Posted on 03/01/2003 12:44:28 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
BOGOTA - Magdalena Rivas watches the news in horror, as hundreds of rifle-toting men dressed in camouflage file past. The soldiers are searching for three American government workers kidnapped by leftist rebels after their plane crashed more than two weeks ago.
The same leftist rebels captured her son, a police officer, in the same cloud-capped mountains of Caquetá state. Elkin Hernández Rivas, 26, has been missing four years and 138 days.
Like other relatives of kidnap victims, Rivas feels for the families of the missing Americans, but wants the search to stop.
Elkin Hernández is one of 72 Colombian soldiers, police officers and politicians now held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC. Since the three Americans literally fell from the sky and into the FARC's hands, the captives have become part of an international tug-of-war.
The rebels are seeking a broad prisoner exchange and are using the Americans as pawns, saying they will only release the Americans -- and the several dozen Colombian soldiers, police and politicians they are holding -- if the government frees about 3,000 of their jailed leftist allies.
Both the United States and Colombia have refused the overture. The search in the mountain highlands continues.
The families fear that the closer the soldiers get to the rebels, the more danger their relatives face. They also fear their relatives will be used as human shields.
Statistics offer some consolation to the families. While 693 Colombians were rescued from kidnappers last year, only one was killed. But that's little comfort considering the size of this operation, the families say.
The rebels, for their part, stoked fears this week. In case of a rescue attempt by force, the kidnapped victims ''run the risk of dying as a consequence of a crossfire between members of our guerrilla organization and units of the state security forces,'' the rebels wrote. So instead, the Colombian family members plead for a deal, a humanitarian accord as they call it, so that their loved ones can be freed.
The longest time period of captivity has been six years. The most famous hostage among them is Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate, who was kidnapped Feb. 23, 2002.
Some of the kidnappings have been brazen. One former governor was seized while riding in a United Nations motorcade. Sen. Jorge Gechen, head of Colombian Senate's Peace Committee, was aboard a flight to Bogotá last year when four armed rebels forced the plane to land and shuffled him off. In the process, they blew up a bridge and killed a pregnant woman.
If anything positive comes from the Americans' kidnapping, relatives believe it could be that more pressure is put on the government and the rebels to make an exchange.
''If there were reasons before, now there are more,'' said Yolanda Pulecio, mother of Betancourt, the one-time presidential candidate.
But for now, the positions are hardened. Since peace talks broke down last year, the Colombian government and the FARC have argued over conditions for a prisoner exchange. Among the sticking points: who exactly will be released, who should moderate the discussion and whether the exchange should take place in a demilitarized zone.
Once opposed to the idea, President Alvaro Uribe appointed a commission to explore possibilities in December. Meanwhile, the FARC, which makes money from extortion and kidnappings -- it seized 936 people last year -- also holds dozens of other hostages who it won't consider to be part of the exchange.
Many Colombians are against an exchange because they feel it would only encourage more high profile hostage-taking and put now-jailed kidnappers back on the streets.
At some point, Uribe and the United States may be forced to engage in a deal, said Leon Valencia, an author and political analyst, because the rebels are hard to find.
They hide in jungle thickets in mountains that impede the usefulness of the radar and sensors used by soldiers.
And that is exactly what would happen. Time to draw the line.
Oh, and don't jail the kidnappers any more. Just execute them. On the spot if practical. Removes the motivation to kidnap for exchange if one side has nothing to exchange
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