces.

Iran, its proxy Hezbollah, and Russia supported the Assad regime. Iran and Hezbollah lost clout in Syria due to their humiliating defeat at the hands of Israel. Russia, busy with an increasingly challenging Ukraine, also lost its ability to sustain the regime without help from the Shia axis of resistance.

For the last thirteen years, Syria has also been facing a dormant crisis of legitimacy.

The Nicolás Maduro government, like the Assad regime, has a severe deficit of legitimacy that can be tracked at least to the death of Hugo Chavez.

Maduro has been committing electoral fraud since 2013. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights denounced Maduro for fraud in the presidential elections conducted in April 2013. The court ruled that Maduro violated freedom of expression and used the state machine to support his election.

In 2018, Maduro won reelection with more than 50 percent of voters abstaining, which already indicated the system’s legitimacy crisis. The United States and European countries denounced Maduro’s victory as a farce. Furthermore, more than sixty countries have recognized Juan Guaidó, the president of the National Assembly, as the president of Venezuela. A few years later, many Latin American and European countries withdrew their recognition of Guaidó as president of Venezuela.

In July 2024, Maduro once again committed major electoral fraud. This time, the opposition finally united around one candidate, sending a clear message that the people wanted change.

Several ideas have been raised to bring about a regime change.

Some still dream of an external invasion, mainly from the United States. Still, such an option seems highly unlikely given the aversion of the American people and the American political elites on all sides of the aisle to sacrifice troops.

Others believe that for now, Venezuelans need to accept the current reality with the expectation that someday, conditions will be ripe for a negotiated transition. Such is the idea of people like the current presidents of Brazil and Colombia, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, and the former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Others believe it is important to continue holding elections, demanding transparency, and denouncing the regime in international forums.

There is nothing that has not been tried, including in the last election, where fraud was exposed, and the international community recognized the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner.

Let us be clear. So far, the results leave much to be desired.

Therefore, it is essential to consider new ideas.

The Maduro regime sustains itself through manipulation, extorsion, and repression.

Like in Syria, the military and paramilitary groups support the regime, Russia supplies weaponry, and Cuban officials have a system of surveillance of opponents. Furthermore, according to an agreement signed between Venezuela and Cuba in 2008, Cuba has increased its power over the Venezuelan armed forces. Cuba trains Venezuelan soldiers and has the authority to review and restructure the Venezuelan military, which also includes the ability to spy on the military.

Cuba indeed significantly contributed to building the republic of fear that Venezuela has become.

But most importantly, like in Syria, what mainly sustains the Venezuelan regime is the drug business.

Syria manufactured captagon and exported it to other countries, mainly Saudi Arabia. Such mass production enabled the Assad regime to lessen the impact of sanctions and strengthen its military, as well as Hezbollah, the main militia that supported and saved the regime. Likewise, the Maduro regime’s income is not from oil but from illicit activities such as drug trafficking and the illegal smuggling of gold and other minerals.

In this sense, a U.S. and even international policy of maximum pressure through sanctions is unlikely to work now as it has not worked before.

The Cartel of the Suns (Cartel de los Soles) is a criminal organization run by members of the Venezuelan military and the Venezuelan government. This group profits from drug trafficking, the smuggling of oil to neighboring countries, and the illegal exploitation of mining and trade of gold and other extracted minerals.

Taking away these resources from the regime is crucial. Maduro and his accomplices work with an entire network of drug traffickers and criminals. The United States must lead the fight against drug trafficking in Latin America to destroy their entire infrastructure. Drug cartels not only support anti-American authoritarian regimes but also cause anarchical situations in various areas of the continent, undermining the rule of law and states’ ability to enforce the law.

We cannot declare the war on drugs a failure only because drug production continues and because the military response caused countless victims in the region.

The United States should work with governments in the area willing to take the fight against drug cartels while minimizing civilian and innocent casualties. The war against drug cartels should be firm but also legal.

Leaders such as Nayib Bukele in El Salvador have carried a war against crime. Unfortunately, those operations came at the expense of human rights and, to a certain extent, democratic and legal practices. However, such counterproductive effects should not serve as a deterrence to the war on drugs but as lessons to improve the operations.

The United States cannot go after every independent source of cocaine production. But governments can. Encouraging national and local governments in the region to remove illicit operations within the framework of the law should be a priority. The United States could supervise the Latin American government’s crackdown on the cartels to ensure that no innocent people are indefinitely detained, that no fundamental rights are violated, and that no paramilitary activity is allowed to flourish.

Indeed, establishing such a balance is very challenging. Such a project will require careful planning, which this article cannot provide. It would be helpful to learn from the experience of Plan Colombia, which the State Department considers successful despite some flaws, and Bukele’s policies in El Salvador, which have been criticized for the high toll on human lives and unnecessary incarcerations. But it is worth making the effort because the region’s state is such that it leaves no alternative. Bukele’s overwhelming victory in the last presidential election indicates that a hard hand against the cartels and the gangs that support their activities is a social necessity. Ecuador, a country facing serious challenges from transnational crime, may provide an opportunity to try this experiment. Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, is already unfairly compared with the former populist president Rafael Correa for involving the military in matters of internal security.

Depriving the Venezuelan government from the sources that sustain it is crucial for regional security and democracy.

Finally, like in Syria, the people of Venezuela need to be ready to identify weaknesses within the regime and prepare for a rebellion. For example, it has been noticed that there is growing displeasure with the regime within military ranks.

This time, such rebellion cannot be limited to protests. Protests can be repressed with state violence and suppressed altogether. Considering that the more an oppressive regime remains in power, the more difficult it is to remove it, and the population surrenders. It is enough to look at the Cuban model. The government quickly repressed protests in July 2021; no significant dissenting action has occurred since then.

Therefore, opposition to the regime should not be limited to political action and electoral moves. The opposition should also prepare for an armed confrontation with the regime. Arming the opposition requires will and external aid. The United States government should consider a past scenario when the United States helped arm, train, and provide intelligence to the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Such pressure eventually helped the transition to democracy in Nicaragua.

The Maduro regime will not collapse because of electoral processes. It is a Cuban-type regime designed to perpetuate itself indefinitely. Cutting its source of support (which is no longer oil but drugs), taking advantage of its weaknesses, and organizing an armed opposition look like the only cards left in the hands of those who wish to see Venezuelan democracy restored.

Luis Fleischman, Ph.D., is co-founder of the Palm Beach Center for Democracy & Policy Research, professor of Social Sciences at Palm Beach State College, and the author of the book Latin America in the Post-Chavez Era: The Security Threat to the United States. Follow him on LinkedIn and X: @LuisFleischman.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».