QUAGMIRE IN THE MAKING

SMYTH, FRANK

Quagmire in the Making In El Salvador, only the names have been changed BY FRANK SMYTH Only last year," said the U.S. official, was the army "willing to move more than nine to five." I'd heard...

...Predictably, as the army has found U.S.-advocated civic action to be ineffective, soldiers have increased their abuses of civilians...
...Government battalions rarely find or engage the enemy, and the guerrillas have learned to leave deadly mine fields in their wake...
...The embassy pointed to the prominent role of young Salvadoran army officers in the plan as evidence that U.S...
...The only other sign of war was an occasional white flag tied to a bamboo pole flapping in the breeze...
...The reasons are not hard to come by...
...Civic-action programs have been an integral part of U.S...
...More carnage is to come...
...Many of the same officers who initially supported "United to Reconstruct" are now demanding more independence from U.S...
...The Salvadoran army and air force completed a series of massive ground sweeps and aerial bombings designed to penetrate and destroy the FMLN's traditional zones of control—at much cost to civilian lives...
...policy and the Duarte government...
...He also asked them who had given them the document...
...Since October, killings and disappearances of civilian activists have doubled...
...I'd heard those same words two years before in the same room deep within the walls of the heavily guarded embassy in San Salvador...
...With such reminiscent names as "Operation Phoenix" and "Operation Concord," these offensives involved up to 40,000 troops—80 per cent of armed-forces personnel...
...fewer than 18 per cent of peasant families have been affected...
...When government troops cross into FMLN-dominated territory in the northeastern province of Morazan, they enter as an occupying force...
...The population in and around these zones was forcibly resettled...
...The military command has warned that organizations which "try to exploit the Frank Smyth is writing a book about U.S...
...The ultimate goal of civic action, however, is not social reform but the improvement of civilian-military relations...
...They haven't dropped any bombs yet," she added, "but we're scared...
...It was called "United to Reconstruct...
...Massive forced displacement of civilians was the only other "success" of the 1986-1987 counterinsurgency operations...
...Not surprisingly, its strong suit was "neutralization...
...Within the past year, the Tandona has moved farther away from U.S...
...United to Reconstruct" was heavily supported by both the U.S...
...At the same time, the Salvadoran military launched a civic-action program to win popular support...
...Members of the class now command 90 per cent of El Salvador's field brigades...
...The influence of the hardliners is now completely unchallenged...
...advisers nor Salvadoran army commanders were able to explain how civic-action programs were supposed to work...
...Army commanders have learned to mimic the rhetoric of "low-intensity warfare" but not the execution, and the U.S.-advocated strategy of winning hearts and minds has been abandoned for more primitive methods...
...If they don't have their card," he said, "they will be taken for guerrillas...
...policy in El Salvador to be published by Westview Press...
...The residents at Los Ranchos are afraid of the armed forces...
...By mid-1986, the Salvadoran military seemed to be following the U.S...
...Still, a crude military approach to the insurgency is unlikely to succeed...
...counterinsurgency strategy since Vietnam...
...Agency for International Development, which diverted funds designated for such private voluntary organizations as Save the Children...
...They are part of a group of 4,200 Salvadorans repatriated from the U.N...
...Yet the residents of Los Ranchos refuse to accept aid distributed by the armed forces, and they receive no help from the government...
...Eight kilometers east of the town of Chalatenango is the village of Los Ran-chos, home of 585 settlers...
...We no longer need a coup because we already have power," said Juan Orlanda Zepeda, chief of intelligence for the military command and a Tandona member...
...counterinsurgency in the Americas is a failure...
...refugee camp in Mesa Grande, Honduras, last October, after fleeing military repression in 1980...
...He said he was surprised that the incident had created so much concern, and that he had not known the two were so important...
...He said he thought they were only simple union members and Interior employees...
...El Salvador is returning to the days when civilian sectors of the population were the primary targets of the war...
...The hardliners were unhappy with a proposed amnesty for leftist political prisoners and upset about an impending trial against two military officers implicated in the massacre of nineteen peasants in 1983...
...They failed to demonstrate that psychological operations, civil-defense units, and "the participation of the local population" would offset joblessness, inequitable land tenure, infant mortality, or malnutrition...
...It cannot stop the army from penetrating into rebel-controlled territory, but it prevents the army from maintaining a stationary presence...
...Nearly all of those involved civilians living in contested zones...
...blueprint...
...In theory, "United to Reconstruct" purported to recognize the "structural" roots of the crisis...
...Salvadoran news organizations were prohibited from publishing copies of the order but one newspaper in the capital published ads placed by two Salvadoran unions, which created a national controversy...
...To date, the intended victims have not been harmed...
...Typewritten on an official form available only to commanders and high officials of the National Guard, the order was made available to friends of the two intended victims, apparently by an officer of the local post...
...Villagers explain that the white flags flying above Los Ranchos are intended to impress the government...
...officials wholeheartedly endorsed the program, boasting that the Salvadoran military had finally come around to their way of thinking...
...It is hard to imagine how an army clown passing out balloons in a small pueblo in war-torn Chalatenango would be able to make up for a century of institutionalized violence...
