The war in El Salvador: a reassessment

THE WAR IN EL SALVADOR: A REASSESSMENT

Washington is losing control of its counterinsurgency war in El Salvador. All aspects of its strategy--military, political, psychological, and economic--are breaking down. In contrast, the popular opposition is gaining momentum.

Six years ago, civil war exploded. The United States stepped in to build up the counter-revolutionary forces and to stamp out the revolutionary ones. The most sophisticated elements of low intensity conflict have been brought to bear on El Salvador. In this tiny country, President Reagan has vowed to draw the line against leftist revolution.

The war has been expensive for U.S. taxpayers: over $2 billion in direct military and economic aid to keep the war raging. It's also been costly for Salvadorans: over 50,000 civilians have been killed by the military, police, and death squads.

It's time to reasses the war. Just two years ago, it appeared that both the political and military sides of the Reagan administration's agenda of low intensity conflict were working well. The election of Jose Napoleon Duarte in March 1984 seemed to prove the administration's assertion that a "democratic center' was indeed being formed. The military, avowing its allegiance to the civilian government, was for the first time taking the initiative on the battlefield. It looked as if the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas were on the run.

In the last year, circumstances and events in El Salvador reveal a different story. The country is now run by a civilian government in name only. The Duarte government has lost virtually all its social base because of its subservience to Washington, the military, and the oligarchy.

The military, while stronger as a result of U.S. aid, is constantly outmaneuvered by the FMLN. It is true that the army's war of attrition has whittled away at guerrilla-controlled zones, but the FMLN has changed the rules of the war by dividing into small units and spreading throughout the country. This has reduced the effectiveness of the air war and counterinsurgency strategy aimed at isolating the FMLN from their civilian support. Moreover, the FMLN is waging its own effective war of attrition against the military and a stepped-up war of sabotage against what it calls the "economic structure of the capitalist oligarchic system.' The FMLN has also taken the political initiative by encouraging a non-violent popular opposition and suggesting a negotiated settlement of the war.

In Vietnam, the United States called the political side of the counterinsurgency conflict the "other war.' Today, in El Salvador, all parties recognize that the outcome of the civil war will be determined by this other war to win hearts and minds (pacification) and to build an alliance of civilian supporters.

Pacification, or the process of maintaining a violent peace, involves three different and overlapping phases: an economic reform program, "democratization,' and the National Plan. To understand the present state of the war in El Salvador, we now take a look at the key elements of the U.S. pacification plan in El Salvador.

I. AID: Quartermaster for the Other War

It would be difficult to overstate the impact of the Agency for International Development (AID) in El Salvador. In financial terms, AID has distributed over $1.5 billion in economic assistance and almost $300 million in food aid since 1980.

Without AID support and direction, the Salvadoran government's extensive pacification program would never have gotten off the ground. In fact, without U.S. aid, the Salvadoran government would soon collapse. Politically, AID helped plan and pay for all elections in the country since 1982; and it provided the funds to organize the popular base of support for the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). Through its Economic Support Fund program (ESF), AID money props up the government, while at the same time keeping the business sector smiling on its way to and from the bank.

El Salvador is the third largest recipient of U.S. economic aid in the world. Yet very little of the money has been used for economic development programs that improve basic living conditions of the poor and landless. Most of this largesse is channeled to programs aimed at stabilizing the U.S.-backed government. A related focus of the U.S. government's economic aid agenda in El Salvador is an effort to strengthen the business or private sector while increasing opportunities for U.S. trade and investment.

Propping Up the Government with Dollars

The two main instruments of this stabilization effort are ESF authorizations and parts of the U.S. food aid program. ESF assistance bolsters foreign exchange reserves, permitting the country to import U.S. goods needed to keep the economy operating. The generous ESF allocations to El Salvador prevent it from experiencing severe balance-of-payments shortfalls, thereby easing financial problems caused by rising trade deficits. Food aid (through Title I of the PL480 program) allows El Salvador to import virtually all of its foreign food needs without expending scarce foreign exchange (dollars).

