Usatoday

Rebel against the rebels

Colombia's armed forces had tried to rescue hostages before, but when guerrillas holding them heard military helicopters coming, they typically shot their captives dead and melted into the jungle.

Last week, though, helicopters were part of an elaborate ruse in which commandos in disguise tricked the guerrillas into handing over their highest profile hostages — three Americans and onetime Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt — without firing a shot.

(Betancourt: Freed after six years / Getty Images)

The plot will make a movie someday. The commandos took acting lessons, a government agent imitated the voice of a key guerilla commander to order the hostage transfer and, in a final bit of trickery, fake rebels ordered the hostages to don handcuffs before boarding the rescue helicopter.

Once aboard, they were freed. For some, the news came after years held in wretched deprivation. Imagine the utter joy.

The story is inspiring, but it might also turn out to be one of those moments that defines the end of an era. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are Latin America's largest insurgent group, the dying ember of a Marxist revolutionary fire that swept through the region over the past five decades, toppling repressive governments in Cuba and Nicaragua and spawning revolutionary groups in many other Latin American nations.

But over the years, nearly all have sputtered out as democracy has advanced. Some insurgent groups joined the peaceful governing process. Others have devolved into little more than drug gangs. FARC makes an estimated $200 million a year enabling Colombia's trade in cocaine, which provides 90% of the U.S. supply.

Colombia's twice-elected President Alvaro Uribe has gradually gotten the upper hand by refusing to concede to the guerrillas, spending billions to professionalize the army and relentlessly pressuring FARC. U.S. support has been generous, consistent and bipartisan. Presidents Clinton and Bush both strongly backed the effort. With nearly 10,000 combatants and huge amounts of drug money, FARC is hardly dead. But it's reeling.

There's a lesson here. A government with popular support and a professional army can make headway against even the toughest insurgency — if it has crucial outside support and the will to fight for years. That's a model worth emulating in Iraq and Afghanistan.