"We Can Move Anywhere"

By George Russell

The guerrillas frustrate the army and the U.S.

For nine days, the rattle of machine guns from helicopter gunships and the thump of heavy artillery and bombs filled the hazy air around the Salvadoran volcano of Guazapa. Some 2,000 members of the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army were attacking guerrillas holed up in deeply entrenched camps along the mountainside, about 15 miles from the capital of San Salvador (pop. 1 million).

The battle was the most intense yet in the drawn-out and increasingly bloody conflict. More important, it marked a major new escalation of the fighting (see following story). The guerrillas abandoned their normal hit-and-run tactics and showed a surprising ability to reinforce their hard-held mountain positions. As the fighting developed, Jose Napoleon Duarte, President of El Salvador's civilian-military government, said the army's goal was "to encircle [the guerrillas] and then tighten the noose up the mountainside."

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the engagement ended last week. The army's target simply melted away. Salvadoran troops said that in the night they had heard the taunting sound of the guerrillas singing as they filtered in small groups through the army lines and into the surrounding countryside. The army claimed that it had killed more than 120 guerrillas and suffered fewer than 75 casualties; the guerrillas claimed 250 army casualties and did not reveal those of the rebels.

The strength of the guerrillas' resistance at Guazapa was dramatic proof of their increasing tactical skill and their growing threat to take over the tiny country, which is roughly the size of Massachusetts. The blunt assessment of one U.S. State Department official: "The military situation today in El Salvador is not as good as it was two months ago." American military analysts believe that the Salvadoran armed forces are only "marginally" able to hold their own against the rebels. Reasons: a lack of tactical training, and declining morale.

The troops will face even more severe testing in the weeks ahead, as the March 28 deadline for El Salvador's critical constituent assembly elections draws nearer. The U.S. considers the elections, which will create an assembly to write a new constitution before the presidential elections planned for 1983, to be a crucial step toward establishing full civilian democracy in the country. The Salvadoran left is boycotting the process, and the guerrilla groups hope to disrupt the balloting, with the aim of making the election meaningless. Spray-paint signs in the guerrilla colors of black and red warn Salvadorans that "whoever votes will be killed." Last week Jose Rodriguez Ruiz, a leader of one of the five major Salvadoran rebel groups, spelled out the guerrillas' broad strategy: "We are going to attack the cities better each time, especially San Salvador."

As the election approaches, the swelling confidence and strength of the guerrillas were not the only worries of the U.S. The Reagan Administration has always hoped that the election would produce a coalition in which President Duarte's moderate Christian Democratic Party would have the leading role. Last week, however, the State Department feared that a strong showing might yet be made by Right-Wing Extremist Roberto d'Aubuisson. Before D'Aubuisson was slightly wounded on Feb. 27 by unknown assailants, he was campaigning far more boldly and publicly than Duarte.

Without a centrist like Duarte holding the balance of power, the Administration doubts that the U.S. public would support the El Salvador government. The Administration is also concerned that moderate voters will be kept away from the polls, not only by fear of the guerrillas but by the climate of violence that has been created in El Salvador by death squads. Duarte's cause was not helped when a top White House aide was anonymously quoted in the U.S. press last week. Said the aide: "Unless something occurs, I don't think there is a lot of optimism that we're going to see a just election and therefore a just society in El Salvador."

As the guerrillas grew stronger, Secretary of State Alexander Haig charged last week--once again--that the Salvadoran rebels were part of a Soviet-sponsored intrusion into the Western Hemisphere helped along with arms and training from Cuba and the Marxist-dominated Sandinista government of nearby Nicaragua. The Reagan Administration, Haig said, had "overwhelming and irrefutable evidence" that the Salvadoran rebellion is under direct "external command and control." But Haig was still having trouble persuading skeptics in Congress that such charges were true. The trouble is that much of the Administration's evidence is intelligence information classified as secret and unavailable to most members of Congress. The White House refuses to release the material on the ground that it would compromise intelligence sources.

Realizing its credibility problem, the Administration has shared at least some of its information with members of the Senate and House intelligence committees. But even the results of that exercise were mixed. One Senator, an opponent of Reagan Administration policy in Central America, described a briefing by CIA Director William Casey as "a farce."

Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, chairman of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, backed the Administration. Said he: "We have definite proof from aerial photos and ground observations [concerning arms shipments from Cuba to El Salvador via Nicaragua]. They are put on small vessels, some of them small fishing boats. They are then taken up the coast, where they are met by other small fishing boats, and in some instances put on small aircraft and flown to the interior. They are also sometimes even put on bicycles and shipped inland to the rebels." Goldwater carefully refrained, however, from endorsing Haig's contention that the Salvadoran rebels are directly controlled by outsiders.

Late last week Haig told a congressional committee that Salvadoran troops had captured a "Nicaraguan military man" who was advising local rebels. Officials in the Salvadoran security forces charged that the man, Ligdamis Anaxis Gutierrez Espinoza, had been trained in terrorist techniques in Mexico. He managed to escape from the Salvadoran authorities, they said, and reach sanctuary in the Mexican embassy in San Salvador. In Mexico City, a Foreign Ministry official said that there was indeed a Nicaraguan in the embassy, a student who attended university in Monterrey, Mexico.

Secretary Haig had earlier been caught in an embarrassing situation when he sought to discredit the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Testifying before Congress, he referred to a picture that had appeared in February in the weekend magazine of the Paris newspaper Le Figaro, which showed bodies being burned in a city street. The caption described a massacre by the Nicaraguans of the country's native Miskito Indians.

Haig was misled. The picture in Le Figaro was actually taken more than three years ago, during the Sandinistas' successful rebellion against Nicaraguan Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and showed bodies being burned by the Red Cross as a sanitation measure after an attack by Somoza's National Guard. Le Figaro admitted that its picture had been incorrectly captioned. The State Department insisted, however, that U.S. charges of Sandinista repression were correct. The Nicaraguans denied the claim, but TIME has independently verified that killings and forced reset dements have occurred.

The need for the Administration to be more persuasive in presenting its case against Marxist-led groups in Central America was emphasized last week by a growing conviction among members of Congress that the U.S. should be encouraging the Salvadoran government to negotiate with the guerrillas (see story on page 23). As concern about the legitimacy of the voting mounted, the Administration announced the names of eight U.S. citizens, led by Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum, who will gather in El Salvador to observe the process.

The resiliency of the guerrilla forces that are disrupting El Salvador and causing the U.S. such concern is demonstrated not only by their strong showing at the battle of Guazapa but at small encampments throughout the countryside. Typical is a rebel stronghold in the department of Usulutan, 80 miles southeast of San Salvador. In February, the army had launched a campaign against the area, which Defense Minister General Jose Guillermo Garcia boasted would bring about "the final destruction of the guerrillas." But last week the rebels had solidly re-established themselves in their old surroundings.

In one village, guerrilla units including armed women practiced weapons drill near thick-walled homes with thatched and orange tile roofs that had been smashed by government forces. The guerrillas had organized patrols of young boys, some under the age often, to act as scouts and runners for their parents. The adults carried a motley array of weaponry, chiefly old carbines and a few automatic rifles.

The guerrillas were under the political command of a man known as Federico, who had a shrewd assessment of the Salvadoran army's strengths and weaknesses. "The U.S. has made a significant difference," he admitted. "The technical abilities of the army are not great, although the bombs and artillery are really improved. The American training is visible in special units, but on the ground the army is still not very good. The basic problem with the majority is morale." Added Federico: "We can move anywhere. We are not going to fight a war of positions. There are too many targets of opportunity."

Some of the targets are immobile--bridges, power stations, electrical pylons. The guerrillas are trying to ruin the country's economy in order to cause chaos that they can further exploit. The strategy is succeeding: between $700 million and $1 billion in private capital has fled El Salvador, and another $1 billion in commercial credits has been withdrawn by nervous bankers. Warns Federico: "The economic crisis of the country is irreversible until the [government] finally realizes that we cannot be ignored in any political solution of the country."

Meanwhile, the death toll continues to mount. An average of 200 to 400 people a week are killed in battle or by paramilitary death squads, whose members often come from the Salvadoran security forces. There was a special poignancy last week in the electoral rallying cry of Salvadoran President Duarte as he toured the countryside, urging his fellow citizens to vote on March 28 despite the environment of violence, intimidation and chaos. Said Duarte: "The country faces the most important choice in its history, to be dominated neither by the right nor the left, but to be free." That freedom is still a long way from being won.

--By George Russell. Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington and William McWhirter/San Salvador

With reporting by Johanna McGeary/Washington, William McWhirter/San Salvador

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