Bordering on Chaos.(Venezuela's border with Colombia)(Brief Article)

Colombia's civil war has turned personal for Otto Ramirez. The Venezuelan rancher, 57, never wanted any part of the armed conflict that has killed 35,000 Colombians over the past decade. Even so, he finally saw no choice but to fight--or give up his farm at the foot of the Andes, 100 kilometers from the Colombian border. The trouble began last year when a Colombian guerrilla commander made the rounds of the local ranches, collecting thousands of dollars in protection money. That didn't keep another local rancher, 25-year-old Hermir Garcia, from being kidnapped a few months later; he has not been seen since. Meanwhile, Ramirez complains, Venezuela has drastically cut its security forces along the frontier. "The rural police we used to rely on have been withdrawn, and military checkpoints disappear from the border area every day," he says. A month ago Ramirez and his desperate neighbors declared their own war, forming a clandestine militia to drive the rebels out.

The risk has never been higher that Colombia's anarchy could touch off a regional conflict. Violence and the threat of violence are spreading all along the nation's perimeter, not only into rural Venezuela but also into Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Panama. Much of the driving force seems to be the massive anti-drug military offensive campaign known as Plan Colombia. The crackdown has sent growers and refugees spilling out across the borders, along with growing numbers of leftist Colombian guerrillas and the right-wing private armies that have sworn to eradicate them. Ecuador's president, Gustavo Noboa, summed it up last week: "Our northern border was traditionally peaceful, without conflict, until decomposition and delinquency settled in southern Colombia and started spreading their poison."

Now it's spewing out in all directions. In Ecuador, where more than 2,000 Colombian civilians have already sought refuge from the Plan Colombia cross-fire, turf battles are multiplying between Colombia's rebels and their paramilitary foes, fighting for control of the drug traffic that funds both sides. Two weeks ago a local politician, his 13-year-old daughter and six other Ecuadorans were kidnapped by unidentified Colombians. Their mutilated bodies were found a few days later on the Colombian side of the border. In Peru, coca production is booming in expectation of shortages in Colombia. In Panama, death threats forced a Roman Catholic bishop to flee into exile last year after he publicly denounced incursions by both the rebels and their right-wing adversaries. And in Brazil, security forces have stepped up their border patrols, trying to keep the combatants off their soil. Nevertheless, a delegate from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's largest rebel group, made no secret of his presence a month ago at the "anti-Davos" countersummit in Porto Alegre.

The contagion is even worse in Venezuela. Soon after taking office as president two years ago, Fidel Castro's good friend Hugo Chavez proclaimed the country's official neutrality in the Colombian conflict. What's more, he gave quasi-diplomatic ...