Stabilization programs provide life-or-death assistance to the Salvadoran government. ESF funds constitute almost half of the country's import bill and provide roughly one third of the government's total operating expenses. Economic stabilization also contributes to the restoration of infrastructure damaged by the FMLN's war of attrition against the military and government.

Political Stabilization through Pacification and Democratization

Besides trying to make El Salvador economically stable, Washington has attempted to build political stability in the country. Pacification and democratization programs are AID's main instruments of political stabilization

Pacification generally refers to the use of non-lethal resources and techniques to reduce popular support for leftist insurgents and to achieve tighter control over the rural population. AID supports numerous pacification projects in El Salvador, including agrarian reform, civic action, food distribution, rural reconstruction, and refugee programs.

Democratization is the other half of AID's political stabilization strategy. Its democratization projects aim "to strengthen those basic institutions fundamental to the democratic process.' These institutions include the judicial system, the security forces, U.S.-associated labor unions, and the electoral system.

The main thrust of the U.S.-sponsored democratization of El Salvador is Washington's support for the electoral process. By sponsoring elections in El Salvador, Washington hopes to give the country an image of a "fragile democracy' in need of international support. The United States has also used the electoral process as a way to modernize the country's economic and political power structure.

From the beginning, the U.S.-backed democratization of El Salvador has been severely circumscribed. Not included are the mass organizations formed in the 1970's, all parties and political factions to the left of the center-right wing of the PDC, and the guerrillas. Only two political sectors--the center-right and the extreme right--have participated in the electoral process.

Initially, Washington selected the PDC as the most suitable vehicle for its counterinsurgency project in El Salvador. Since 1984 the U.S. Embassy has increasingly moved away from the PDC and toward a newly formed alliance of industrialists, agroexporters, and right-wing politicians. The declining popularity of Duarte is one reason for this shift, but it can also be explained by the Reagan administration's own visceral sympathy with the right wing's ideology of unfettered capitalism and extreme anticommunism.

Democratization has done little to improve the human-rights situation. The decline in civilian deaths in the last several years has had little to do with democratization. Rather, it can be attributed to the fact that the perpetrators of repression have accomplished their goal of decapitating the non-violent opposition.

Despite President Duarte's promise to bring the authors of death squad killings to justice, no officers have yet been brought to trial.

II. National Plan of Pacification

Over the past few years, Washington has unleashed the "total war' advocated by LIC proponents. This war has incorporated many of the pacification programs used in Vietnam, including rural reconstruction, refugee relief and resettlement, staging of elections, agrarian reform, and civil defense patrols. The war effort has also brought about a renewal of military civic action programs that use U.S. government and private humanitarian aid. Sophisticated psychological operations, labor organizing drives, humanitarian aid programs, and the involvement of right-wing private organizations are other elements in the total war.

Little of what is being tried in El Salvador is actually very new. The National Plan of Security and Development, the pacification plan announced in 1983, has its origins in the CORDS pacification program in Vietnam. It is also an outgrowth of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine developed in the 1970s called Internal Defense and Development (IDAD). Low intensity conflict, as practiced in El Salvador, is little more than a fine tuning of IDAD doctrine --with added emphasis that direct U.S. military intervention occur only as a last resort.

The Evolution of the National Plan

The National Plan has gone through a number of transformations since its announcement in June 1983. As first conceived, the pacification plan called for extensive reconstruction and resettlement programs in conflictive areas that were initially "secured' by elite Salvadoran battalions and then protected by civil defense patrols. But a pilot pacification project called Operation Well-Being proved overly ambitious. The military was unable to keep targeted provinces secure, which meant that government ministries could not proceed with their planned reconstruction and development projects.

After the failure of Operation Well-Being, the character of the National Plan changed. Instead of extensive government-sponsored reconstruction and development projects, the pacification campaign involved only temporary short-term civic action projects directed by the Salvadoran Armed Forces (SAF). This avoided the security problem encountered by Operation Well-Being. The new variation of the National Plan still involved civilian ministries in food distribution, but the armed forces became the leading actor in pacification programming.

