New Strategy

The guerrillas are back

Ever since the defeat of their self-described "final offensive" last winter and their failure to spark a civilian uprising, El Salvador's leftist guerrillas have been thought to be under control. But in some parts of the country regrouped leftists have come back with a vengeance. Profiting from the painful lessons of last winter's setbacks, they are now conducting a classic war of attrition, inflicting heavy casualties on Salvadoran troops and avoiding serious losses themselves.

Moving about many areas of the countryside with relative freedom, the guerrillas interdict roads and harass army supply and communications links. Bands of insurgents occupy villages and occasionally even a sizable town for a few days at a time. When superior government forces arrive, the guerrillas fade away. When the army units move on, the guerrillas are apt to return shortly thereafter. In Chalatenango department, such hit-and-run tactics have forced army troops to stay close to their barracks. In Morazan department, the insurgents control most of the countryside. Last week TIME Correspondent James Willwerth traveled to Morazan, 100 miles from San Salvador, to assess the latest fighting. His report:

Seven months ago, the Salvadoran army believed it had pushed the guerrillas in this rugged eastern department north, up to the Honduran border, and rendered them incapable of causing trouble for a long time to come. Now, however, the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Army of the People (E.R.P.) are back in large numbers, and the armed forces have also returned for a new offensive with some 2,000 infantrymen, backed by U.S.-made helicopters, trucks and armored vehicles. It is an indication of how well the guerrillas are dug in and how well they are fighting that this time the army's goal is to drive them north of the Torola River, leaving much of the department in E.R.P. control.

At the moment, the offensive appears to be in trouble, and government forces are taking high casualties. In the tiny capital of San Francisco Gotera (pop. 5,000), for instance, clattering helicopters regularly emerge from the dark rainy-season skies to bring in the wounded. Most of them land just outside of town and transfer their passengers to planes headed south, but some head for the main square in front of the village church, and from there the more seriously wounded--as many as 15 to 20 a day--are taken for emergency treatment to the town's civilian hospital. The rate of casualties is so high that the army has provided a brand-new X-ray unit and blood bank, and three army doctors rotate on duty.

Roads going north out of San Francisco Gotera are blocked. Red Cross drivers have not been able to get supplies to Torola, a town 20 miles to the north, for six months. E.R.P. forces occupied the town of Villa el Rosario (pop. 2,000) for two weeks until a large government force moved in and surrounded it early this month. Then the guerrillas slipped away in the dark, avoiding a fight. Early last week guerrilla ground fire for the first time forced down a U.S.-made Huey helicopter carrying troops over the battle area. A Salvadoran Green Beret commander, who is in charge of all army operations in Morazan, admits that the guerrillas set up operations on major roadways until his troops are sent to chase them away.

The guerrillas also appear to be taking few casualties. The security forces, totaling 15,000 troops, simply lack the manpower to respond effectively to fast-moving insurgent units operating on their own terrain. "The guerrillas' idea is to grind the government down," concludes one foreign military expert. In Morazan and elsewhere in El Salvador, they appear to have begun working skillfully to keep government forces tied down and the countryside in turmoil.

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