Battling on Two Fronts

By John Kohan

Winter offensives begin in Washington and El Salvador

In El Salvador the new year opened with a bang that resounded in Washington.

Just as the White House made ready to battle on Capitol Hill to wrest perhaps as much as $175 million in military funds for the Central American nation, disheartening news came of a daring guerrilla offensive. On two year-end raids, leftist insurgents not only captured and held El Salvador's fourth-largest military base for some eight hours but blew up the Cuscatlan suspension bridge, a span that had come to symbolize 20th century progress for Salvadorans.

U.S. officials insisted that there was nothing particularly ominous about the latest guerrilla successes in El Salvador's four-year civil war. But U.S. advisers on the scene feel the rebels are improving as soldiers more rapidly than the government forces. During most of 1983, the guerrillas dominated the fighting. The recent winter offensive proved to be especially ill-timed for the Reagan Administration.

If the White House requests $175 million in military aid, well above the $64.8 million Congress approved last year, there will be stiff opposition when the Senate and House of Representatives reconvene on Jan. 23. Congressional critics of U.S. policy in El Salvador were angered when the President used a pocket veto during the holiday recess to block a bill extending the requirement that the U.S. certify El Salvador's progress in human rights and political reform before granting further aid. Last week 33 House Democrats filed suit in federal court charging that the President had acted unconstitutionally. The certification law will undoubtedly be resubmitted once Congress is in session.

The final shape of the Reagan Administration's aid package is also bound to be strongly affected by the recommendations of the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Central America, led by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The twelve-member panel, which visited all the countries in the troubled region, plans to release its report this week. Though debate within the commission is said to have echoed divisions in Congress and the American public, the group, by most accounts, has now agreed on a general approach for treating Central America's chronic problems of poverty and violence.

The Kissinger commission appears to be unanimous in favoring continued U.S. military assistance and hefty infusions of economic-development funds, which alone could total $5 billion to $7 billion during the next five years. Panel members are said to agree that any aid must be tied to political and economic reforms. Such a linkage principle would exclude Marxist Nicaragua, but whether it would put pressure on El Salvador or Guatemala is not clear. The roles that regional negotiations and the U.S. military must play in bringing about stability are also open questions. But whatever the specific issues that remain to be resolved, the White House will find it difficult to ignore or discredit the Kissinger panel's conclusions.

For the moment, the more immediate concern in Washington seemed to be how to hold the line in El Salvador. Buoyed by the reorganization of the Salvadoran high command last November, U.S. military aides argued that government forces "had turned the corner" in their struggle against the guerrilla armies of the five-member Farabundo Marti National Liberation

Front (F.M.L.N.). That was before the start of the winter offensive. In a four-day battle on the slopes of Cacahuatique mountain in the eastern department of Morazan late last month, government forces finally broke a rebel siege, but lost 40 men. U.S. military aides commended the army for responding so quickly to the guerrilla raid, but at least two support battalions broke and ran from entrenched positions.

In the last days of 1983, rebels raided the hilltop.headquarters of the 4th Infantry Brigade near El Paraiso, 30 miles northeast of San Salvador. The attack proved a serious blow both to the army and to army morale. After learning that 700 of the 1,300 troops based in the garrison were away on illegally authorized holiday leaves and 200 other soldiers were absent on patrol, the guerrillas struck. In the early hours of the morning, they set off a mortar barrage, scoring direct hits on barracks where government soldiers were sleeping. Some army troops scattered in panic. Within eight hours, the guerrillas had overrun the chain-link fence and barbed-wire perimeter, but they abandoned the fort at nightfall. Several days later, the rebels reportedly released 158 captured soldiers and civilians. Salvadoran military officials claimed that 100 government troops were killed in the fighting, but hospital officials and villagers who witnessed a mass burial reported that at least 160 had died. It was the largest toll of any single battle in the civil war.

Just as fireworks celebrating the new year were subsiding, the guerrillas struck again at the meagerly defended Cuscatlan Bridge, a crossing 50 miles east of the capital on the Pan American Highway that many considered to be indestructible. Before government forces responded to the attack, the rebels managed to plant plastic explosives on the quarter-mile span. The blast snapped the suspension cables and sent twisted sections of roadway plummeting into the Lempa River. Until the bridge can be repaired, cotton, sugar and coffee harvests from the eastern departments will have to be transported across the top of a near by dam.

The twin attacks underscored the continuing problems that American military advisers have faced in turning the Salvadoran army from a Praetorian guard of the rich into a modern fighting force. They are particularly concerned about the training and motivation of the captains, majors and lieutenants in charge of field combat. Some junior officers have even told their soldiers to wear street clothes under their uniforms so that if need be they can be dressed for surrender. The number of government troops who have gone over to the guerrillas or allowed themselves to be captured is far higher than the number of guerrillas who have accepted the government's amnesty offer.

The night-riding, right-wing death squads that are suspected of killing as many as 25 Salvadorans a week in recent months are causing the White House almost as much concern as the Salvadoran military. Alarmed that right-wing violence might endanger hopes of political reform in El Salvador and alienate congressional critics in the U.S., the Reagan Administration dispatched Vice President George Bush to San Salvador last month to let the government of interim President Alvaro Magana know in no uncertain terms that the U.S. wanted suspected ringleaders to be transferred out of the army and other sensitive posts or sent into exile by Jan. 10.

Washington officials say that the Salvadorans "got the message" and complain that congressional efforts to force El Salvador to be certified every six months are self-defeating. Says Thomas R. Pickering, U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador: "For the first time we believe the government has responded to the call of treating right-wing extremist violence with the same degree of interest and activity and will as they have dealt with left-wing extremist violence." Last week Major Jose Ricardo Pozo and Lieut. Colonel Aristedes Alfonso Marquez, two senior intelligence officers with links to the death squads, were assigned abroad. Other officers are also said to be on their way to diplomatic postings in South American countries with military regimes. Still, death squads are a force in El Salvador. Rightists in the country have begun to complain about U.S. meddling. After last week's military setback, editorials appeared in the right-wing press demanding the resignation of the army's high command and an end to American intervention in El Salvador.

The Secret Anti-Communist Army, one of the most notorious death squads, warned in a communique last week, "We will not allow the gringos to come here and make decisions about military command changes."

American hopes and rebel aspirations will ultimately collide when El Salvador goes to the polls on March 25 to choose a President. "Elections are the key," says Pickering. "The government has a real opportunity to increase its support." But the guerrillas are equally determined to sabotage and discredit this attempt at U.S.-style democracy. The presidential campaign between U.S. -backed centrists and the reactionary right will be bitter and divisive. Whether a fair election can be held at all will depend on an army that has yet to prove its valor in battle or its commitment to change. -- By John Kohan. Reported by Timothy Loughran/San Salvador and Johanna McGeary/ Washington

With reporting by Timothy Loughran/San Salvador and Johanna McGeary/ Washington