EL SALVADOR Disunited to Deconstruct
Ostertag, Bob
As their highly touted counterinsurgency program has fizzled into political fiasco, Salvadorean military officers are trading bitter charges of incompetence, bad faith and corruption with...
...Ponce, now the powerful commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Brigade in the eastern half of the country...
...If we were armed, there would be problems for sure...
...Emilio Ponce, who developed the program at the Army high command in 1985, claims that approximately 700 projects have been completed or are in progress in other target areas around the country...
...Elsewhere in the country, government leaders, military officers and U.S...
...A shiny modern electrical line which was installed months ago, but never actually hooked up, towers over the village as a monument to the disorganization that plagues the reconstruction effort...
...Though such actions may well score points for the Army among a population increasingly bitter about rebel economic sabotage, they hardly constitute structural changes in the national economy...
...The armed forces saw it as crucial to avoid identifying United to Reconstruct with the Duarte Administration in order to win the cooperation of the business sector, the president's long-time enemy...
...The Army asked us to carry guns," explained 50-year-old Radil Castro Rivas, "but we said no...
...line: they frequently assert that El Salvador's "problem" is "only 10% military and 90% political...
...Almost one year later, residents are still without electricity, permanent housing or easy access to drinking water-all of which were promised upon their return...
...Under the influence of U.S...
...Five or six years ago there would have already been five or six coups...
...Even at the local level, problems persist...
...today Ichanqueso remains the only one to get off the ground...
...But despite residents' claims that Ichanqueso was the most ardently pro-Army of the 33 settlements that once covered the area, they have refused to participate in civil defense...
...Earlier Salvadorean counterinsurgency programs, such as the various "national plans," had focused more on pacification of designated rural areas and lacked an ambitious political agenda...
...project that could effectively channel resources into the war effort...
...A Military Eclipse...
...The government, on the other hand, saw the plan as a military attempt to eclipse its civilian leadership...
...Many top officers today appear to have thoroughly assimilated the U.S...
...One crucial element of the counterinsurgency program was the projected involvement of targeted populations in "civil defense" patrols to free up Army soldiers for offensive action against the guerrillas...
...But the Army's program consists largely of repairing bridges destroyed by guerrillas and reopening schools in conflictive zones...
...aid...
...Such rhetoric is echoed by statements like those of Col...
...The Army, predictably, was incensed...
...Most importantly, the very conception of the plan does not live up to the LIC rhetoric that accompanies it...
...According to the United to Reconstruct plan, the counterinsurgency program was drafted in 1986 on the assumption that guerrilla activity would "continue at a level equal to or less than its current level...
...AID made plans to pour $18 million directly into the project, while millions more already earmarked for government ministries were reprogrammed toward United to Reconstruct...
...Off the record, informed sources indicate that friction was most intense between the Army and the Ministry of Culture and Communications...
...Light reflected from newly constructed corrugated tin huts dances across the hillside, while the air is filled with the sounds of carpenters at work rebuilding the local schoolhouse...
...The real strategy of United to Reconstruct was to use the Army's prestige and muscle, and the funding of the U.S...
...On topics such as the stalled agrarian reform the military remains conspicuously silent...
...Another problem the Army faces is the war itself...
...Rifles & Structural Change In addition to the chaos in the civilian sector, United to Reconstruct may also suffer from serious deficiencies of its own...
...Planned as a model repopulation site to be emulated elsewhere, Bob Ostertag, a correspondent for Pacific News Service, has written extensively on El Salvador...
...The powerful propaganda ministry is run by Julio Rey Prendes, a close associate of the president and a likely Christian Democratic presidential nominee in 1989...
...But to disgruntled Army officers, it now appears that all was for naught...
...A leaked secret Army document outlining the program asserts that the counterinsurgency program must seek a "more equal sharing of the national wealth...
...According to this view, "nation-building," or the assembling of a stable, civilian coalition capable of efficiently administering the government and leading the nation politically, is the key to winning the war...
...Last year an exasperated Gen...
...As a result, the areas in which many United to Reconstruct projects are concentrated are now offlimits to journalists without special permission from the military...
...Adolfo Bland6n, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, broke his usual public silence in a series of stinging criticisms of his civilian allies...
...They said the gringos would bring us real houses from the United States but at this point, who knows...
...I believe another Martinez will emerge and end this thing once and for all," he added, referring to an Army leader who suppressed a peasant rebellion in 1932 by massacring some 30,000 peasants and ushering in decades of military rule...
...History goes in circles," said one top field commander...
