Terrorists tried to blow up Bolivia’s President Evo Morales on a naval boat on Lake Titicaca. Mercenaries, including a veteran of the Balkan wars, were plotting against Morales and his political opponents at the same time. A Roman Catholic cardinal was among their targets. Reuters correspondent Eduardo Garcia reports that these are just some of the bizarre allegations made by the Bolivian government after police killed three men in a shootout at a hotel. The government said the police foiled a plot to assassinate the leftist president.

The strange tale began on Thursday when Bolivian police killed three alleged terrorists or mercenaries and arrested two others in the eastern city of Santa Cruz. Morales said he ordered the men detained because they were plotting to kill him.  When police stormed the hotel, a gunfight broke out and three suspected were killed.

The third man killed was identified as Bolivian Eduardo Rozsa Flores, who the government says fought in separatist movements in the former Yugoslavia. In his blog, Rozsa describes himself as Muslim and in one entry he calls Morales’ hero, Argentine revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara a racist and mass murderer. He also had this site.

Marton Dunai of Reuters in Hungary reports that Zoltan Brady, editor of the left-wing magazine Kapu, where Rozsa worked as a correspondent, said Rozsa had gone to Bolivia to fight with the separatist movement and against communism. Political opponents to Morales, a socialist, have demanded that the eastern part of the country have more autonomy from the central government.

Vice President Alvaro Garcia said the hotel gunfight lasted 30 minutes and that the three “highly dangerous terrorists” had guns, explosives and grenades. Yet the police emerged unscathed from the battle.

Two survivng men, identified as Hungarian and Bolivian, are under arrest.

Authorities also said they found evidence that the alleged mercenaries tried to put explosives on a navy boat when Morales and his cabinet traveled on Lake Titicaca, on the Peru-Bolivia border, a couple weeks ago.

Police also reported finding a stash of weapons including sniper rifles, high-caliber guns, dynamite and powerful explosives in Santa Cruz on the grounds of a trade fair organized by farmers and businessmen who are among Morales’ strongest opponents. No wonder some opposition politicians scoffed that the whole thing was staged. However, one of Morales’ arch enemies, politically speaking, Santa Cruz Gov. Ruben Costas also was among the targets of the alleged terrorists, the government said.

And, to top it off, police said the alleged terrorists used some explosives from their stash to attack the house of Cardinal Julio Terrazas earlier this week. There’s lots of friction between between Morales and church leaders.

Morales frequently accuses his political rivals and U.S. spies of trying to kill him but has never provided substantial evidence.  This is the first time security forces have backed up the accusations by killing suspects.

____________________________

Photos:

Top: Bolivian President Evo Morales, show speaking at the presidential palace in La Paz on April 14, 2009, said he was one of the targets of an assassination plot that was foiled by police. Photo by REUTERS/David Mercado

Middle: Bullets were confiscated after Bolivian police broke up an assassination plot in a 30-minute shootout at a hotel in Santa Cruz. Photo by REUTERS/Marisela Murcia

Bottom: Police seized a vareity of weapons after the shootout. Photo by Reuters/Marisela Murcia

Russia’s bear-paw swipe at Georgia has got many people drawing comparisons with the Cold War, but personally I like to look for parallels in the 19th century.

At the time the faultlines between Russian and British imperial interests ran from the Balkans through the Crimea and the Caucasus to Central Asia and Afghanistan. That is remarkably similar to some of the faultlines creating upheavals today.  

Angered by western support for the independence of Kosovo in the Balkans, Russia is at loggerheads with NATO over Georgia in the Caucasus.  The row over Georgia has raised fears Russia may halt vital transit of NATO cargoes to Afghanistan – though this has been denied by Moscow – threatening the U.S.-led campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban. Such is the geographical sweep of the world’s problems, that British commentator Simon Jenkins even suggested we may be drifting towards a new global war.

So what are the lessons of history? And what can we learn about what Russia’s motives really are in the current crisis?

According to Lawrence James’s history of the British Raj, the Russians in the 19th century were experts at applying in war and diplomacy a technique adapted from a chess manoeuvre known as a “Maskirovka”. This aims to deceive your opponent into expecting an attack in one place in order to gain strategic advantage elsewhere. In particular, he says, they tried to trick the British into fearing a Russian invasion of India to divert their attention so that Russia itself could focus on securing its European flank.

The Russians considered this gambit during the Crimean war when Britain and its allies fought Russia for control of the Black Sea (the scene of tensions today between U.S. and Russian ships off the Georgian coast) — eventually driving the Russians out of the port of Sebastopol in 1855 (now known as Sevastopol in Ukraine and leased to Moscow as the base of its Black Sea fleet).  It seems history has a way of repeating itself when it comes to choosing its faultlines. 

They tried it 20 years later, prompting Britain to invade Afghanistan in 1878 to secure a buffer state between Russia and India. It was Britain’s second attempt to take over Afghanistan and like its earlier invasion from British India ended in humiliation and defeat. But then history has repeated itself so often when it comes to unsuccessful invasions of Afghanistan that it’s a wonder that any foreign army would choose to set foot in the country ever again.

Reading between the lines of James’s account, it’s easy to reach the conclusion that western powers — from the old British empire to the United States of today – have so consistently underestimated Russia’s sense of vulnerability on its European flank that they have misread the signals on other fronts to the point of making foolish counter-moves of their own. Indeed James says one of the few rulers of British India not to have fallen for Maskirovka adopted a policy of “masterly inactivity”.

Perhaps time to take a long hard look at what matters to Russia, and to work out what it is trying to achieve, rather than interpreting its every move as a potential step towards a new Cold War?