In mid-1984, the SAF began to take pacification seriously. It beefed up its psychological operations and civic action departments. Working closely with U.S. MilGroup and AID, SAF units started hosting civic action programs in rural villages in conflictive zones. The programs combined humanitarian assistance such as medical care and clothing handouts with a program of psychological operations that blamed the FMLN for the misery of the campesinos.

Civic action in El Salvador falls into two categories: programs completely directed and implemented by the armed forces, and joint endeavors by the military and civilian agencies. In the first type, the army sends in its own psychological operations, food distribution, and medical teams to war zones. In relatively secure areas, civic action is more of a joint venture, with civilian ministries, private groups, and the military supplying the services.

Civic action programs would not be possible without AID-supplied food and medicine and without a steady stream of donations from conservative organizations like Knights of Malta, World Medical Relief, Christian Broadcasting Network, Family Foundation of America, Americares, International Aid, Tom Dooley Foundation, National Defense Council, Salvadoran-American Foundation, Church of Christianity, Medical Benevolent Foundation, Project Hope, and the Air Commandos Association.

United to Reconstruct

Over half a billion dollars in U.S. military aid since 1980 have made the SAF a stronger, more disciplined, and better organized institution. The military high command recognizes the important role that the Christian Democratic government has played in building a base of popular support for counterinsurgency and in attracting U.S. assistance. But it has grown increasingly frustrated with the government's failure to maintain popular support and its inability to unite the country behind the war.

From the point of view of the SAF, the Duarte government has done a poor job of nation-building. Seeing the rise of the non-violent opposition, the mounting support for a negotiated settlement, and the government's inefficient and corrupt management of pacification programs, the military in early 1986 began to consider ways that it could take a more central role in directing pacification and nation-building projects.

In July 1986, General Adolfo Blandon, the army's chief-of-staff, presented another version of the National Plan called United to Reconstruct. The new pacification plan was the product of joint planning with U.S. military advisers stationed in El Salvador and a team of civic action planners from the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Panama. The plan, which incorporated most elements of the U.S.'s IDAD strategy, called for a joint effort by all sectors of society, all government ministries, and international donors to defeat the guerrillas and reconstruct the nation.

United to Reconstruct encompasses three phases: (1) "cleaning up' operations, (2) area consolidation, and (3) reconstruction and development. The SAF says that "psychological operations, the organizing and training of civil defense forces, military civic action, and the active participation of the population of each area' all play critical roles in the United to Reconstruct campaign.

The United to Reconstruct plan places a high value on creating a base of support for the SAF in the countryside. It is a response to the FMLN's increased dispersion of forces and intensified political organizing. In explaining the reasons for the campaign, Blandon said that the "subversive war to take power is 90 percent political, economic, social, and ideological and only 10 percent military.' It is necessary, he said, for the SAF to devote a corresponding amount of its resources to winning the "civil population.'

III. Requiem for Reforms

The United States recognized the need to back economic reforms when it began its counterinsurgency project in early 1980. It stood behind the three reforms announced by the civilian-military junta: nationalization of banks, state control of agroexport trade, and agrarian reform. The reforms had a threefold purpose: (1) reduce the power of the traditional agroexport oligarchy, (2) create an economic and political base for a "centrist' alliance led by the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), and (3) preempt popular support from the FMLN/ FDR.

The most significant reform announced in early 1980 was the agrarian reform program. As first announced, this would have significantly weakened the economic base on the landed oligarchy. Almost half the country's farmland was scheduled for redistribution, and some 50 percent of poor rural households would have received land.

AID supported the land reform program, and the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), a branch of the AFL-CIO almost completely funded by AID, moved into El Salvador to organize popular support for the program.

Agrarian reform has proved only partially successful. It did result in important political gains, but it was an economic failure from the beginning. As AID itself claims, the promise of redistributed land did "help prevent radicalization of the rural population.' In addition, it was a major factor in building a rural base of support for the Christian Democrats.

But its value as a pacification device was severely undercut by the intense repression that accompanied the implementation of the program. At the same time that Duarte announced the land reform program in March 1980, the army declared a state of siege, unleashing a wave of repression that resulted in some 25,000 civilian deaths, many of them peasant leaders.

