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.”
He added that Delcy Rodríguez, the acting President, had capitulated to American pressure. “That is my view. Maybe she will change her mind; I do not know. But the questions arise very clearly. You (Delcy) have known for months — the Americans have publicly said they are going to remove your President from office. They never specified how. The CIA has been present in Venezuela for months and months, planning this operation,” he said. Mr. Ali also raised doubts about the mysterious circumstances in which all of Mr. Maduro’s Cuban bodyguards were killed. “Who killed them? Who shot them? How come their guns had not been fired?” he said.
Mr. Ali said the U.S. was now acting openly. “The only big difference between President Donald Trump and his predecessors is not that Trump is doing things openly (such as destabilising and toppling governments). Trump says, ‘Yes, I am doing this. So what can you do about it?”
According to Mr. Ali, the U.S. is after Venezuela’s oil reserves. “When Mr. Maduro refused to accept Mr. Trump’s demands, he wanted him to go…And when Maduro began to mobilise against the American presence in the Caribbean — arming his people and creating popular militias — the U.S. thought the sooner, the better,” he said.
Mr. Ali said people who were celebrating the abduction of Mr. Maduro were an extremist far-right wing of the Venezuelan opposition, not all the Venezuelan opposition. He was also highly critical of the Western media’s portrayal of the Venezuelan government, saying the alignment of the liberal Left with conservative media “in the service of American interests and the American empire was blatant to see”.
“We have seen it non-stop in Gaza since the genocide began. But it started earlier — with Venezuela, and more seriously with NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It then continued with attempts to topple Chávez, constantly portraying him as a dictator when he had won more elections than most people,” he said.
Mr. Ali said what would happen in Venezuela also depends on the rest of Latin America, which has gone very right-wing — Chile, Argentina — Brazil is in trouble and in Bolivia, the army is back. The only exceptional country now in Latin America is Mexico, whose President pledged to maintain the flow of oil to Cuba. Mr. Ali said that if Cuba falls as a result of Mr. Maduro’s capture and American domination of Venezuela, that would be a very heavy blow [to the Left] on a global scale.
Published – January 27, 2026 05:00 am IST
