Saturday, February 01, 2020

Colombia and Honduras Join US-Headed ‘Counterterror’ Strike against Hezbollah

Pompeo and Colombian President Duque Give c9904
*(Top image: Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Colombian President Ivan Duque deliver joint press statements in Bogotá, Colombia, on January 20, 2020. Credit: Ron Przysucha/ U.S. Department of State)
Colombia and Honduras were the latest countries joining in on officially declaring Lebanese resistance group and political organization Hezbollah a terrorist group on Monday.
Both Colombian President Ivan Duque Marquez and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez issued statements live and over Twitter.
Their declarations came during the Third Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial conference in Bogota, Colombia, with Pompeo having read the opening statement for the opening plenary.
“Colombia adopted lists of terrorist groups and individuals from the European Union and the US, which will allow timely detection of members of cells such as Hezbollah, Islamic State and Al Qaeda,” said President Martinez during the conference, issuing a “call for harmonization of these databases between countries."
In his declaration, President Hernandez announced on twitter his “reaffirmation” of an agreement between himself and US Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf on the decision to name Hezbollah a terrorist group.
US asset in Venezuela, Juan Guaido, who tried to stage a right-wing coup against Nicolas Maduro in 2019, also was in attendance for the conference, defying a Venezuelan travel ban against him.
As he spoke at the conference on Monday, Guiado vowed that he would “not stop” until “democracy and freedom” was reached in Venezuela.
The two right-wing heads of state joined other Western-allied Latin American governments which include Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil in the designation, receiving praise from ‘Israeli’ officials such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Danny Danon, ambassador from ‘Israel’ to the UN.
Netanyahu was eager to “commend” the countries in their move to “join Israel”
Mike Pompeo also joined in on lauding the move. On Monday, January 20th, he stated in a tweet:
The meeting expounds upon an OAS initiative to strengthen the intelligence, military, and political consensus between Washington and key Latin American allies.
In shoring up support for occupation against a strong regional pink tide, the United States has backed a number of right-wing coups overturning sovereign, socialist governments in favor of
In October 2019, the OAS formed the Inter-American Network on Counterterrorism under Washington with a $395,000 US Department of State Grant.
The alliance is a partnership between the United States and Canada with the 18 member nations, which, along with Colombia and Honduras, also include Argentina, the Bahamas, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Mexico, and Uruguay.
The OAS, called by Bolivian President Evo Morales to investigate right-wing accusations of vote-rigging that invited a US-backed coup in November 2019.
The current government of Honduras is also a product of a coup. In 2009, the US influenced a military coup to help depose of the then-president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, and again shaped a 2017 political crisis in the stalled and meddled-with elections between candidate Salvador Nasralla and the then-incumbent Hernández.
It is clear that the OAS, as a “counterterrorism” and intelligence alliance working under the US, has been a catalyst in helping instigate the illegal coup against Morales.
Ultimately, this is in service of implementing and accelerating the spread of US-friendly, neoliberal governments and policies to overturn Latin American governments and their policies of nationalization and socialism.
Evidently, it also safeguards additional alliances with ‘Israel,’ intensely eyeing Latin America under Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in the past decade.
In 2011, a high number of Latin American countries threw their support behind Palestine as the Palestinian Authority stalled peace talks with ‘Israel’ over the issue of illegal settlements.
JULIA KASSEM
Kassem is a Lebanon-based writer specializing in the politics of austerity and the Middle East in general. Her work can be found on Counterpunch, Mintpressnews, Mondoweiss, TruthOut, among others.

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