The allegation that the abducted Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, was involved in drug cartels is “a figment of the imperialist imagination”, said Tariq Ali, the renowned British intellectual and former editor of the New Left Review.
Speaking to The Hindu about the turn of events in Venezuela, Mr. Ali said the developments did not come as a surprise to him.
Mr. Ali recalled how Fidel Castro, the late Cuban leader, once told Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro’s predecessor in Venezuela, that if the U.S. came after them, it would carry out a Noriega-style operation, and that both leaders had agreed they would rather die fighting on the front line than hide like Saddam Hussein.
(Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian strongman who had close ties with the CIA since the 1950s, was removed from power by a U.S. invasion in 1989 after he fell out with Washington).
“I can think of other countries in the world where this could not happen,” said Mr. Ali referring to the January 3 U.S. attack on Venezuela. “Whatever the character of the President or the army, this could not happen. But it happened in Venezuela, and that suggests to me that, despite the rhetoric, important sections of the Bolivarian state apparatus were prepared to let Mr. Maduro go. I cannot reach any other conclusion.”
