A daring raid and maybe an end in sight for FARC

It was a great week for Colombia and its president, Alvaro Uribe, and the latest in a series of really bad months for FARC. It also wasn't such a good week for Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, since the events highlight his duplicitous meddling in Colombia.

FARC is a long-running guerrilla movement that, whatever its original grievances and ideological goals, has long since degenerated into a terrorist organization subsisting on drug trafficking and kidnapping.

On Wednesday, in a daring and bloodless coup, the Colombian military freed 15 of those hostages, including the four most valuable and visible held for over five years, one-time Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three Pentagon contractors, along with 11 Colombian police and soldiers. As a plus, it also snagged "Cesar," the commander of the guerrilla unit guarding the hostages.

By happenstance, the raid coincided with a visit to Bogota by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who expressed support for Uribe, the most pro-U.S. leader in a region where those are in short supply, and for a pending free-trade agreement that Congress, in all decency, should pass quickly.

While the badly tarnished FARC no longer commands the reflexive support of the world's leftists, Uribe has still been under considerable pressure to "negotiate" with the rebels for the hostages' freedom. He rightly refused to give in to their principal demand, that he surrender part of the country to FARC's control.

In recent months, FARC has lost three top leaders, one in a cross-border raid into Ecuador, a junior partner of Chavez, that resulted in the capture of several laptops that detailed the extent of the Venezuelan leader's support for FARC. Until that sub-rosa relationship was exposed, Chavez was working to have Latin America's leftist governments extend diplomatic recognition to FARC.

FARC is apparently infiltrated at the highest levels. The raid involved sending false signals, ostensibly from guerrilla headquarters, to Cesar, ordering him to assemble the hostages in a specific location to be transported elsewhere. The unmarked helicopters that arrived were filled with Colombian commandos disguised as rebels. It was a neat piece of work.

With continuing U.S. aid and trade, this 44-year-long bleeding of Colombia may soon be over. A few more bad months for FARC may do it.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)