Big Problems, Small Progress

By George Russell

The fighting grinds on in El Salvador and Nicaragua

As the political controversy deepened over how the U.S. could best support the government in El Salvador and the rebels in Nicaragua, military professionals were concerned with a basic question: In either case, will the U.S.-backed forces win? The answer: there are grounds for optimism in El Salvador, and pessimism about the CIA-backed contras in Nicaragua.

For the 47 U.S. military advisers in El Salvador, the country's four-year counterinsurgency campaign has mostly been an exercise in frustration. The main reason: the lackluster performance of the 22,000-member Salvadoran army and particularly its officer corps. According to the U.S. military men, almost all of whom have experience in Viet Nam, the way for the Salvadorans to beat the 5,000 to 6,000 Marxist-led guerrillas is to pursue them through the countryside. Says a U.S. counterinsurgency expert: "You have to put troops out and keep the guerrilla from operating. The ultimate goal is to reduce him to banditry."

The Salvadoran military did not see things that way. Says a senior U.S. military officer: "By our standards, the Salvadoran army is just plain bad." That criticism does not extend to ordinary Salvadoran soldiers, whom a U.S. expert describes as "physically hard, readymade soldiers who like to be told what to do." But, says the expert, "the officer corps is bewildered. There are so many things wrong, you don't know where to start to fix them."

For more than a year, U.S. advisers fretted about the army's "9-to-5 war," in which Salvadoran officers took their units on fruitless guerrilla chases during the day, then returned to their garrisons at night, leaving the Salvadoran countryside to the rebels of the Faraibundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.). As a result, the guerrillas have held the initiative in the war, using hit-and-run strikes, mobility and economic sabotage to wear down the battered country.

Above all, the Americans have had trouble convincing the Salvadoran officers that, as one U.S. Special Forces officer puts it, "they have a deadly serious live-or-die fight on their hands." Says one outspoken U.S. military analyst: "These guys have got to start thinking about more than their pretty uniforms and cocktail parties. They have to get over that manana attitude. There is no more time left for that."

At last it seems that the insistent U.S. pressure for action is producing progress. Most encouraging is a campaign known as Operation Goodwill, a U.S.-directed attempt by the Salvadoran military to regain the offensive. Launched in June, the drive is largely aimed at the departments of San Vicente and Usulutan, the agricultural heartland of El Salvador. All together, 74 infantry companies (about 7,400 men) have been involved, spearheaded by two of the country's three "fast reaction" battalions, which were trained in the U.S. last year in counterinsurgency techniques. The campaign appears to be succeeding. Asserts Salvadoran Colonel Reinaldo Golcher, who commands Operation Goodwill: "This has changed the direction of the entire war."

According to Golcher, the Salvadoran army has managed to reclaim from F.M.L.N. control an area that previously contained some 1,200 guerrillas. The territory was won without a heavy fight: the guerrillas in the area moved out before the troops arrived. This time, however, the Salvadoran army does not intend to go back to its barracks; it is going to stay. Says one of the U.S. Special Forces advisers who designed the campaign: "We're not stacking up bodies, but that's not the point. We are taking back terrain, clearing the area, getting lots of intelligence."

The principles of Operation Goodwill are based on the "hearts and minds" theory of combined military and economic action that the U.S. first tested in Viet Nam. In addition to a more aggressive role for the Salvadoran army, the campaign depends on the training of regional defense forces to keep the guerrillas from returning after the army moves on to other objectives. At its newly opened regional training center in Puerto Castilla, Honduras, the U.S. will have trained by the end of this year four new Salvadoran provincial military units of 350 men each, called cazador (hunter) battalions, to fill that need. Two additional hunter battalions for each of the country's 14 departments are being trained by U.S. and Salvadoran teams in El Salvador.

Meanwhile, behind the military shield, Salvadoran government technicians and U.S. Government officials are moving into the territory reclaimed in Operation Goodwill to repair the roads, power lines, bridges and schools destroyed in the F.M.L.N.'s economic sabotage campaign. Says a U.S. military expert: "You can't bring the guerrilla to bay with military means alone."

Operation Goodwill is a step in the right direction, but so far only a modest one. The U.S. military advisers still face formidable obstacles. For one thing, the Salvadoran officer corps will not change overnight. As a U.S. expert puts it, there are still some "weak sisters" in crucial provincial commands. For another, the new, U.S.-inspired tactics and training are severely taxing the resources that Washington has made available in El Salvador. The U.S. military men in the country chafe openly at the Reagan Administration's self-imposed limit of 55 trainers in the country. Says one: "To do the task properly there should be at least 180 to 200 trainers here." That may be so, but the U.S.'s rotating schedule for sending advisers to El Salvador has meant that even the current ceiling of 55 often is not reached.

An even more important consideration is money. A senior U.S. diplomat in San Salvador estimates that a "bare minimum" of $80 million to $ 100 million, an increase of more than $30 million over current funding levels, is necessary annually to sustain the counterinsurgency campaign. Most would go for logistical support and training. The Salvadoran army requires $25 million annually for ammunition alone. Lack of a sustained funding commitment by the U.S., says the diplomat, reduces Salvadoran military self-confidence and also provides "an excuse for not taking vigorous action."

