Betancourt rescue signals FARC on "brink of defeat"

By Hugh Bronstein - Analysis

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's rescue of Ingrid Betancourt shows Latin America's oldest insurgency is on the brink of defeat in its cocaine-financed war for control of the country, even though the group could take years to die out.

Wednesday's rescue of French-Colombian politician Betancourt, three Americans and 11 Colombians held for years in the jungle immediately boosted confidence in the Andean nation as the peso currency surged along with the local stock market.

"This was the worst blow to the morale of the rebels ever," Alvaro Jimenez, an ex-member of the demobilized Colombian M-19 guerrilla group, said. "But that does not mean the war is over. The death throes of this conflict could be very prolonged."

With this and other recent strikes against leftist FARC rebels, U.S. ally President Alvaro Uribe has crowned his success at improving security in the industrialized north of the country, which is attracting record foreign investment.

But conditions in other parts of the country of 44 million people may still help guerrillas limp along for years more, nourished by the cocaine trade and rural underdevelopment that breeds a steady pool of young, resentful recruits.

Real stability hinges on defeating the thriving drug business. Cultivation of coca plants used to make cocaine rose 27 percent last year and Colombia remains the world's No. 1 exporter even as the guerrillas' power has waned.

Billions of dollars in U.S. military aid and Uribe's unflinching offensive has the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, reeling and unlikely to recover as a coherent national force capable to challenging the state.

The killing earlier this year of two FARC secretariat members, one betrayed and dismembered by a bodyguard motivated by a government reward, ended four decades of government failure to hit the guerrillas' top leadership.  Continued...