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Hostage Rescue Humiliates Rebels

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Los Angeles Times

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 6, 2008

BOGOTA, Colombia - BOGOTA, Colombia - The sensational rescue of 15 hostages from the grip of Latin America's largest rebel group has highlighted the severely diminished state of an organization that just six years ago threatened to overrun the Colombian government.

Once fueled by Marxist ideology and awash in narcotics profits, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, now finds itself facing a more robust Colombian military led by a popular president.

The group has suffered the deaths of top leaders, seen large-scale defections of supporters, and is being squeezed for the money it needs to sustain its operations.

Now the FARC has lost its trophy hostages: ex-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. defense contractors, including Keith Stansell, whose two children reside in Sarasota, whom the rebels viewed as human shields against all-out government attacks. The nature of the rescue mission - in which government agents posed as rebels and freed the hostages without firing a shot - was widely seen as a deep humiliation and public relations disaster for the FARC.

Security officials caution that the rebel group retains some sting. The number of militants has dropped by about half in the last decade, but it still has about 10,000 armed guerrillas spread from the Caribbean to the Isthmus of Panama. And it continues to hold 700 hostages, bargaining chips that preclude a quick end to the group's 44-year-long insurgency.

But President Alvaro Uribe's strategy of aggressively taking the fight to the FARC, backed by a $5 billion U.S. aid package, appears to have seriously degraded the rebels' ability to challenge the state.

Uribe took office in 2002 at a time when the Colombian capital was virtually encircled by FARC forces. A missile and mortar attack marred his inauguration.

Since then, he has bolstered the number of government troops by 40 percent while greatly improving surveillance abilities. Colombian troops have disrupted logistics and killed or captured numerous key FARC lieutenants, leaving guerrillas beleaguered and demoralized.

The FARC no longer controls any significant towns and has been reduced to a series of bands operating in isolated redoubts with fragmented central command, intelligence officials said. They contend that recruitment is down and tensions with civilians have risen as the FARC is seeks younger recruits - some as young as 13 - while forcing urban sympathizers to join rural combat units.

Defectors also say that mid-level commanders live in fear of being turned in by fighters for hefty ransoms offered by the Colombian government. In one notorious case this year, a guerrilla killed his superior in return for a government payout, providing authorities with the slain leader's bloody hand as proof of his treachery.

Uribe always has shunned the idea of holding talks with the rebels, arguing that to do so would bestow them with political legitimacy.

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