Daring Hostage Rescue Signals Decline of Rebel Group in Colombia

The hostages included three American contractors who had been working on an anti-drug mission for the Pentagon in 2003 when their plane crashed in the Colombian jungle. The most famous hostage was Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician who was abducted while campaigning in 2002. Eleven Colombian soldiers were also rescued.

A complicated and audacious rescue mission

	Politician Ingrid Betancourt, pictured here in captivity in 2007, brought attention to the plight of the hostages through letters she wrote her mother.

On July 2, government agents tricked the rebels in charge of the hostages into believing that they were ordered to transport the captives in a helicopter to one of the guerrilla group's leaders in a different camp.

Colombia's Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said that he instructed his special rescue team to "Use your imagination, be audacious and catch the enemy off guard,'" he told the Washington Post.

The plan was so convincing that Betancourt later told reporters that it was not until the rescuers told her she was free that she realized she was not among FARC rebels.

"The chief of the operation said: 'We're the national army. You're free,'" she said. "The helicopter almost fell from the sky because we were jumping up and down, yelling, crying, hugging one another. We couldn't believe it."

Hollywood Reporter magazine reports there are already several movies being scripted from the events.

The impact on FARC

	FARC rebels were under intense military pressure in 2007 and lost several leaders in 2008.

The rebel group's roots lie in the country's highly segregated society with an upper class of Colombians of Spanish descent and a lower class of poor Colombians of mixed-race descent.

The leftist group FARC, which was established in 1964, said it would use armed struggle to seize power from the elitist government and return it to the common people.

The group largely uses money from the illegal drug trade to finance its operations. And some analysts believe that the group has lost its political focus and is more concerned with making money.

There are an additional 700 captives still in the jungle, and their families fear they are in greater danger from the now-embarrassed rebels.

Meanwhile, civilians continue to be caught in the crossfire between FARC and the government and other right-wing paramilitary organizations.

U.S. foreign policy in Colombia

	A U.S. Justice Department map shows the flow of cocaine from Colombia to U.S. cities.

The three Americans captured by FARC, Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell, were working for U.S. Defense Department contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. when their crop surveillance plane crashed.

FARC's future

	Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said he would have resigned if the plan to free the hostages was unsuccessful.

"It's reaching a point where most of the leaders of FARC are going to say, 'We're not going to win, we don't have a chance.'" Peter DeShazo, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the New York Times. "And when they reach that point, then political negotiation becomes more possible."

Colombia's defense minister agrees that peace negotiations are possible.

"We need to insist on military pressure. And at the same time, we are offering them a peace negotiation. If they want to negotiate seriously a peace agreement, we are willing to sit down, but we will not repeat what they have done in the past of using a negotiation simply to strengthen themselves," Santos told the NewsHour.