| Bold Colombia Rescue Built on Rebel Group’s Disarray |
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Bogotá (Simón Romero & Damien Cave), July 4.— At 5 a.m. on Wednesday, the sun had yet to peek through the jungle canopy in this country’s Guaviare Department when the guerrillas told their captives to gather their belongings. A call had come in from a top adviser to Alfonso Cano, their new supreme commander. He said to move. Immediately. Or so the guerrillas thought. In fact, the gravelly voice that sounded so full of authority belonged not to a grizzled leader of Latin America’s most feared insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, but rather to a government officer. The fighters had been duped. With the help of satellite telephone intercepts and a spy who infiltrated the FARC’s upper echelons, the Colombian military had managed to plan and execute an operation that ended a long-running international hostage saga and upended Colombia’s four-decade civil war. The voice was simply the most dramatic touch in a daring rescue that exploited the recent disarray within the FARC. The insurgency has now lost many of its top leaders and its most prized hostage: Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian politician whose captivity since 2002 has attracted attention worldwide. Its founder, Manuel Marulanda, has died; security forces killed its second-in-command, Raúl Reyes, in March; and some 3,000 combatants have deserted in the last year. [ full text ] |
The rescue, described by commanders of the Colombian Army and officials in Washington and Bogotá, was almost exclusively a Colombian operation that highlighted the growth of a military that has benefited from $5.4 billion in aid from the United States since 2000. And while many here and in Washington stressed that the FARC remained a powerful force of several thousand fighters, earning around $200 million a year from drug trafficking, some analysts suggested that the raid combined with continued pressure might push the rebels to negotiate for peace.
