Uribe Poised to Crush Colombian Rebels as Hostages Are Freed

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Caribbean & Latin News
Uribe Poised to Crush Colombian Rebels as Hostages Are Freed
By
Jul 3, 2008, 13:00

Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas and Porlamar, Margarita Island, Venezuela.

A Bloomberg story by Helen Murphy and Andrea Jaramillo at www.bloomberg.com

(Bloomberg) -- The bloodless rescue of former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages puts President Alvaro Uribe within sight of his most cherished goal: crushing the guerrillas who have spent 44 years trying to overthrow the government.

The hostage rescue deprived the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia of its last major bargaining chips and proved the wisdom of Uribe's hard-line policies, analysts said. The FARC, as the group is known, was already reeling from the deaths this year of three top leaders, desertion of dozens of its most seasoned commanders and betrayal by one of its security chiefs.

``The FARC are for all intents and purposes finished,'' said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy research group in Washington. ``There will still be violence in Colombia, and certain FARC fronts will remain heavily involved in the cocaine trade, but now nobody is going to care.''

For Uribe, 55, the rescue provides a boost of international prestige at a time few Latin American leaders have backed him in his confrontation with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and a much sought-after free trade accord with the U.S. languishes in its Congress.

``Hopefully this will raise awareness in the international community about the Colombian government's efforts to build peace and a new future and perhaps boost chances for the free trade agreement,'' said Andres Jimenez, chief analyst at Bogota brokerage Interbolsa SA.

High Value Hostages

While the FARC still holds some 700 hostages, none are as valuable as those it lost yesterday -- Betancourt, 46, a French- Colombian citizen kidnapped in 2002 whose plight drew the attention of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and other world leaders, and three U.S. Defense Department contractors held since 2003.

Betancourt and the U.S. captives gave the FARC an international limelight, said Cynthia Arnson, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Latin American program in Washington.

``These were the FARC's trump cards,'' said Myles Frechette, U.S. ambassador to Colombia from 1994 to 1997. ``Everyone thought they'd be the last ones freed because it would reduce the FARC's leverage tremendously.''

Efforts to resolve the four-decade conflict foundered under 10 previous Colombian presidents.

Special Forces

Then Uribe, a lawyer whose father was killed by the FARC, won election in 2002 on a pledge to crush the group. Taking advantage of $5 billion of U.S. aid furnished in the past seven years, he sent battalions deep into the jungles to seek out rebel hubs and camps. He expanded the army by 44 percent while U.S.-trained special forces troops pursued the rebels, supplied from the air by helicopters.

He imposed a war tax to bolster the military and set up local militias to coordinate with the army.

The offensive helped cut kidnappings by 83 percent and terrorist attacks by 76 percent by the end of last year, winning him an 84 percent approval rating in March.

Unlike his predecessors, Uribe refused to negotiate. While he let Chavez broker the release of six hostages, he ended that role when Chavez talked directly to the head of Colombia's armed forces. The confrontation escalated to talk of war after Colombian troops in March attacked a FARC camp in Ecuador, a Chavez ally, capturing computers Colombia said showed Chavez aided the rebels.

Infiltration

``The FARC needs to understand that ours is a path toward peace,'' Uribe said in a televised address last night alongside Betancourt and the other former captives. ``We invite the FARC to make peace and to start by freeing the remaining hostages.''

Troops rescued a total of 15 captives yesterday. Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said the group's top command was infiltrated and tricked into putting the handcuffed hostages on a helicopter they thought belonged to an aid group and believed was headed to guerrilla leader Alfonso Cano. The army surrounded about 60 FARC fighters in the operation and let them go as a gesture of peace, Santos said.

``This was a movie style rescue,'' said Santos. ``It's unprecedented.''

The FARC's ranks have been cut in half since Uribe took office to about 8,000 fighters. In the past four months the rebels lost their founder, Manuel Marulanda, his deputy, Raul Reyes, and several chief commanders. Computers retrieved in the Ecuador raid provided wide-ranging intelligence.

`Huge Blow'

Betancourt was seized with her running mate, Clara Rojas, in 2002 while campaigning against Uribe in the demilitarized zone former President Andres Pastrana set up in 1998 in a failed bid to facilitate peace talks. Rojas was freed in January with the mediation of Chavez.

``We need to unite and work together to get the rest of the hostages free,'' Betancourt said. ``This is a huge blow to the FARC.''

The three U.S. men, Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes and Marc Gonsalves, were photographing coca fields in February 2003 when their plane crash landed in FARC-controlled jungles. They flew directly to the U.S., Santos said.

The FARC, which today is considered a band of terrorists by the U.S., the European Union and Canada, was founded in 1964 as a rural, peasant, Marxist insurgency. It initially received support from the Soviet Union, Cuba and the Communist Party of Colombia and today survives on cocaine trafficking, according to the U.S.

Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas and Porlamar, Margarita Island, Venezuela.