...The army subsequently could not understand why the population did not embrace "United to Reconstruct...
...But neither U.S...
...East of the province capital in Chala-tenango, the massive military presence which permeates much of the rest of the country suddenly disappears...
...He said the incident had caused him a lot of trouble, and that he was being transferred because of it...
...Whether El Salvador and the United States have the vision and stamina to pursue this difficult task remains to be seen," he wrote...
...Yet two years have passed, and no progress has been made...
...officials...
...Officials of the Duarte government are busy, however, trying to document the settlers...
...Besides constructing a dozen ill-equipped and understaffed health clinics, "United to Reconstruct" has little to show for itself...
...In the north central province of Chal-atenango, the FMLN has followed the Morazan model...
...David L. Silk (David L. Silk is a free-lance writer in Stonington, Connecticut...
...Bolstered by the overwhelming victory of the ultraconser-vative ARENA party in March, the hardliners within the military may soon have their way...
...In an all-day meeting at the National Palace, members of the Tandona threatened President Duarte with a military coup...
...The rebels' civilian support network is extensive and well organized, although it is disguised to avoid detection...
...The Salvadoran armed forces have watched uneasily as the guerrillas succeeded in organizing a wider rural and urban base...
...The government was to provide social services, and the private sector was to provide jobs...
...Transforming the Salvadoran armed forces into an effective counterinsurgency force has been a perennial problem for U.S...
...and mobilization of the national resources (human and material) for popular involvement in progress...
...An elderly woman said that soldiers frequently enter the camp and planes fly overhead once in a while...
...counterinsurgency in the Americas is a failure...
...The newly ascendant right-wing ARENA party, which took over the legislature in March, gave the green light for a crackdown...
...aid to El Salvador, American policy is in shambles...
...While the plan has failed to win support from the civilian population, it has swelled resentment in the ranks of the military...
...United to Reconstruct" is still "the factor to attack the crisis," says Colonel Mauricio Ernesto Vargas, chief of operations for El Salvador's military command...
...basic needs of people" will be equated with the armed combatants of the FMLN...
...Jorge Alberto Cara-vantes from the Ministry of the Interior was present in March, preparing to issue identity cards to every resident...
...Army War College report dated January 1,1985, Colonel John D. Waghelstein outlined three objectives for El Salvador: "balanced development to negate the causes of the insurgency...
...Echoing the words of the Waghelstein report, "United to Reconstruct" was to unfold in three stages: clean-up operations, consolidation, and reconstruction...
...But it did not address the link between poverty and high concentrations of economic and political power...
...dent was not deposed, in part because he pardoned (with only two exceptions) military officers and members of El Salvador's rightist death squads for more than 40,000 documented killings of noncombatants since 1979...
...The Salvadoran presiMake Them Disappear On March 11, 1988, the commander of the National Guard headquarters in the Salvadoran city of Zacatecoluca issued an order to his subordinates to maintain strict surveillance on two members of the labor union representing Ministry of Interior employees...
...But except for breaking the FMLN base camp on Gua-zapa Volcano near the capital city, these operations have failed...
...He met them in his office on March 18...
...training and assistance had finally made a difference...
...Writing in a U.S...
...Especially important to the campaign," the Salvadoran army said, "are psychological operations, the organization and training of civil-defense units, civic/ military programs, and the active participation of the local population...
...But even Waghelstein was less than sanguine about the prospects...
...military strategists...
...The turning point came Monday, September 28, 1987...
...Pentagon advisers describe the task of getting the Salvadoran military to rethink its notorious policy toward civilians as the most important aspect of the counterinsurgency campaign...
...officials admit that except on paper, the plan no longer exists...
...El Salvador's lame-duck Christian Democratic government of Jose Napoleon Duarte was in no position to object...
...When the forces of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) took the initiative this year, a growing movement within the Salvadoran officers' corps demanded a ruthless response...
...Appearing nervous, he told the two he was their friend and had been for years...
...This is a tremendously embarrassing concession: The most comprehensive attempt to implement U.S...
...From January 1986 to October 1987, the Salvadoran military launched wave after wave of counter-insurgency sweeps...
...After seven years of training and more than $3 billion in U.S...
...neutralization to destroy the guerrillas armed element...
...The government, private business, trade unions, the Church, and the general population would all participate—under military supervision—in the last two stages of the plan...
...I encountered only one heavily armed government patrol on a two-hour hike into the interior...
...The much-heralded 1980 land reform, for instance, remains stalled...
...But they were sent for by the same commander who had signed their "disappearance" order...
...The most comprehensive attempt to implement U.S...
...Most of these officers are associated with La Tandona, the Salvadoran War College class of 1966, the largest ever to graduate from the military school...
...At the opportune moment, proceed against them using any type of maneuver until they are made to disappear," said the order...
...In this regard, the architects of "United to Reconstruct" were hopelessly naive...
...embassy and the U.S...
...But U.S...
...The military did succeed in inflicting 7,879 casualties by its count...

Vol. 52 • June 1988 • No. 6


 
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