Kristen Gyles | What caused the blackout in Venezuela?

For months leading up to January 3, the US special forces had been rehearsing its step-by-step capture plan for the arrest of Nicolás Maduro from his home in Caracas, Venezuela. At roughly 2 a.m. in Caracas, US helicopters arrived on the compound of Maduro’s home and by 4:30 am, he was being escorted on to a US aircraft.

According to the US President, the US special forces practised their break-in on a building made specifically to mimic the layout of Maduro’s home. Once Trump gave the ‘go ahead’, roughly 150 military aircraft across 20 different air bases took off, heading for Caracas. As a part of the operation, Venezuela’s air defence systems were disabled and according to Trump, the lights of Caracas were “largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have”. As the forces made their way on to Venezuelan territory, they initiated several strikes which, according to the Venezuelan interior minister, left 100 people dead.

The rightness or wrongness of what the US has done under Trump’s direction is still being debated across the world. While it is obvious that the US has breached international law through its invasion of Venezuela and consequent kidnapping of the country’s president, supposedly for his ‘trial’ in the US on charges of ‘narcoterrorism’, many citizens of Venezuela seem all too happy that Maduro is gone. For them, any path taken to achieving Maduro’s capture, must be worth it, since he has been functioning illegitimately as the country’s president for years and has totally destroyed the country’s democracy through his dictatorial style of leadership which has also resulted in a collapse of the country’s economy.

A LOT TO THINK ABOUT

As citizens of relatively unaffected countries, there is a lot to think about. An oft-repeated African proverb reminds us that when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. This is probably the most uncomfortable truth that can be gleaned from the geopolitical workings since the beginning of the year. You and I are the little blades of grass hoping to dodge the heavy feet of mindless elephants. Has anyone spared a thought for the 100 dead people? Or have we become so desensitised to all the barbarism and bloodshed at the hands of state leaders who press buttons and make calls that instantaneously destroy lives?

The other uncomfortable truth is that there is a whole lot we know nothing about as citizens in this crazy world. Make no mistake about it, nothing ordinary happened on the early morning of January 3, when Maduro was captured. Firstly, Maduro and his wife were taken from a heavily guarded military fortress. The compound was securely built with steel doors and a reinforced safe room which is intended to be almost impenetrable. It was not because he lived in a straw hut that the US army was able to haul him from his home and put him on a plane. Furthermore, as Trump admitted, the power supply in Caracas was turned off due to some unnamed expertise or technology utilised by the US. Like the 1.9 million Venezuelans living in Caracas who were affected by the blackout, it seems Maduro probably found himself groping around in a thick plume of darkness, while being attacked by US forces which knew their way around his home just as much as he did.

This is not fiction, but real weaponry that several countries have at their disposal. For example, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) bombs, which are powerful enough to decimate a country’s entire electrical power grid, are widely believed by experts to be within the possession of major nuclear states like North Korea, China and the US. EMPs are nuclear weapons designed to explode at very high altitudes. The higher the altitude at which the bomb is detonated, the more widespread its impact.

DISABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICES

The effect of an EMP attack, however, is not a run-of-the-mill loss of power. A high-altitude EMP event can disable unprotected electronic devices like phones, radios, computers, cars and most devices that use electricity, within thousands of kilometres from the site of explosion.

One US Marine Corps gunnery sergeant had this to say about the potential impact of an EMP:

“A high-altitude nuclear weapon detonated 25 miles above North America would destroy most US electronics, high voltage transformers, vehicles (including tactical ones) and other electrical machinery… Currently 99 per cent of all military bases rely on civilian electric grid.”

In this modern world, almost every activity we engage in relies on some form of electricity, so a total collapse of any nation’s electrical grid would be sure death to that nation.

Because these weapons exist, with varying capabilities and strengths, it is not unfathomable that the US president could find the ‘expertise’ to have the lights of Caracas ‘turned off’. Some experts have also not ruled out the use of cyber warfare as the cause for the blackout. Others surmise that the reason for the pitch-black darkness experienced by Venezuelans on Saturday morning was the bombing of electric plants. But when electric plants are destroyed, they cannot be repaired overnight, and it is still unclear how much of Caracas is still without power.

The truth is that across the world, countries have in their arsenal, deadly weapons that can wipe out entire countries, and occasionally, if a state leader is crazy enough, they actually use these weapons.

Since Trump’s abduction of Maduro, and his declaration that the US will run Venezuela, he has signalled that he might take a similar course of action in Cuba, Columbia and possibly Greenland. And if we all sat like dummies doing nothing while watching the US kidnap a state leader and take control of another country, what will make the global response any different when it happens again? Only God can protect us.

Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com.