Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY • 473oil production facilities, destroying machinery and stealing explosives.During January to August 1987 the ELN bombed petroleumpipelines and attacked oil exploration and drilling camps, as well asother U.S.-Colombian targets. These attacks served the twofold purposeof protesting the foreign presence in the Colombian economyand of depriving the government of economic viability. Attacks onthe petroleum-producing facilities cost the Colombian government$400 million in 1988 alone. In June 1989 an ELN bombing of thepipeline terminal in Coveñas, Sucre Department, temporarily haltedoil exports from that port.Although the ELN remained one of the most active Colombianguerrilla groups in the late 1980s, its relative prominence was duemainly to the reduced activity of the other major leftist groups, whichtook advantage of the truce of May 1984 to participate in the openpolitical arena until 1995, when FARC withdrew from the politicalarena and resumed its operations. Currently the ELN with 5,000fighters is in second place only to FARC, which now has approximately12,000 fighters active.The ELN apparently ran afoul of the president of Venezuela, HugoRafael Chávez Frías, elected on 6 December 1998. Since Chávez wasthe former leader of the far-left Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement,both FARC and the ELN expected him to support their insurgency. AlthoughChávez allowed the ELN’s second-in-command, Antonio Garcia,a safe haven in Maracaibo, just across the border from Colombia,in March 1999 the ELN erred tactically in persuading a criminal gangto hand over a Caracas businessman whom the gang had kidnapped.When the ELN ransomed him back to his family for several milliondollars, this scandalized Venezuelan public opinion and disillusionedChávez, who threatened to use the Venezuelan military against ELNforces operating from within Venezuelan territory.2. The Bolivian National Liberation Army was an umbrella groupembracing the Nestor Paz Zamora Commission and other minorBolivian leftist groups. The original Bolivian ELN was the groupfounded and led by Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia from November1966 to October 1967, which was routed and destroyed byBolivian troops trained by U.S. counterinsurgency advisers. Little isknown of the current ELN apart from the activities of the Nestor PazZamora Commission. The tactics and rhetoric of the group suggestthat, like the original ELN, the current one may be a foreign-directed