The positive impact of the reform was also undermined by the government's failure to fully enforce it. Phase II--the part of the program that called for the expropriation of the agricultural base of the coffee oligarchy--was indefinitely postponed. And the other two parts, Phases I and III, have not been fully implemented.

As a result, less that 10 percent of the rural poor have received land--far short of the 50 percent initially promised. The lack of technical assistance and the recipients' obligation to compensate the landowners for the expropriated land has further dampened peasant enthusiasm for agrarian reform.

Despite all its shortcomings, the agrarian reform did give AIFLD the opportunity to build a network of peasant support for the PDC. Bankrolled by AID, AIFLD paid hundreds of campesinos belonging to AIFLD-created associations to provide rural support for the reform program and for the political campaigns of the Christian Democrats. This rural base proved critical to Duarte's election in 1984.

But today agrarian reform is all but dead in El Salvador. There is little hope that Phase II will ever be implemented, and other parts of the program are moving in reverse. Cooperatives formed to run expropriated estates are folding because of high debts and the absence of technical assistance. Individual recipients are having similar problems.

Agrarian reform did achieve its original objective of creating rural support for the Salvadoran political party backed by Washington. It also created an ideal opening for AIFLD organizers to spread their message of counter-revolution throughout the countryside. But it reached its limits in 1984. Since then, neither Washington nor Duarte has been willing to buck the oligarchy by forging ahead with the program. Consequently, there is little hope in the countryside that a U.S.-backed government will ever truly address the economic inequities that mark rural El Salvador.

IV. Keeping a Lid on Labor

Until 1985 the manipulation of worker and peasant organizations by the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) was the most successful element of ther overall pacification plan. Recently, however AIFLD's hold on labor organizations has slipped dramatically. In fact, the labor movement now represents a major threat to the entire U.S. counterinsurgency project in El Salvador.

In mid-1979, after an absence of six years, AIFLD was invited back into El Salvador by the weakening Romero regime. Its mission was to stem the increasing shift of workers and peasants to the left. The mildly reformist junta government headed by Duarte in 1980 gave AIFLD the opportunity it needed to proceed with its agenda. One of its objectives was to organize peasant unions in support of the agrarian reform program.

A related objective of AIFLD was to help form a worker and peasant coalition that would provide popular support for the Christian Democrats and for U.S.-sponsored democratization. This coalition called Popular Democratic Unity (UPD) provided critical support to PDC election campaigns. UPD leaders were continually whisked off to Washington to show Congress that the Reagan Administration's program in El Salvador had the backing of the country's poor.

However, AIFLD's control over the UPD began to slip soon after Duarte became president in mid--1984. UPD leaders had supported Duarte on the condition that he enforce economic reforms, protect the interests of the country's poor, and try to negotiate an end to the civil war. This "social pact' that candidate Duarte had made with the UPD was largely ignored by President Duarte. The direction of the new Duarte government mirrored Washington's own priorities for El Salvador. No longer were reforms and democratization major concerns. The top priorities were winning the war, stabilizing the economy through private investment, and keeping a lid on the labor movement.

Not only did Duarte refuse to honor important conditions of the "social pact,' but he also adopted political and economic policies that directly attacked workers and peasants. Like the military, Duarte saw the upsurge in labor-management confrontations in 1985 as the first stage in an urban war staged by the FMLN. The government's Ministry of Communications launched a psychological operations campaign to undermine the credibility of labor leaders by labeling them dupes of the guerrillas. And in June 1985, Duarte called out U.S.-trained counterterrorist units to break a strike by hospital workers.

The use of counterterrorist squads against workers and the January 1986 announcement by Duarte of an economic austerity package undercut most of Duarte's remaining support within the UPD coalition. AIFLD hurriedly put in place a new coalition called the National Union of Workers and Peasants and a new labor federation called the Confederation of Democratic Workers (CTD). But these new AIFLD creations are largely paper organizations. To AIFLD's horror, most UPD leaders joined a broad new center-left coalition of peasant associations, unions, and other popular organizations called the National Unity of Salvandoran Workers (UNTS). UNTS set itself firmly to the left of Duarte, calling for serious peace negotiations, an end to U.S. military aid, the expulsion of AIFLD, implementation of agrarian reform, and a general amnesty for political prisoners.

