wing rebels, their numbers cut by death and desertions, are increasing their attacks a year after they lost their prize hostage in a stunning rescue and raised hopes for an end to the war. While the frequency of violent guerrilla operations is on the rise, the government's US-backed security policies have blunted the effectiveness of the attacks. Thursday marked the first anniversary of the army tricking the guerrillas into handing over former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other high-profile kidnap victims held for years in secret jungle camps. The rescue, in which government agents posing as members of a leftist humanitarian group spirited the hostages away on a helicopter, was a humiliating blow to the four-decade-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC. Since then Colombia has seen an increase in hit-and-run FARC operations that dominate headlines once filled with euphoria over the liberation of French-Colombian citizen Betancourt, three American defense contractors and 11 soldiers and police. The rebels are far from re-emerging as a threat to the state, which they were prior to 2002 when President Alvaro Uribe was first elected, promising to smash the insurgency. But the FARC's attempts at rebirth likely will be an irritant for years to come and remain a concern for investors who have long been wary of the rebels' impact. Early in 2008 the FARC lost a key commander in a bombing raid. Another top rebel boss was killed and dismembered by his own bodyguards for a government reward and the group's founder, Manuel “Sure Shot” Marulanda, died of natural causes. It was the year hailed by some as the beginning of the end of the insurgency. But 13 soldiers and police have been killed in FARC ambushes over the past 10 days alone and local lawmakers have been subject to a recent spate of guerrilla kidnap attempts. “The FARC is reduced to carrying out small, violent actions that register on the local news but have no strategic impact,” Deputy Defense Minister Sergio Jaramillo told Reuters. The number of FARC attacks nearly doubled in the first three months of this year compared to the same 2008 period, according to local think-tank Security & Democracy. While the quantity of operations rose to 58 from 32 quarter over quarter, the deadliness of the attacks has fallen, said Alfredo Rangel, who heads the Bogota-based research group. “They are in a hurry to improve their morale and show that they still have military capacity. But the actions that they are carrying out are on a smaller scale,” he said. “They are mounting more operations but doing less damage.” The turning point in the war came with the arrival of Uribe, a hard-liner whose father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping in the 1980s. Backed by billions of dollars in US military aid, Uribe ordered the army to take the fight to the guerrillas. The results are dramatic. The rebels have been pushed deeper into rural areas and the police have retaken control of highways where the FARC once kidnapped with impunity. Uribe's policies were so popular he was re-elected in 2006 after the constitution was changed to allow a second term. Despite a series of scandals in which some of the president's closest political allies are accused of illegal dealings with right-wing death squads, his backers are trying to change the law again to allow him to run for a third term. Meanwhile, the FARC has been reduced from about 18,000 fighters in 2002 to less than 9,000 today, Rangel said. “Their presence is shrinking. They will never be able recover to the point where they were in 2002 but they are showing that they can, for a time, increase the number of attacks they carry out,” Rangel said.
