On average, 8,000 kidnappings take place annually, from the Northern Caucasus to China, South America and Europe.
Of this figure, 3,000 take place in Mexico, while the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) hold the highest number of hostages in the world, 3,000, with ten people being abducted each day.
Emerging out of the fighting in the 1950s between liberal and conservative militias, the FARC was established in 1964 by the Colombian Communist Party to defend what were then autonomous Communist-controlled rural areas.
One of Latin America’s oldest, largest, most capable, and best-equipped insurgency groups of Marxist origin, the FARC is governed by a general secretariat led by Alfonso Cano.
Organized along military lines and including several units, it operates mostly in key urban areas such as Bogotá, with approximately 9,000 to 12,000 armed combatants and several thousand more supporters, based mostly in rural areas.
In 2003, the FARC conducted several high profile terrorist attacks, including a February car-bombing of a Bogotá nightclub that killed more than 30 persons and wounded more than 160, as well as a November grenade attack in Bogotá’s restaurant district that wounded three Americans.
While it is hard to obtain steadfast figures on the nature and outcomes of kidnappings – by their very essence criminalistic and therefore murky – it is further estimated that victims stand an 80% chance of survival.
The fact that in Colombia the figure is reduced to 21% makes the recent release of the former Colombian presidential candidate, Íngrid Betancourt, so miraculous.
In recent years the mortality rate of hostages held by the FARC has risen substantially with instances such as the Valle del Cauca Deputies crisis and the 2008 Andean Diplomatic crisis, in which a total of thirty-two people were killed.
Captured on February 23, 2002, Betancourt was taken alone with her aide, Clara Rojas, while campaigning in a southern region of Colombia that is controlled by the FARC.
In 2002 Rojas gave birth to a baby boy in captivity, named Emmanuel, the father of whom is speculated to be a FARC guerrilla.
Earlier this year, both Rojas and another former congresswoman, Consuelo González, were freed through Operation Emmanuel, which had been coordinated by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Born in Colombia on December 25, 1961, Betancourt grew up in Paris where her father, Gabriel Betancourt Mejia, was a diplomat.
Her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, was a former Miss Colombia who later served in Colombia’s Congress.
Betancourt married, and later divorced, a French diplomat, Fabrice Delloye, receiving French citizenship as a result, and had two children, Melanie and Lorenzo.
In 1989 she returned to Colombia to become actively involved in national politics, and was subsequently elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1994, on an anti-corruption ticket.
She then formed her own party, the Oxygen Green Party, and became a senator in 1998.
A severe critic of the FARC, Betancourt empathised greatly with the plight of those living in rebel-controlled San Vicente del Caguan, and it was this empathy that prompted her to ignore government warnings and persistently visit the area.
According to her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, said she had felt she needed to be with the people of San Vicente “during the good and the bad”.
In April this year, pessimistic news entered circulation when a priest from a village near FARC-occupied land claimed that Betancourt had been taken to the local clinic for medical care.
A medical mission sent by French President Nicolas Sarkozy landed in Colombia hoping to offer Betancourt medical care, but ultimately remained grounded in the capital, Bogota.
Nevertheless, yesterday, in a feat of derring-do, the Colombian government successfully plucked both Betancourt, the American contractors Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, and eleven Colombian security personnel, from the jungle and away to freedom.
Codenamed Operation Jaque, which translates as ‘checkmate’, the rescue team tricked the FARC rebels into handing over the hostages by posing as members of a fictitious non-government organisation that supposedly would fly the captives to a camp to meet the rebel leader, Cano.
Once ensconced in the two helicopters, the handcuffed hostages were confronted by men wearing shirts of Che Guevara.
Upon taking off, however, the men revealed themselves to be members of the Colombian army, a move that almost caused the helicopter to crash as wild jubilation broke out and they made the break for freedom.
According to Betancourt:
This is a miracle. There is no historical precedent for such a perfect operation. The helicopter almost fell from the sky because we all jumped, shouted, cried and embraced. We couldn’t believe it.
The inspirational story of Íngrid Betancourt is a reminder of how volatile and fickle a concoction politics and conflict can be.
For now, there can be happiness for the second success of such an operation in one year.
Yet many thousands of hostages remain in captivity the world over – a simple Google search of petitions reveals a bleak reality that the suffering continues for aid workers, journalists, lawmakers, and ordinary citizens.
At the end of such posts I usually place a link to organisations taking action on such issues.
The sad fact is that the crime of kidnapping, for political or monetary gain, is so rife that it is near impossible to monitor.
And so this post can only end with the twee hope that for those still in captivity, the success of Operations Emmanuel and Jaque can be repeated.
Soon.
Filed under: Americas, Conflict Zones , Colombia, Latin America, South America
