The Middle Game
IF THE UMBILICAL THEORY IS DEAD, THE implications are profound. In coming round to a more accurate understanding of why Cuba and Nicaragua are important to the FMLN and other prospective...
...Military Personnel and U.S...
...Clements says he heard Americans giving orders over shortwave radio: see also Clements' book Witness to War (Bantam Books, New York, 1984...
...It sent a clear signal to Nicaragua, Cuba and the Salvadorean guerrillas, and was a pretext for leaving behind equipment and facilities for the use of the contras, who were by now operating openly from Honduran soil...
...But that patience was sorely tested as each round of military escalation meant fastening the political muzzle more tightly...
...Military Personnel in Honduras 1980-1984," Central American Historical Institute...
...In May he visited Washington and signed an agreement to open the Regional Military Training Center (CREM) for Salvadorean troops...
...his boss, Haig, promised that the United States would do "whatever is necessary" to defeat the FMLN...
...The Army's June counteroffensive brought a new Americanization of the war on several fronts...
...Soon after his inauguration, Liberal President Roberto Suazo Cordova promoted the fast rising Alvarez to brigadier general...
...The corps of U.S...
...More significant by far is the process of qualitative escalation which has deepened the level of Salvadorean dependency and U.S...
...Operation Ocean Venture was even larger...
...This is ironic indeed...
...It was their most effective yet...
...According to Salvadorean officers involved in the negotiations, the U.S...
...In the words of one Salvadorean officer who was summoned to the Embassy by military attache Col...
...It was the beginning of a headlong retreat by Congress from any fundamental criticism of the Administration's support for the Salvadorean regime...
...advisers directly in the field...
...HE MARCH 1984 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN provided the crowning indignity...
...The Reagan team soon found itself confronting the same Lt...
...Ochoa succeeded in cutting a deal: he would accept temporary diplomatic exile in Washington...
...Embassy intervened and brokered the appointment of non-partisan banker Alvaro Magana as interim president...
...advisers was cranked up another notch with the arrival of a "National Military Strategic Assistance Team'"-its job, as the name implied, "to assist in developing a national military strategy"' 9 Other advisers put the new Tactical Intelligence School into operation and set up crash training programs in helicopter operations and maintenance...
...Embassy, while in Washington President Reagan gave the green light to the covert war on Nicaragua...
...Guerrilla forces overran towns and small garrisons and captured government troops and weapons en masse...
...involvement, it was a full-time job for the U.S...
...9. Cynthia Arnson and Flora Montealegre, "Background Information on U.S...
...8. The New York Times, November 5, 1981...
...6. Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1981...
...But it would have taken the notorious security forces out of the limelight, where they were a conspicuous target for human rights critics...
...official spelled out the message: "The political goal," he said, "is to show we will defend our allies in Central America...
...But at the same time in Washington, Enders' boss Alexander Haig was secretly asking the Pentagon to draw up feasibility plans for U.S...
...But the key component of the aid, in the wake of the FMLN's spectacular attack on Ilopango airfield on January 27, was designed to expand the air war...
...And when the Cuscatlan bridge was dynamited on January 1, the local garrison commander was in San Salvador attending an ARENA meeting...
...Invoking the Soviet threat, he announced plans to train 1,600 Salvadorean soldiers at bases in the In the skies over Carolina, San Miguel United States...
...Their complaint was an old, familiar one: certain commanders were ignoring U.S...
...In July, 1,000 troops sustained more than 100 casualties in fierce fighting on the border with Morazan...
...December brought the first real escalation of public rhetoric from the Administration since Haig's "drawing the line" offensive in February and March...
...advisers in the field were telling The Washington Post by June that "the U.S...
...In July 1982, for example, the State Department cabled the U.S...
...From February 1980 onwards, Green Beret Mobile Training Teams provided training in "urban counterguerrilla operations" and border security, with the Salvadorean frontier particularly in mind...
