Video: Ingrid Betancourt released

The operation to free 15 of Farc’s most prominent hostages has not only triggered a surge of optimism in Colombia that Latin America’s oldest surviving guerrilla insurgency could be nearing an end. It has also vindicated the uncompromising approach of the country’s leader and reshaped the region’s balance of power.

The biggest winner — apart from the hostages — is President Uribe of Colombia, who has resisted calls from many hostages’ families to sit down with the rebel movement and negotiate. Despite the careful planning, security experts say that the rescue operation could have gone badly awry.

Politically, he had the most to lose if the hostages had been killed.

“It was clearly a vindication of his strategy,” said Patrick Grayson, an intelligence consultant. “You need great nerve to give the green light to such an operation. You have to be prepared to take the flak if it all goes wrong.”

The operation also represents a serious setback for the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, who has lambasted his Colombian counterpart as a “pawn of the [US] empire” and sought to position himself as a key go-between in Colombia’s four-decade conflict. “This was the card that Chávez was playing,” said Michael Shifter, an analyst at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think-tank. “He had claimed he was the only person who could deliver these hostages. This sort of marginalises him.”

Mr Chávez and his Ecuadorean counterpart, Rafael Correa, have been at best tolerant of Farc’s operations on their territory; at worst, Colombia’s two neighbours have actively backed for the rebels.

After killing a Farc commander this year, Colombian authorities recovered evidence that Mr Chávez was financing the guerrillas and sending them weapons. The Venezuelan and Ecuadorean government have vehemently denied the charges. The evidence has been verified by Interpol and seems to have brought about a change of heart from the Venezuelan leader.

Mr Chávez had been calling on the international community to take a more benign view of Farc. Now he has changed his tune and has called on the rebels to abandon their struggle. Mr Uribe’s offensive has isolated the guerrillas, who are cut off from each other. Estimates of their numbers range from 7,000 to 12,000, down from about 17,000 in 2001.

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