While its influence is much reduced, AIFLD continues to play a key role in pacification. AID recently awarded it a $7.9 million grant--the largest ever to AIFLD--for its work in El Salvador. AIFLD's efforts to link reactionary union leaders with the agroexport oligarchy and the right-wing political party Patria Libre signal possible support for a right-wing political coalition in the 1988 and 1989 elections.

V. Psyops: A Battle for Minds

The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador is the command center for a critical part of U.S. strategy of low intensity conflict: psychological warfare. Agents of the United States Information Agency (USIA), the CIA, and officers in the Special Forces direct a psychological operations campaign (Psyops) aimed at shaping public opinion and changing the course of events through well placed information.

The Salvadoran government and military have their own Psyops departments. The creation of the Ministry of Culture and Communications in mid-1985 marked the Salvadoran government's entry into psychological operations. The ministry wages a propaganda war aimed at building support for the Duarte government and eroding popular support for the FDR-FMLN. Leaflets dropped over guerrilla-held zones, frequent radio and TV spots, posters, newspaper ads, and dissemination of alleged guerrilla documents are all part of this war of ideas.

A regular theme of this Psyops campaign is that guerrillas, union leaders, and human-rights workers are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. The FDR-FMLN is said to be behind all popular organizing, strikes, and opposition to the government. Demands for higher wages are equated with acts of economic sabotage. Images of guerrilla destruction are counterposed to images of the military's and AID's reconstruction efforts.

While the Ministry of Culture and Communications is supposed to be the lead Psyops agency, the military's S-5 division and the Press Office of the Armed Forces (COPREFA) are in fact the prime managers of psychological operations. The military's easier access to foreign funding and training-mostly U.S--is one reason for this contrpol. In fact, the Ministry of Culture and Communications relies on the Defense Ministry for a large part of its own funding. The armed forces amplified their Psyops capability with the opening this year of Radio Cuscatlan (the "soldier's voice'), which operates out of the High Command in San Salvador. Radio Cuscatlan served as the official voice of the government during the October earthquake.

VI. A Nation of Displaced People

One of the biggest challenges of the "other war' is the deepening problem of displaced people. Large numbers of refugees are the inevitable result of the kind of counterinsurgency war the U.S. is directing, in which the objective is to reduce support for a popular-based guerrilla movement. Today, between 10 and 15 percent of the nation's population has been internally displaced. (Another 10 percent has fled to other countries.)

The first surge of refugees came in the late 1970s when the U.S.-inspired and trained paramilitary network called ORDEN launched a drive to rid the country of dissidents and suspected revolutionaries. This terrorism heightened in 1980 under the military state of siege. As the civil war expanded, the army unleashed a wave of terror against rural areas suspected of sympathizing with the guerrillas. Entire villages packed up and fled to safer parts of the country.

As the counterinsurgency war grew more sophisticated, the army recognized the need to isolate the guerrillas from the population that supported them. The resulting effort to "drain the sea' (rural population) to deprive "the fish' (guerrillas) of their sustenance has resulted in wave after wave of refugees since 1983.

This counterinsurgency strategy has gone through several variations. At first, the army relied on U.S.-trained "hunter' battalions to clear areas of guerrillas. Another tactic was to terrorize the population in conflictive and guerrilla-controlled zones through heavy bombardment. The air war did drive most of the population out of certain targeted zones. But by 1985 it was decided that the air war had to be used more selectively as a depopulation measure because of negative international publicity.

The army now tries to induce the inhabitants to leave guerrilla-occupied zones by cutting off food and supply lines to these areas. It also organizes "rescues' that use air transport to carry off villagers to army-controlled territory.

However the ever expanding refugee population is an obvious sign that something is amiss. It is the job of the armed forces to "drain the sea'--something they are doing effectively. But the lack of sufficient military security has obstructed most plans to resettle refugees and reconstruct villages damaged by the war. For its part, AID (along with its Salvadoran government and private adjunct groups) is supposed to administer relief, reconstruction, and resettlement programs that keep this potentially volatile population under control. For all its resources, however, AID refugee programs have never successfully extended beyond basic relief measures like food distribution. AID has also failed to propose economic development programs that would integrate refugees into the national economy. As with most government programs of this type, AID's displaced persons program is also beset with inefficiency and graft.