...The delicate factor of officer corps morale has, in the eyes of many local military observers, taken on increasing importance in the last year...
...In response, the United States sent down two new helicopters and a new crop of advisers, who extended the Army reorganization program from the brigade to the battalion level...
...The only proviso was that the Administration should periodically certify progress in agrarian reform and human rights...
...We are not acting yet like we're serious...
...The real impact of the air war came with A-37 bombing runs...
...6 But in May guerrilla attacks resumed...
...The news is bad, the hour is late," warned Ikle...
...For Enders, this was "the decisive battle for Central America...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36capabilities...
...Naval facilities too were refurbished, at Tiger Island and Puerto Cortes...
...At this point the advisers hoped that companies of U.S.trained commandos could eventually be air-lifted into combat...
...and in August they seized the town of Perquin in the department of Morazan--their biggest victory yet in the field...
...Garcia would resign...
...It said, however, that the Joint Chiefs had found direct intervention to be unnecessary, too costly, and dangerously lacking in public support...
...7 Within two weeks of Nutting's remarks, the FMLN launched its October offensive...
...The issue had thus been narrowed from a qualitative one-did the regime deserve any support at all?-to a merely quantitative one-had the body count of civilian murders declined sufficiently to entitle the Salvadorean Army to further aid...
...By April 1982, he was declaring that, "Our country is small and weak...
...On July 26, 30 U.S...
...More than two years later, however, the effect of aid on Army morale has taken on some subtle and paradoxical twists...
...The reforms and the imposition of Magana drove a chisel into an Army and oligarchy already suffering serious hairline fractures from the 1979 coup...
...Embassy to urge implementation of a program designed "to allow us to meet requirements for that month's congressional certification...
...Thanksgiving Day, 1983...
...A U.S...
...In tropical grasslands 25 miles from the Nicaraguan border, they set out to defend Honduras from the "red army...
...By the fall of 1983, major overhauls were complete in all key aspects of Army operations...
...The Army counteroffensive briefly retook guerrilla-held towns but then abandoned them to retreat to their garrisons...
...Each new policy adjustment meant infringing on the autonomy and political turf of the Army and oligarchy, especially where the death squads were concerned...
...But there were drawbacks...
...The MilGroup argued that the advisers should now accompany combat battalions in the field, and a communications team set up a shortwave network linking MilGroup headquarters "with U.S...
...Departing MilGroup chief Col...
...The Army had indeed improved...
...commitment with the rationale of supporting a reformist regime...
...Aside from continuing to endorse the principle of agrarian reform-in the words of former MilGroup commander Col...
...The next step was to make Honduras into a base of operations for maneuvers by U.S...
...Robert P. McKenzie, was designed to "send a signal to those people who are friends and those who would oppose us in this part of the world...
...Other teams began reorganizing the day-to-day operations of the Army's five regional brigade headquarters...
...9 By now, the possibility of direct U.S...
...military attache interceded on Ochoa's behalf, seeing the impending change as a chance to push further on U.S...
...advisers openly criticized a January operation by the Army...
...The oligarchs no longer set policy or paid the bills...
...The rightists' ideological soul mates in Washington urged them to swallow hard and think of their long-term interests...
...that was Washington's role...
...support which is vital to Salvadorean morale...
...In October, advisers supervised the first joint Army-Navy maneuvers near the Gulf of Fonseca, and by all accounts logistics and communications were better than the year before...
...Adolfo Blandon, a close U.S...
...advisers just to rearm and reorganize the Salvadorean Army...
...In May, Honduras gave the United States permission to upgrade the airfields at Palmerola, Goloson and La Mesa to accommodate C-130 transport planes...
...After all, in the words of one State Department official, "the death squads are the operative arm of intelligence gathering" for the Salvadorean security system-a system that had been created by the State Department and CIA in the early 1960s, during the Kennedy Administration...
...TENSIONS WERE ALREADY SIMMERING WITHin the Army and between senior officers and U.S...
