Venezuela expands military presence at Guyana border in ‘perpetual prewar footing,’ says report
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Venezuela continues to build up military infrastructure and hardware close to the border with Guyana as President Nicolas Maduro and his supporters scale up their threats to annex an oil-rich piece of Guyanese land.
Venezuela continues to build up military infrastructure and hardware close to the border with Guyana as President Nicolas Maduro and his supporters scale up their threats to annex an oil-rich piece of Guyanese land. In a report shared with CNN, the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) warns that while the Venezuelan government “has little to gain and much to lose from a full-blown conflict” it continues to play “a dangerous game” over its claim over the densely forested Essequibo region. “The constant drumbeat asserting ‘the Essequibo is ours,’ alongside the creation of new military commands and legal structures to oversee the defense of the region, is helping to institutionalize a sense of perpetual prewar footing,” it wrote. Tension over the region, which amounts to about two-thirds of Guyanese national territory, mounted last year after a Venezuelan referendum in which voters assented to creating a Venezuelan state within the disputed region. Guyana had called the move a step towards annexation and an “existential” threat as the specter of armed conflict loomed over the region. CNN previously reported in February about an expansion of operations at Venezuela’s Anacoco Island military base despite both countries agreeing in December to pursue a diplomatic avenue to resolve the conflict. Using satellite imagery and social media, CSIS found that the expansion of Anacoco Island’s military base has continued. A bridge is seen being built across the Cuyuni River to connect the Venezuelan riverbank to the island, which has been a point of contention between the countries after it was awarded to Guyana in an 1899 ruling by an international tribunal. Venezuela annexed it in the 1960s.
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