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...Bogotá Freedom for FARC Hostages Former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was rescued in a Colombian military-intelligence operation July 2, ending her six years as a hostage of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The most famous of FARC's estimated 750 captives, Betancourt, who holds French citizenship, was liberated along with 14 others, including three U.S. military contractors...
...rescue operation was dubbed Jaque - which means "check," as in checkmate, in Spanish - and was indicative of how deeply Colombia's military intelligence has been able to infiltrate the FARC's top hierarchy, the secretariat, in recent months. A government mole had been able to convince those bosses to transfer Betancourt and the 14 other hostages to the encampment of the FARC's new No. 1 leader, Alfonso Cano. Under the yoke of a FARC unit led by Comandante Cesar, the group made its way to a smaller camp belonging to a friendly NGO. "They tied our hands and feet...
...game has changed now that the major hostages are free. Says Michael Shifter, vice president of the InterAmerican Dialogue in Washington: "This removes the only real bargaining chip the FARC had left in its dealings with the government. It's going to be very hard now to talk of the FARC as a national guerrilla movement - it's going to fracture and fragment even more, and the important thing for the Uribe government to do now is offer them more incentives to incorporate themselves into civilian society...
...survive the demoralization, considering that dozens of its commanders have been killed or have surrendered recently and some 300 rank-and-file members are deserting every month, according to the government. They've even lost the enthusiasm of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, an unabashed FARC sympathizer who had brokered the release of a handful of other hostages this year. The Uribe government accuses Chávez of funding the FARC, which the U.S. lists as a terrorist organization. Last month Chávez urged the rebels to disband, calling their brand of guerrilla insurgency, a hemispheric staple...
...political winner, however, is Uribe, Washington's key ally in Latin America, whose campaign against the FARC has made him perhaps the most popular President in the nation's history. The FARC was once respected by many Colombians for fighting the nation's epic inequality, but today it is viewed by most as a mafia. Betancourt's mother, Yolanda Pulecio, told TIME earlier this year that she feared Uribe's bellicose policy would mean interminable captivity for Betancourt, who looked emaciated and alarmingly despondent in her most recent photographs. "I'm killing myself every day," she said, "wondering why dialogue...