...The guerrillas the Palmerola Base for dinner Mike Goldwater/Network served notice that they too had escalated their military means deepening U.S...
...One change requested by State was the transfer of "intelligence and other military duties" from the National Guard and Treasury Police to the Army, and the creation of a single national intelligence service under Army control...
...troop involvement had to be seriously contemplated...
...The U.S.-trained battalions, especially the Atlacatl, was said by U.S...
...In November 1983, the Administration responded to congressional attempts to condition military aid on human rights improvements with a campaign against individual officers implicated in death squad activity...
...The Carter Administration began the U.S...
...The action, according to Rear Adm...
...Somehow they have to be persuaded that they can't win...
...Alvarez now proposed to open the floodgates...
...A U.S...
...This high-visibility drive left death squad structures intact but sowed bitterness among officers...
...On a deeper level, though, the polls suggested that a sense of inevitability was taking hold beneath the anxiety...
...Still clinging to the "umbilical" theory, Haig put special stress on Castro, requesting plans for "a show of air power, large naval exercises, a quarantine on the shipment of arms to the island, a general blockade as part of an act of war, and an invasion by American and possibly Latin American forces...
...Today, Salvadorean officers say their maintenance ratio has only improved slightly...
...Ironically, this more militant approach is rooted in analytic premises usually characteristic of liberals and the Left...
...Much of that was already coordinated by Army intelligence...
...A logistics team began to systematize Army inventory and munitions consumption...
...Elsewhere, conventional Army forces ranging in strength from two to seven companies tried unsuccessfully to dislodge the insurgents from their northern strongholds...
...Today, aid MAY/JUNE 198435 35 MAY/JUNE 1984REndgame o e A Endgame military role must be expanded or it will become almost point- less...
...Nutting had some misgivings on that score, wondering aloud if the shortage of trained leadership left the Salvadoreans ill-equipped to absorb the new U.S...
...The move would in fact have done little to curb death squad activity...
...The team of advisers which arrived in November expanded Army reorganization right down to the company level...
...and Canadian vessels conducted naval maneuvers in the Gulf of Mexico...
...4. Author's interview with Salvadorean official, San Salvador, February 1984...
...This latest debacle brought them to the boiling point...
...During March and April, as ten Green Beret Small Unit Training Teams drilled the new Atlacatl Battalion, action was sporadic...
...As second-in-command of ANSESAL, the political intelligence agency that selected death squad victims, Roberto DAubuisson had "worked with the CIA for years," according to his aide, Major Oscar Serrato...
...takeover of the conduct of the war...
...When D'Aubuisson and the small rightist parties (including his own ARENA party) won a majority in the 1982 Constituent Assembly elections, the U.S...
...Agency for International Development (AID) set to work on a road through the tense Atlantic Coast area where Nicaragua's Miskito Indian refugees were clustered...
...commitment, far out of proportion to the actual dollar sums involved...
...The New York Times, May 12, 1984...
...In this frame of mind, it grudgingly acceded to military aid packages as long as they were leavened with reforms...
...When FMLN units stormed the El Paraiso barracks on the night of December 30, more than 700 troops were AWOL...
...By the end of the month, Mexico and France had recognized them as a "representative force...
...still others began to design the Army's first Tactical Intelligence School, started training a 1000-man rapid reaction battalion and introduced a program of basic maintenance for communications, motor vehicles and naval equipment...
...Policy on Internal Affairs: Reactions from Honduras," Central American Historical Institute...
...Its successor-let us call it the "self-sustaining" theory of revolutions-sees that they must be confronted directly, for their means of sustenance are primarily internal and the main contribution of their revolutionary allies is as advisers and role models...
...From 1979-83, U.S...
...3 In further developments, CBSNews reported that advisers had supervised an artillery barrage...
...HAMMER and anvil operations on the Salvadorean border proved costly for the Hondurans...
...Nairn, Op Cit...
...Declaring that Cuba was fomenting subversion in Honduras, the United States built a training complex at Lepaterique, close to the capital...