Even assuming the success of Operation Goodwill, there is no quick end to the fighting in sight. If all goes well, a top U.S. counterinsurgency expert estimates, "about two years" of additional training will be needed to guarantee control of the guerrilla threat, and even then the rebels will not be totally defeated. Other estimates of the time required run higher.

A military evaluation of the CIA-sponsored contra campaign in Nicaragua leads to an even less hopeful conclusion. In all, some 9,500 anti-Sandinista guerrillas, split into three factions, now face the most formidable military machine in Central America. Under the Sandinistas, Nicaragua currently has an estimated 138,000 soldiers: 25,000 in the regular forces, 25,000 in the reserves, 80,000 in the militia, 8,000 in paramilitary forces. (By contrast, the late Nicaraguan Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle had an 11,000-man National Guard.) According to U.S. sources, these forces are backed by more than 2,000 Cuban military advisers. The Sandinista regular army is expected to grow still further, to as many as 50,000. Last week Nicaragua Defense Minister Humberto Ortega Saavedra swore in 1,400 members of yet another kind of Sandinista military unit, a "territorial militia" whose function is to defend local neighborhoods, factories, hospitals and schools in the face of " Yanqui invasion."

Not only are the anti-Sandinista guerrillas heavily outnumbered and outgunned, they are relatively disorganized and riven by personal and political feuds. One group, the 1,500-member Revolutionary Democratic Alliance, led by former Sandinista Hero Eden Pastora Gomez, has refused, at least publicly, to have anything to do with the leadership of the 5,000-member Nicaraguan Democratic Force (F.D.N.), which is the principal recipient of covert U.S. funding. The reason: the F.D.N. includes officers from the hated National Guard of former Dictator Somoza. The third guerrilla faction, the 3,000-member group of disaffected Miskito, Sumo and Rama Indians whose tribes inhabit the east coast of Nicaragua and Honduras, received some initial organizing help from the F.D.N. but then announced it was going its own way.

Fortunately for the rebels, the revolutionary Sandinistas, who took power through guerrilla warfare, are curiously incompetent at combating their own kind of tactics. Says a U.S. military analyst: "The units that are actually fighting the contras are inept."

Rather than throwing their heavily mechanized, Soviet-equipped Sandinista People's Army at the contras, the revolutionary government has until recently been using ill-trained reserves and militia members to stop the guerrillas' sporadic attacks. The result is that the Sandinista forces have taken a disproportionate number of casualties. Says a spokesman for one of the contra groups: "It is not only that our fighters are good; it is also that theirs are not."

Even so, the contras have so far failed to accomplish very much. The F.D.N. guerrillas are largely grouped in the mountainous northwest corner of Nicaragua along the Honduran border; the fighting Miskitos in the rain forests of the northeast, and Pastora's group in the equally impassable southeast. The guerrilla challenge is hardly any threat to the centers of Sandinista power. Says a foreign diplomat in neighboring Costa Rica: "In the entire southeast corner of Nicaragua, there is not a single community of more than 200 people. Pastora controls this, but what has he got? A lot of jungle and a rainy season."

Western military experts profess to be unfazed by the lack of contra success. They predict that within weeks the F.D.N. forces in particular will be fighting hit-and-run actions around the Nicaraguan population centers of Matagalpa and Chinandega. Says a Western diplomat in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua: "It is unrealistic to think that the contras can hold territory. They are going to be engaged in limited actions: sabotage, destruction of economic targets."

More interesting to professional military men is the clumsy Sandinista use of their best army units and equipment, most of which are confined to areas around Managua and other urban centers. The Sandinistas have, for example, at least three tank battalions, two of which are equipped with Soviet T-55 tanks, the other with old U.S. Shermans. One of the tank units has reportedly been sent to the northeastern border area. It is almost useless against guerrillas, of course, but the tanks serve another purpose: intimidating Honduras. Nonetheless, most military experts discount the possibility of a Sandinista attack across the border. The risk would be major--direct U.S. involvement in support of an invaded Honduras--and the chances of success minimal.

Belatedly, the Sandinistas have created their own counterinsurgency battalions, but U.S. analysts explain the earlier decision to spare elite regular units and fight the contras with ill-trained reservists as a political one. Says a U.S. intelligence officer: "The army is politically reliable. It is available for operations in urban areas in case an uprising ever comes." The Sandinistas and the contras, in other words, may agree on one thing: that the regime in Managua has at least the potential to be profoundly unpopular.

If more U.S. support is funneled to the contras, the military risk for the Sandinistas may rise, but so may their own level of military response. In the long run, the chances of contra success will depend on the level of popular dissatisfaction in Nicaragua. There are few signs yet that resentment against the Sandinistas has reached anything like a critical stage.

--By George Russell.

Reported by Bruce W. Nelan/San Salvador

With reporting by Bruce W. Nelan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.