The extent to which AID's refugee program has failed to deal with the problem has been highlighted by recent attempts by refugees themselves to repopulate their old villages. A bold project sponsored by several European agencies to rebuild and resettle the bombed-out town of Tenancingo also reveals the inadequate nature of official programs. Cases of independent organizing and the growing desire of displaced Salvadorans to return home signal the reality that refugee communities have not been pacified and might someday soon constitute a serious political threat to the U.S.-backed government.

VII. The Present State of the War

The shortcomings of the strategy of low intensity conflict have become apparent in El Salvador. All the key elements of LIC warfare are present in the country: a civilian government with the trappings of democracy; a military willing to pursue the economic, political, and psychological aspects of counterinsurgency; a substantial ratio of military to guerrilla forces; and close coordination of U.S. military and economic aid.

Still, almost every aspect of the LIC strategy is breaking down.

AID, having pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the country each year, has fallen far short of its goal of economic stabilization. The economy has not moved forward. In fact, per capita income levels are comparable to those of the 1960s. AID's generous support of the private sector has not resulted in new investment but has simply strengthened this privileged sector.

Political stabilization through democratization and pacification is also failing. Democratization reached its high point in March 1984 with Duarte's election, but has slid downhill since. The "democratic center' lauded by the Reagan Administration now appears to be nothing more than the attractively packaged face of counterinsurgency. The PDC is the country's main legitimator of continued counterinsurgency war. The inability of the Duarte government to keep its social base under control has frustrated the military's plan to use the civilian government as a "political shield' for its "patriotic' war of counterinsurgency. As a result, the military high command is now trying to shape a national consensus of civilian sectors around its United to Reconstruct project.

The vanishing support for the Duarte government has also endangered the viability of the entire democratization project. In a country where most of the population is tired of war and supportive of a negotiated settlement, elections that feature only center-right and right-wing parties have increasingly less relevance. Significantly, recent polls show that 80-90 percent of Salvadorans now favor a negotiated solution to the six-year war.

Attempts to win popular support through such pacification measures as agrarian reform, "democratic' labor organizing, and military civic action have also shown their limits. Reforms have proved to be without substance, deceptive, and not really aimed at empowering the poor majority. ALFLD has demonstrated that its true interests lie not in protecting workers and peasants but in fostering a counter-revolutionary network.

The military's new commitment to civic action is patently shallow. The scheme of doling out candy and food rations after the army has bombarded an area is not winning any hearts and minds. The superficial nature of the army's promise to "reconstruct' El Salvador was demonstrated during the recent earthquake when it conspicuously failed to organize emergency relief efforts.

The only really forward moving aspect of counterinsurgency is the joint government-military psychological operations campaign. But even here attempts to brand nonviolent opposition figures as terrorists has backfired in increased disaffection from the government. Contrary to the main message of the Psyops campaign, both the government and the armed forces are seen not as the country's "peace makers' but as its primary warmakers.

In EL Salvador today, there is an expanding confluence of popular forces that stands in strong opposition to the counterinsurgency war. They are organizing rallies, marching in protest, going on strike, and attending peace forums-- activities that cost thousands of Salvadorans their lives only several years ago. These forces calling for peace and a halt to U.S. intervention have the potential of forming a broad opposition front that to some extent resembles the mass popular movement of the late 1970s.

The lesson for low intensity conflict strategists is that dollars and pacification programs, no matter how well orchestrated, do not win hearts and minds. The U.S. counterinsurgency project in El Salvador is failing not for lack of resources but for lack of a commitment to true democratization, substantial reforms, and development programs that empower the poor. An ideology of anticommunism and counter-revolution, even when wrapped in $2 billion of military and economic aid, has not proved sufficient to stop the Salvadoran people's long search for peace, political freedom, and a better lief.

COPYRIGHT 1987 Monthly Review Foundation, Inc.
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