...The Big Pine I (Ahuas Tara) exercises brought the first mass arrival of U.S...
...The clashes between Honduran and Anne Nelson Overseer of the "secret war," U.S...
...In October 1981, 130 U.S...
...Nutting noted that, "The solution will not be the destruction of the guerrillas in the physical sense...
...Its confidence was temporarily shaken in June, however, when the FMLN again took Perquin and wiped out the two Army companies sent to retake the town...
...accordingly, a fresh team arrived to train two quick reaction airborne companies...
...Two aircraft carriers, 37 warships and 200 aircraft staged an amphibious assault on a "hostile island" (Vieques, Puerto Rico) in Operation READEX...
...7. The Washington Post, June 7, 1981...
...2 1 W ITH NO ARMED ENEMY AND NO STUBBORN local officials in the way, the strategic buildup in Honduras proceeded along a smoother path...
...Two more rapid reaction battalions began training-at Fort Benning, Georgia and Fort Bragg, North Carolina as well as in El Salvador...
...Wallace Nutting spoke for the first time of the need to put U.S...
...The guerrilla offensive of October 1983-February 1984, however, handed the Army their most severe defeats to date...
...Paradoxically, it was the November 1981 presidential elections that thrust the newly rebuilt Honduran Army on to the national and world stage...
...Brigade officers were taught how to make better use of intelligence...
...advisers in Honduras-not including covert CIA operativesstood at 346.3 All that remained was for military realities to be ratified politically, and Alvarez wasted little time in arranging that...
...adviser in La Union, eastern El Salvador sized, "that the United States may take direct action if they try to destabilize nations in the hemisphere...
...to send troops eventually if the junta can't defend itself -even though four out of five said they would oppose such a move.' 0 THE MARCH 1982 ELECTIONS DEALT THE FMLN a political setback, which had military repercussions...
...Up to this point, the gradual increase in control over the internal functioning of the Salvadorean Army had been accomplished with relatively stationary levels of funding and personnel...
...24 tions Committee, December 14, 1981...
...Big Pine I marked the emergence of Honduras as open U.S...
...Their involvement provoked warnings from the FMLN--echoed by Nicaragua-that retaliatory strikes would hit targets in Honduras...
...American arms are a crucial factor," stressed Haig in testimony in March 1982, "even more in political and psychological terms than in actual military terms...
...Internal disunity led to a decline in guerrilla activity for almost six months...
...With Garcia's resignation in April, the stage was set for the final U.S...
...officials in El Salvador, it is a continuing source of morale problems, especially among senior officers...
...El Salvador received eight A-37 counterinsurgency jet fighters and four O-2A spotter planes to direct the A-37 barrages...
...Eldon Cummings showed no undue alarm when he estimated that fighting would last "at least a year...
...In September, Defense Minister Jose Guillermo Garcia went so far as to proclaim victory, the Pentagon was skeptical...
...research by George Black and Anne Nelson for an article to be published by The Nation in July 1984...
...By September, a National Security Council study acknowledged that the situation was deteriorating badly...
...By February 1983, the United States had dropped any pretence that its buildup was aimed at meeting the internal needs of the Honduran armed forces...
...New Atlacatl units were brought into the field and embarked on more advanced training routines-patrolling, ambushes, airmobile operations, medical backup and demolitions...
...and local experts also agree that the Salvadorean pilots have performed poorly at combat insertions, and usually leave their troops near the battlefield rather than actually in it...
...In April 1983, the corps of U.S...
...Many could be ascribed directly to poor morale and lax command...
...MilGroup official praised the assault as a "showpiece" use of military intelligence.' 6 THOUGH THE ARMY COUNTEROFFENSIVE failed to drive the FMLN from its strongholds, the guerrillas did appear to have forfeited the military initiative since March...
...Atlacatl companies were rushed into action in Suchitoto...
...policy now replaced this symbiotic relationship with a one-sided dependency...
