Trouble on Two Fronts

By James Kelly

El Salvador's guerrillas make progress as right-wing violence increases

Every day at dusk, a scruffy knot of rebels gather before the gutted cathedral in the Salvadoran town of Jucuaran. All carry automatic weapons, but little else about them bespeaks military discipline. They fidget and giggle like schoolboys, snapping to attention only at the sight of their bearded commander. "For the people of this town, you are the revolution," he warned them one evening last week. "Be polite. Ask permission before entering a house." But as soon as the leader departed for his camp deep in the nearby hills, the youths slung their M-16s over their shoulders and hauled out a tape deck. "The best beaches have just been liberated," exulted a young guerrilla while strutting to a Billy Joel tune. "There won't be a problem about where to spend this weekend."

For the 500 people left in Jucuaran, 80 miles southeast of the capital, the face of El Salvador's revolution belongs to an armed teen-ager with a weakness for American pop. Yet, difficult as it may be to believe, 8,000 guerrillas, many of them just boys, continue to confound the country's U.S.-trained army of 25,500. Since September, when they began their latest offensive, the insurgents have attacked 128 towns and come to dominate six of the nation's 14 provinces. Though the country is in no imminent danger of falling, the momentum is with the guerrillas. Says a dismayed State Department official: "They've done good things, and the army has not."

Washington's worries have been compounded by another ominous development: rising violence by rightist death squads. For the past month the Reagan Administration has stepped up pressure on the Salvadoran government to clamp down on the murderous crews, but last week's signals were confusing at best. First the State Department denied a U.S. visa to Roberto d'Aubuisson, president of El Salvador's Constituent Assembly and head of the right-wing ARENA Party, some of whose members have been linked to the killings. The next day, however, President Reagan vetoed a bill that would have extended a provision under which U.S. military aid can flow to El Salvador only if the Administration assures Congress every six months that the country is improving its human rights record. The White House move drew angry denunciations from Capitol Hill. Said Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island: "We will not stand by to see U.S. military assistance poured into a nation that has not demonstrated a will to undertake basic reforms."

The guerrillas have strengthened their grip mainly in the eastern provinces. They control a strategic 62-mile stretch of Pacific beach and can roam freely through most of the countryside. To the north, the insurgents have streamed down from Chalatenango and the mountain redoubt of Guazapa to infiltrate the province of Cabanas and the fertile strip of northern Cuscatlan (see map). Though command of the villages seesaws between rebel and government forces, the guerrillas have held on to about 50 towns. For the first time in the four-year civil war, the forces of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.), an umbrella organization for five guerrilla groups, are consolidating their power in towns, not just isolated hamlets.

The results are mixed. When the rebels took over Jucuaran last September, 80% of the 30,000 people living in and around the city fled. Save for banning liquor, the guerrillas altered little; the public school remained open, and local officials stayed in office. Yet promises to fix the water system and provide a paramedic have gone unfulfilled, and residents are bitter about the destruction of a bridge that linked the town to the coastal highway.

The F.M.L.N.'s skills on the battlefield have been overshadowed by the deterioration of El Salvador's army. Perpetually plagued by inept commanders and a "9t05" fighting mentality, the military improved over the summer but faltered once the rebel offensive began. The poor performance has prompted Defense Minister Carlos Eugenic Vides Casanova to shuffle his corps of colonels, but the troops suffer from battle fatigue as much as bad orders. Says a State Department analyst: "The army did not so much go back to their barracks as just run out of steam."

U.S. military officials are especially disappointed that their training has had little effect. On paper, the programs appear successful. Since the arrival of American advisers in 1980, close to 10,000 Salvadoran soldiers have been taught combat basics. The reality is less encouraging. At the regional army headquarters in San Vicente, for example, a dozen U.S. advisers must turn recruits into jungle fighters in five weeks. Courses cover marksmanship, explosives and ambush prevention, but the lessons are not easily understood. More than half the enlistees are illiterate, and many of the others can barely write their names.

But the army suffers from an even more serious ailment: lack of enthusiasm. Since 1981, roughly half the troops trained by Americans have left the army at the end of their two-year tour. Only 15% of the 1,800 Salvadorans trained in the U.S. have re-enlisted. In rural provinces, teen-agers as young as 15 must be forcibly conscripted to meet manpower quotas.

Since September, 300 government soldiers have been killed or seriously wounded while some 450 have been taken prisoner. One humiliating incident occurred two weeks ago in the southern town of Anamoros when, after a brief firefight, an army company of 135 men surrendered. Though the rebels announced that they would return the soldiers through the International Red Cross, they pointedly added that they would keep an arsenal that included 153 assault rifles, four M-79 grenade launchers, a 90-mm cannon and 50,000 rounds of ammunition.

