Ingrid is free!

I am happy to report that after several years (!), a group of 15 hostages held captive by FARC has been rescued by the Colombian army a few hours ago. Happily, Ingrid Betancourt is among the rescued persons, which also include three US citizens and 11 members of the Colombian army. Of course, this is great news for all of us. Independently of our political views, one can only be happy to know that Ingrid and the others are back again.

Only a few details are known about the operation that lead to the rescue of the hostages. Here's what is known so far. According to the Minister of Defense (who, once again, stole all the credits from the president), the rescue was the consequence of a carefully planned (impressive, in my opinion) action of intelligence. It turns out that intelligence forces of the army managed to infiltrate people in both the group of guerrilla troops that were holding the hostages and the FARC's secretariat (the small group of commanders that leads that terrorist organization). Colombian intelligence knew that the hostages were divided in different groups, so using the infiltrated agents, they managed to made believe the guerrilla troops that Alfonso Cano (head of the secretariat) had ordered to bring all the hostages to him. The misinformation was successful, and all the small groups of hostages were brought to a determined point in the south of Colombia, where a helicopter was waiting. The FARC members thought that such a helicopter had been sent by Alfonso Cano to take the hostages to his place. Of course, the helicopter was of the army, and as soon as all the hostages were inside, a special forces unit neutralized the guerrilla soldiers in charge.

Too many things come to my mind right now. Let me mention two of them. First, the political consequences. On the one hand, I think that, once again, Alvaro Uribe will try to modify the Constitution, so he can run for a third period. In case this is not possible, the natural successor will be Juan M. Santos, current Minister of Defense and despicable human being. I don't know which one is worst. On the other hand, Ingrid Betancourt will for sure assume a political role, but right now it's difficult to say which position she will take with respect to the current right-wind government. Could be Ingrid the key to stop an eventual Uribe or Santos government, during 2010 elections? Ingrid's political intelligence is so needed in this moment, but I am not sure if she will be psychologically healed to assume such a challenge now.

The second thing I think is that, assuming that all what the Minister said about the intelligence plan is true, FARC are really weakened. I mean, infiltrating such an organization seems really difficult, and if they really managed to do it then they might have the key for the end of FARC as a rebel army with political ambitions. I really hope so.