...John Cash to receive the orders for Reyes Mena's ouster, "the aid was being badly used...
...In August 1981, as 240 NATO ships and 120,000 1- I l : r i D U. lt .J...
...This was the first time that any facility had coordinated Army field operations with those of the three security forces (the National Guard, National Police and Treasury Police...
...Between 500 and 600 of them were to bejunior officers...
...For years the military had done the bidding of the oligarchy, and in return officers received financial rewards...
...Their priority was less to implement democratic process than to guarantee a presentably moderate result...
...ONGRESS RESPONDED BY PASSING A WATERshed foreign aid bill, which expanded presidential authority to make emergency military transfers and ratified continued aid for El Salvador...
...military action in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Cuba...
...Miami Herald, February 22, 1983...
...plans for tactical and structural reforms...
...And now you come along and persecute my companeros for doing their jobs, for doing what you trained them to do...
...The New York Times, March 11, 1982...
...For the first three years of heavy U.S...
...In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Fred Ikle introduced a new dimension: large-scale troop training outside of El Salvador...
...forces...
...military advisers in El Salvador REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34restraint...
...advice that large, cumbersome sweeps should give way to the deployment of small units constantly on the move...
...At about this time, the fighting underwent the first of many deceptive lulls...
...advisers...
...U.S...
...The White House people said we had to be patient with these congressmen...
...For the first time, they began to fight Army units head on...
...Radar/weapons" teams began working with naval patrols...
...weapons...
...Garcia had himself been a Washington protege, but had recently fallen from favor for failing to secure the cooperation of local commanders resistant to the new tactics...
...advisers offered instruction in helicopter maintenance, intelligence, air-to-ground operations, communications and photo analysis...
...Even as Vice President Bush was demanding the removal of the targeted officers, the United States was continuing with covert training and intelligence gathering for security forces involved in death squad operations...
...We had a meeting in Washington," remembered Guillermo Sol, patriarch of one of the 14 families and a founding member of ARENA...
...Domingo Monterrosa (R) is a favorite of U.S...
...Author's interview with Charles Clements, New York, May 11, 1984...
...surrogate in Central American geopolitics...
...But Congress recognized that in the long run little could be more unpopular than for the United States to "lose" another country...
...John D. Negroponte arrived to take charge of a freshly upgraded U.S...
...They said we needed their support for now and that, anyway, who would you rather have on your side, a bunch of congressmen or Jeane Kirkpatrick...
...Linn, "The Cuban Threat...
...Arnson and Montealegre, Op Cit...
...Tiempo (Tegucigalpa) October 19, 1983, quoted in "Impact of U.S...
...The authority of the U.S...
...they stepped up their campaign of economic sabotage...
...Said Meyer, "My own views always have been that we have to build on whatever strength we had in the region, and I believe Honduras is a strength...
...A corps of 21 U.S...
...base at Guantanamo, Cuba...
...The United States later helped build a new Army headquarters and Air Force training school...
...What are we supposed to think of that...
...During that time, the U.S...
...The umbilical theory, usually associated with the hard-line Right, offered an illusion of rollback through only limited intervention...
...small unit tactics, declared a mutiny against Defense Minister Garcia after receiving unwanted transfer orders...
...the United States wanted it to be used correctly...
...During the campaign, however, the CIA worked to defeat its former associate by channelling funds to Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte...
...The Washington Post, January 22, 1983...
...That is a structural reality that can only be altered by forceful, and presumably direct, intervention...
...That has never been possible in a guerrilla war...
...The polls showed that the specific issue of military aid to El Salvador was unpopular with the public...
...troops with C-130s and Chinook helicopters arrived to build a permanent Honduran base nearby at Durzuna, 25 miles from the Nicaraguan border, as part of combined operations with Honduran forces...
...Military Assistance to Central America, Update #5," Institute for Policy Studies, August, 1981...
...Tooth-pulling, a centerpiece of the U.S...