The incident underscored the little-publicized fact that for the past year the rebels have relied almost totally upon captured U.S. weapons to meet their military needs, not upon arms smuggled in from Nicaragua, Cuba or the Soviet Union. The guerrillas received supplies from Nicaragua during the early stages of the civil war, but by last spring some U.S. officials in the region were admitting that the flow had slowed to a "trickle." Nonetheless, the Administration has justified its support of rebels fighting Nicaragua's Marxist-led government largely on the ground that their actions are necessary to stop the stream of arms and the "export of revolution" from Nicaragua to El Salvador.

Nicaragua did not necessarily cut the arms pipeline because of U.S. pressure. According to the rebels, they have been so successful in seizing weapons that additional aid would be superfluous. Though F.M.L.N. claims that 90% of its arms have come from the U.S.-trained Salvadoran army may be inflated, there is little doubt that the guerrillas have all they need. The insurgents claim that during the first five months of 1983, they seized 1,700 assault rifles, 27 mortars, 20 grenade launchers and 37 machine guns. Rebels refer to their rifles as "my gift from Reagan."

Despite their recent progress, the rebels do not control any of the country's 14 provincial capitals and retain little sway around San Salvador or the western half of the nation. Like most tropical wars, the conflict is cyclical. During the fall harvest, guerrillas make gains while the army pulls back to guard the cotton and coffee crops. By the end of January, the rebels retreat as the military swings to the offensive. Says a Western diplomat in San Salvador: "Washington's summer euphoria fades each November and returns around Christmas."

Meanwhile, the Administration is voicing increasing alarm about El Salvador's notorious death squads, which, according to El Salvador's Human Rights Commission, have killed an estimated 40,000 people during the past four years. In a speech to a group of Salvadoran business leaders two weeks ago, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering warned bluntly that U.S. aid would be halted if the Salvadoran government did not make a greater effort to stop the killing. When Pickering's predecessor in San Salvador, Deane Hinton, delivered a similar speech in October 1982, he was reprimanded by the White House. Addressing a conference of Latin American buiness and political leaders in Miami last week, Deputy Secretary of State Kenneth W. Dam charged that right-wing repression only fosters the kind of revolution that rightists want to avoid. Said he: "The death squads are enemies of democracy every bit as much as the guerrillas."

One reason for Washington's heightened concern is that, after declining for two years, the death toll has begun to climb again. The renewed killing appears to reflect an attempt to stall reforms, including land redistribution, that are being considered by the Constituent Assembly. The rightists also oppose the Salvadoran Peace Commission, which President Alvaro Magana named in August 1982 to explore the possibility of negotiating with the rebels. The State Department has assembled two lists of suspected death-squad leaders, complete with institutional ties and chains of command. One tally pinpoints the killers in El Salvador; the other names the exiles working from Miami. Though the identities have not been made public, the top suspects include officers in the National Guard and treasury police.

Some progress has been made. In announcing his military shake-up two weeks ago, Defense Minister Vides Casanova transferred several men suspected by the U.S. of being tied to the death squads. Among them are Major Jose Ricardo Pozo, intelligence chief for the treasury police, and Lieut. Colonel Aristedes Alfonso Marquez, head of intelligence for the national police. But the Salvadoran government has done nothing about another man whom U.S. officials have mentioned in connection with the killings: Hector Antonio Regalado, a D'Aubuisson crony who is security chief for the Constituent Assembly. Meanwhile, U.S. officials are investigating reports that a trio of wealthy Salvadoran exiles living in the Miami area are funding some of the death squads and even fingering victims. By refusing to allow D'Aubuisson to travel to the U.S., Washington was serving notice that he could no " longer, as a State Department official put it, "prance around with his rich supporters in Miami."

Some State Department aides argued last week that the Reagan veto of the human rights certification bill would actually make it easier for the White House to press El Salvador to crack down on the death squads. According to these officials, the congressional requirement led the Salvadoran government to view human rights solely as a concern of Capitol Hill, not of the Reagan Administration. Thus Salvadoran officials did not treat U.S. concern as seriously as they should have. The rise in right-wing violence had convinced Secretary of State George Shultz he might not be able to certify in January that progress had been made. The White House decided that its goals in El Salvador would suffer more if certification was not granted than if the process was scrapped.

President Reagan only muddied matters when, in a meeting with high school students at the White House, he voiced his suspicion that the squads had been penetrated by leftists to besmirch the rightists. Said he: "I wonder if those guerrilla forces have not realized that they can get away with these violent acts and the right wing will be blamed for it." His aides quickly downplayed the statement. Said a top official: "Ninetynine percent of the thugs are right-wing guys."

Caught between a violent left and a violent right, the U.S. might wonder anew about the prospects for El Salvador. The presidential elections scheduled for next March already have been touched by the bloody conflict. The guerrillas have seized the voter registration lists in hundreds of towns, making an orderly election very difficult. Four years after the civil war began, democracy in El Salvador seems as elusive as ever. --By James Kelly. Reported by David DeVoss/San Salvador and Johanna McGeary/Washington

With reporting by David DeVoss/San Salvador, Johanna McGeary/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.