At the height of the Iraq War, US forces confronted a relentless insurgency waged by fighters from a wide range of political movements and religious orientations, including ex-Baathists, Salafists, Wahhabis, and Shi’a militants. Less understood at the time was the role played by a neighboring state in facilitating this onslaught. A cross-border network quietly funneled hardcore Islamist militants through so-called “rat lines” into Iraq with the explicit aim of inflaming the conflict. At the center of this effort was Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s now-deposed dictator, who hoped to use the chaos of neighboring Iraq to deter US intervention in his own country.
“American deployment on Venezuelan soil would almost certainly provoke a prolonged and punishing insurgency.”
A similar dynamic looms in the Western Hemisphere with the threat of a US invasion of Venezuela. Should American troops enter Venezuela, they would face an insurgency that could prove to be more organized, more experienced, and no less lethal than the one encountered in Iraq. The Colombian Marxist-Leninist rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), is anti-American, battle-hardened, and deeply embedded in regional smuggling networks. Unlike the Islamist fighters of Iraq, the ELN has several decades of fighting experience in inhospitable terrains and enforces a disciplined command structure. The group also enjoys cross-border sanctuary in Colombia and Venezuela, and maintains close coordination with Nicolás Maduro’s security forces. Any American deployment on Venezuelan soil would almost certainly provoke a prolonged and punishing insurgency from the ELN and its affiliates.
Founded in the early 1960s by radical Catholic priests inspired by the Cuban Revolution, the ELN was trained in Fidel Castro’s Cuba under the influence of Che Guevara’s foco theory, which envisioned small guerilla bands sparking a broader revolution. From the outset, the ELN fused elements of liberation theology with a Marxist-Leninist ideological framework. Led by radical Roman Catholics with a revolutionary anti-imperialist flair, the group preached social justice for the impoverished rural dwellers of the Colombian countryside while also railing against multinational corporations and oligarchic elites in Bogotá. The rebels built alliances with local labor unions and peasant associations frustrated by what they saw as the Colombian central government’s failure to address their daily needs. In the late 1970s, facing off against right-wing paramilitary death squads and equipped with outdated weaponry, the ELN began to finance military operations with extortion and kidnapping operations, which it called “revolutionary taxes,” as well as turning to illicit activities such as the cocaine trade.
Amid its protracted guerilla war against the Colombian National Army, the group reached out to Hugo Chávez’s nascent regime in the early 2000s and found a safe haven in neighboring Venezuela. In addition to sharing their ideological commitments to anti-imperialism and revolutionary socialism, Chávez found the ELN and other Colombian leftist rebel groups to be a useful buffer against the US-aligned Colombian government. The ELN collaborated with Venezuelan military officials and became enmeshed in cross-border drug trafficking and illegal mining operations. The alliance served the interests of both the Venezuelan government and the ELN, delivering strategic, ideological, and financial benefits to each side.
When the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, once the country’s dominant leftist rebel group, demobilized in 2016, the ELN seized the moment to expand its territory and its ranks. Now present in more than a fifth of Colombia’s municipalities and firmly established in three Venezuelan states, the group is arguably at the height of its power, with more than 6,000 members. In January 2025, the ELN launched a major military offensive in Catatumbo, one of Colombia’s most prolific cocaine-producing regions, targeting remnants of the FARC. The fighting forced roughly 50,000 civilians to flee the area, fearing for their lives.
As the Trump administration ramps up pressure on Caracas, the ELN has not idly stood by. In response to the mounting “imperialist intervention,” the group announced a 72-hour “armed strike” in Colombia. Across the country, the ELN carried out attacks on police stations and military bases. This assault by the rebels, which employed explosive-laden commercial drones, killed six Colombian soldiers and underscored the group’s growing technological sophistication.
From Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military has repeatedly struggled against insurgencies. In all of these wars, US forces have failed to achieve decisive victories against irregular adversaries, regardless of whether that is because they are constrained by laws of war and ethical norms or stymied by the fundamental difficulty of identifying and defeating clandestine fighters. Entering into another military conflict with a formidable insurgency risk would plunge America into yet another forever war built on the flimsiest of pretexts.