...Honduras is now confronting an armed aggression from the Soviet Union by way of Cuba...
...White House and State Department mail ran as high as 20:1 against the Salvador buildup, and 63 % told a New York Times poll that the United States should stay out of the conflict altogether...
...But I don't REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38think we have made a commitment that is sufficient to convince the communists that we won't quit at the eleventh hour...
...The project took shape under Carter, with a reorganization of the Army and its infrastructure...
...It would also have eliminated the lucrative jobs of the officer corps in the security forces...
...ADVISERS, WHO visited El Salvador during November-December 1980, established a joint command center in the headquarters of the Army general staff...
...The elements of the model were now all in place...
...They also initiated limited aerial bombing and strafing...
...According to U.S...
...Over the course of 1980 it became a rightist regime, but one which the United States was pushing toward reforms...
...John Waghelstein "a key element of any successful counterinsurgency'--Reagan offered elections...
...For the Salvadorean Right, all this was galling: "We learned our way of operating from you," complained one senior officer, "I studied in the Canal Zone, I studied in North Carolina...
...personnel in outlying training sites...
...aid helped finance a 100% real increase in military spending at a time when the Honduran economy was slumping...
...In these zones of guerrilla influence and control, he claimed, "there are areas of up to 30 kilometers where not even a dog moves, except for members of the guerrillas...
...helicopters to airlift Atlacatl troops into Honduras for pincer attacks on the guerrillas' rearguard...
...In 1982, they had 20 Hueys, and only enough pilots and qualified mechanics to keep a quarter of the fleet in the air at any given time...
...role is turning out to be still more traumatic...
...Their confusion was hardly surprising...
...The Salvadoreans' UH-1H "Huey" helicopters only hold 10-12 men...
...Scornful U.S...
...Salvadorean military officers, meanwhile,' met with their Honduran and Guatemalan counterparts for the first public discussion of reviving the Central American Defense Council (CONDECA), and the Reagan Administration publicly acknowledged Haig's request for war plans...
...Gen...
...Edward Meyer, the retiring Army chief of staff, explained the Pentagon's agenda bluntly...
...T HE FIRST TEAM OF U.S...
...Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1983...
...The New York Times, March 21, 1982...
...involvement in the day-to-day management of Salvadorean Army affairs...
...A senior Air Force official says that his A-37s concentrated their firepower-in descending order of intensityon Guazapa, Morazan, Usulutan, San Vicente and Cabanas...
...advisers pressed ahead with their step by step restructuring of the Army and its systems...
...U.S...
...A particularly bloody example was a 15-day sweep through San Vicente by 3,000 troops in August 1982...
...forces being involved in another low intensity, limited war in Central America may present itself before any European confrontation with the Soviets," it commented...
...Author's interviews, San Salvador, March 1984...
...3. Author's interview, San Salvador, March 1984...
...Role in El Salvador's Official Terror," The Progressive, May 1984...
...A portion of the new funds was earmarked to equip two new rapid reaction battalions and to overhaul and decentralize the command and control systems...
...As long as basic material changes were still needed, each new improvement might yield dramatic results...
...The, U.S...
...Author's interview, San Salvador, March 1984...
...Author's interview, San Salvador, March 1984...
...troops-1,600 of them...
...Miami Herald, September 24, 1982...
...Military aid has long been presented to Congress as a demonstration of U.S...
...Newsweek, November 8, 1982...
...D'Aubuisson's defeat marked the eclipse of the Army's traditional power base...
...In peak periods, they were flying up to 30 missions a day...
...In coming round to a more accurate understanding of why Cuba and Nicaragua are important to the FMLN and other prospective revolutionaries, the Administration may grasp that they matter not because they run guns-which, after all, is behavior that can be "cured" by arm-twisting and offshore blockades-but because of their very existence as revolutionary left-wing states...
...In October the FMLN, which by now reportedly controlled a quarter of the country, dynamited the Puente de Oro...
...Evans and Novak, citing U.S...