...The more important objective was to build political unity among the bickering political factions which support the Army...
...Agency for International Development (AID), to bring the openly feuding government, political parties and business community to heel in the construction of a coordinated economic, political and military io REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10superncially, untea to Heconstruct nas much to show for itself...
...Congress for aid when the very people we are defending won't pay their share...
...snapped one high-ranking officer...
...Instead of plotting a coup, the high command developed plans for United to Reconstruct, hoping that through the program the military could make its leadership felt without seizing direct control of the state...
...Col...
...Yet over the past year, rebel actions have increased, and the FMLN has consolidated positions in areas of the country where it previously had only a tenuous presence...
...But today most officers remain convinced that the electoral process must be maintained, both to politically isolate the guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and to ensure continued U.S...
...We would have preferred to fight this war harmonizing all the fields of power in the country-political, economic, military and social," he announced...
...By 1985, however, the Duarte government was seemingly unable to either effectively mobilize its populist base or to build bridges to the rightwing business sector which had been the party's traditional enemy...
...The program was launched a year ago amidst all the publicity the high command could generate, with Bland6n repeatedly calling on the government, political parties and business sector to fall into line...
...Embassy officials have been shaking hands, cutting ribbons, and smiling for cameras in a series of ceremonies marking the completion of a slew of related public works projects...
...How can we continue to ask the U.S...
...Key government ministries, meanwhile, were bogged down in red tape and rumors of corruption rampant...
...We are neutral...
...As their highly touted counterinsurgency program has fizzled into political fiasco, Salvadorean military officers are trading bitter charges of incompetence, bad faith and corruption with the business community and government...
...The onceabandoned mountain village of Ichanqueso in central El Salvador is now the showcase project, populated with former refugees who have returned home under the program's auspices...
...Many are particularly bitter about the government's response...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1988 11"Unfortunately, some politicians have viewed the plan with suspicion, alleging it was an attempt by the armed forces to retake the power we had supposedly lost," complained Col...
...Reportedly, the ministry refused to release any publicity for the program unless it carried the insignia of the ruling Christian Democratic Party...
...A frustrated minority, however, seems to have lost patience with the political approach to counterinsurgency and are contemplating a return to the more repressive methods of previous years...
...Backslapping and Bickering But United to Reconstruct was intended to do much more than repair a tiny fraction of the war damage...
...Red Tape and Corruption It was with this in mind that the Army, which directly controlled the state for much of the last 50 years, allowed Jos6 Napole6n Duarte to win the presidency in 1984 and his Christian Democratic Party (PDC) to gain control of the legislature the following year...
...Yet the crucial political unity has failed to emerge, making the whole of the effort much less than the sum of its parts...
...They told us these houses were provisional," said Ruperto Ovidio Rivera, a weather-beaten middle-aged campesino and member of the community council...
...Yet behind all the back-slapping at photo opportunities, deep divisions remain...
...Feud Hampers Efforts Beneath the visible local shortcomings of civil defense or repopulation programs, though, lie issues at the very heart of this regime's ability to successfully wage a low-intensity war...
...Business leaders, meanwhile, reportedly told Bland6n in private that they were unwilling to cooperate with any program like United to Reconstruct while the Christian Democrats were in power...
...Despite these damaging precedents, the Army, in announcing United to Reconstruct, was optimistic about its potential...
...In the view of many officers, government ministries have often been more interested in using AID's money to build Christian Democrat patronage networks than to fortify real bridges with business or with other political forces...
...advisers, the Salvadorean Army abandoned the large-scale indiscriminate repression it practiced in the early 1980s for a more sophisticated, politicized approach to counterinsurgency warfare advanced by the Pentagon under the doctrine of "low-intensity conflict" (LIC...
...In the face of this fiasco, most highranking officers appear to be at a loss as to what to do next, other than to wait until the 1989 presidential elections and hope a more capable government emerges...
...They then made their point publicly by declaring a national work stoppage earlier this year which ultimately defeated the government's attempt to impose new war taxes...
...You might say Duarte stole Bland6n's plan," quipped one source with close ties to the Army...
...Mauricio Vargas, current head of operations at the high command, who says that "you don't kill guerrillas with rifles but with structural change...
...Superficially the Army's program, known as United to Reconstruct, has much to show for itself...
...AID officials backed Duarte, refusing to channel United to Reconstruct funds through the Army...
...Bland6n planted the AID money and Duarte harvested it...
...But in fact when we most needed political stability, the polarization increased...
Vol. 22 • January 1988 • No. 1
