Buenos Aires  - There is probably no such thing as a good year for a person who is being held hostage in the jungle, sick, in chains or barefooted among other terrible conditions.

And yet 2008 has seen great developments in the Colombian conflict, even as some 700 hostages remain held by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The current year featured unilateral releases by the rebels and crucial rescues, including that of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, the most high-profile hostage held by FARC.

It also saw key developments and changes within FARC as an armed organization, including the death of its founder and second-in- command, that may yet bear fruit in the years to come.

The Colombian conflict, which has pitted left-wing rebels against the Colombian government for more than 40 years, is far from over. Experts agree that FARC, though evidently debilitated, can survive as an armed organization in the dense Colombian jungle.

Kidnappings in particular have earned the group international condemnation, but the rebels do not appear to care.

"We will never be the ones - never, a thousand times never - to lay down our weapons," FARC wrote months ago.

The year started with what seemed to be a failed attempt to secure the release of some hostages.

Moreover, it was made public that a boy born in captivity to Betancourt's vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas and a rank-and- file rebel, and whom FARC had offered to release, was not in their custody, but rather in foster care. The discovery appeared to erode even further the rebels' validity as partners in dialogue.

And yet everything changed very quickly. Within days, Rojas was emotionally reunited with her 3-year-old son after being released by FARC along with former legislator Consuelo Gonzalez.

The following month, FARC freed four more hostages, all of them former legislators, but vowed to stop unilateral releases to pursue a comprehensive hostage swap.

The rebels intended to exchange some 40 politically relevant hostages - politicians and police and military officers, led by Betancourt and three US defence contractors.

However, the tables started to turn on FARC in March.

On the first day of the month, Colombian troops conducted a diplomatically controversial crossborder raid on a FARC camp in Ecuador, killing rebel number-two Raul Reyes.

Another member of FARC's seven-member leadership, Ivan Rios, was killed by a disgruntled fellow rebel just days later.

And the group's elderly founder and leader Manuel Marulanda died later that month of natural causes, to be replaced by former student leader Alfonso Cano.

Within just one month, the monolithic FARC was forced to redesign much of its structure, and to recompose difficult logistical processes in the jungle. Experts said it took them months to rebuild communications.

This was the backdrop against which Colombian President Alvaro Uribe scored his greatest success to date.

On July 2, Betancourt, the three US contractors and 11 Colombian military and police officers were freed by the Colombian military in what was officially presented as a daring but peaceful intelligence- based rescue. FARC captors handed over prisoners to commandos posing as fellow rebels.

Later, there were abundant rumours that a ransom had been paid to the rebels who were watching the valuable group, and that foreign forces had taken part in the rescue operation. The Colombian government denied these charges.

Uribe, however, admitted that one military official misused Red Cross symbols during the operation in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

"The operation was perfect," Betancourt stressed hours after her liberation. "Rescue was an option that was less bad than kidnapping."

And yet many are not quite so sure of the procedure.

"It is much better to avoid military rescue operations which may not be as successful as this one," said opposition Senator Piedad Cordoba, who was involved in talks with FARC to free hostages.

In a further blow, former Colombian parliamentarian Oscar Tulio Lizcano managed to escape FARC in late October, after eight years in captivity, with the help of his guard.

It may well be concluded that 2008 has not been a good year for FARC, and even that it has been a great year for those hostages who recovered their freedom after more than five years in captivity.

However, this runs the risk of marking a negative turning-point for hundreds of hostages still held by FARC. Deprived of the international attention that Betancourt and the US contractors attracted, there is a danger that their cases may fall into oblivion.

It is this possibility that released hostages have set out to counter. "We could be over there, we could be the ones left in the jungle," Betancourt has stressed.

In another relatively new development, Colombians have poured out onto the streets four times this year, to demand an end to the kidnappings that plague the country.

Betancourt ended 2008 with a tour of Latin American nations in which she asked regional leaders to get more involved in efforts to secure the release of the many remaining hostages. (dpa)