...From March to July 1981, adviser teams helped establish a communications and logistics network to carry out directives from the new center...
...advisers in El Salvador draws heavily on this report, which is based on Pentagon documents obtained by IPS under the Freedom of Information Act...
...total aid from $34.6 million to $99.3 million...
...commitment...
...troops and six ships had participated in Operation Falcon's Eye, a naval maneuver off Puerto Cortes on the Caribbean coast to practice ship interceptions and landings on "Country X." That was only the first step...
...5. The Washington Post, March 11, 1982...
...Ambassador to Honduras John D. Negroponte Nicaraguan troops, sparked by CIA-sponsored contra raids, grew in frequency and fierceness toward year's end...
...SUCH LARGESSE HAD ITS PRICE...
...DEMANDING THOUGH A STRATEGY OF LIMited intervention may have proven to client states such as El Salvador and Honduras, the shift to preparation for a more forceful U.S...
...The following discussion of the Honduran military relies heavily on Historical Institute materials...
...There was no longer room to tolerate obstructionists...
...On January 6, Col...
...Sixtytwo percent told Gallup that they favored economic aid to the Junta, and two out of three respondents told The Washington Post-ABC that they "expect [the] U.S...
...The guerrillas, however, had also made strides forward...
...In 1981 Green Berets began teaching at the Honduran Military Academy and the Command and General Staff School...
...They left hundreds of civilians dead, thousands refugees...
...Author's interview with Salvadorean official, San Salvador, March 1984...
...Whether or not it wished to, it would be obliged to continue upping the reform ante-at least symbolically-if it hoped to escalate its plans in the military arena...
...Armed with his newly reaffirmed emergency powers, Reagan sent down $55 million in military assistance on February 1. His first certification of human rights imMAY/JUNE 1984 37Endgame provements ten days earlier flew in the face of evidence from human rights monitors, but liberal protests were ineffectual...
...By January 1983 the FMLN was ready to stage its most audacious maneuver to date, raiding the San Carlos barracks -the nation's largest-in the heart of the capital...
...2 2 As well as supervising a purge of officers reluctant to see the Salvadoreans as allies, the team presided over a struc39 MAY/JUNE 1984Endgame tural reorganization of the Army, forming three brigades with fifteen new battalions...
...Duarte announced that the Army would have to be more than doubled in size-to 40 or 50,000 men-if the guerrillas were to be defeated...
...The following discussion of the function of U.S...
...But Alvarez, with President Suazo's backing, prevailed...
...In El Salvador, the slide up the conflict spectrum has been accompanied by a deepening of the Devil's bargain that legitimizes Washington's involvement...
...Describing himself as "somewhat pessimistic...
...and Argentine advisers trained Alvarez' elite Cobra antiterrorist unit...
...Military Buildup," NARMIC, April 1983...
...7 Publicly, the Administration was committed to "a political solution" in El Salvador, as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas O. Enders told the World Affairs Council in July...
...2 0 The Marine Corps Gazette was quite explicit about what this might mean: "The possibility of U.S...
...Public opinion still bedevilled the desire to escalate...
...2. Allan Nairn, "Behind the Death Squads: An Exclusive Report on the U.S...
...Enders made an outspoken speech to the American Legion...
...Sigifredo Ochoa, a field commander in Cabanas who embraced the U.S...
...collaborator...
...An Operational Planning and Assistance Team worked at the Army general staff "for planning and coordination at the national level...
...It should be made clear to the Soviet Union and Cuba and Nicaragua," he emphaU.S...
...intelligence sources, attributed the spectacular raid to 500 Cuban commandos who had allegedly arrived at Managua airport the previous month, "their arms...concealed in suitcases:' Southcom Commander Gen...
...THE MIDDLE GAME 1. The Washington Post, July 8, 1982...
...Some Honduran legislators and editorialists were outraged at his disdain for the Constitution and his invitation for the country's traditional enemies to sharpen their combat skills inside Honduras...
...advisers to be performing well in military terms, though they were implicated in wholesale civilian killings...
...There, U.S...
...I'd really like to anchor the defense of the region initially on Honduras...
...In pure military terms, the Honduran Army became the instant beneficiary of the most rapid comprehensive aid buildup Latin America has ever seen (though how much of the aid ended up in the hands of the contras will never be known...
...Because of that, if no other possibility exists to preserve peace, Honduras is in agreement that the United States, as a friendly country, intervene militarily in Central America...
...See also Raymond Bonner, Weakness andDeceit, (Times Books, New York, 1984...
...and Latin mercenaries working with the CIA made their first appearance in action, according to Salvadorean officials.' 4 Most important of all, perhaps, the arrival of the A-37s meant that the air war could start in earnest...
...That spring saw the final flourish of the "umbilical" theory, with intimidating naval maneuvers at a peak in April and May...
...Cynthia Arnson, "Background Information on Honduras and El Salvador and U.S...
...surveillance ships arrived in the Gulf of Fonesca in January, and the next month an "Operations/Electronics" team began training the Salvadorean Navy in arms interdiction...
...The Administration abandoned its earlier pretence of guarded optimism, and Haig recognized that the war in El Salvador was at a "Stalemate...
...5 Massive attacks with 300-, 500- and 750-pound general purpose bombs would "soften up" the target areas in preparation for infantry sweeps...
...The Washington Post, March 24, 1982...
...It is no longer simply a matter of reaffirming support...
...Again, the umbilical theorists reared their heads...
...Quoted in Honduras: A Democracy in Decline, Washington Office on Latin America Special Update, February 1984...
...With the Defense Department's annual Posture Statement declaring ominously that Western Hemisphere security "is no longer a foregone conclusion," U.S...
...T HESE MOVES SHOCKED AND DISILLUSIONED ARENA and their allies in the military and oligarchy, who had built personal ties to the Reagan team in 1980 and embraced the policy statements of Haig and Kirkpatrick as geopolitics after their own hearts...
...For the first time the Army complemented its own massive sweeps with U.S.-style small unit tactics...
...It deployed 60 ships, 350 planes and 45,000 men in an invasion maneuver that included an evacuation drill at the U.S...
...five other landing strips followed later...
...Army's civic action Debate in Congress and the press has often obscured the extent of that involvement by focussing narrowly on the quantity of aid...
...22...
...You taught me how to kill communists and you taught me very well...
...For many officers, the loss of autonomy was hard to accept...
...In exchange, then, for the authority to wage war in defense of the status quo, the Administration's bargain entailed denying the Right its political voice in the short term...
...The Central American War: A Guide to the U.S...
...In June, the first Salvadoreans arrived at the CREM to be trained by Green Berets...
...Honduran children are bussed to warships appeared off the Salvadorean coast...
...8 T O SUPPLEMENT ITS GROUND SWEEPS, THE Salvadorean Army began using U.S...
...12 The National Security Council concluded in April that the deterioration of the regional military situation had been stemmed and that the Salvadorean guerrillas could be contained with no increase in the U.S...
...officers had already taken charge of key tactical communications, especially in the coordination of air strikes.' 8 They had set in motion a series of promotions for sympathetic younger officers, a sequence of personnel changes that culminated in November 1983 with the replacement of Col...
...advisers-that is, those publicly acknowledged-soared from 21 to 104...
...Their emphasis was on officer training, small unit tactics and the mastery of new U.S...
...Defense Secretary Weinberger still seemed to believe that such indirect actions could solve the Salvadorean problem, telling Congress that "the government might well be able to prevail if the resupply was not going on...
...Reyes Mena as Army chief of staff by Col...
...Palmerola would later become command center for the Big Pine maneuvers...
...It is in Central America that a showdown between East and West may next take place...
...Assistance to Central America, Update #7," Institute for Policy Studies Resource, November, 1982...
Vol. 18 • May 1984 • No. 3
