Alarm bells ins Central America

Press, 1 July 1983, Page 12

Alarm bells ins Central America

From “The Economist,” London

President Reagan urged Americans on June 20 to reject “those who would disarm our friends and allow Central America to be turned into a string of anti-Ameri-can Marxist dictatorships.” He predicted that such a defeat would lead to a “tidal wave” of Central American refugees seeking to enter the United States. “This time they’ll be ‘feet people’ and not ‘boat people’,” he said.

The reference to boat people was not an invitation to compare policy in Central America with the lost war in Vietnam. The Reagan Administration is deeply reluctant to let American soldiers be sucked into the civil wars to its south.

The President’s remarks were meant to point out that the fall of Vietnam followed cuts in congressional aid to that country’s war effort, and that El Salvador could fall to the communists were it deprived of military supplies and advice. This warning was partly designed to add pressure on Congress to approve the Administration’s aid proposals for Central America, and partly a reflection of genuine worry about the future of the region. The outlook for a SSOM supplemental aid proposal for El Salvador, urgently needed and due to be discussed soon by a conference of the Senate and House of Representatives, is uncertain. Military aid funds may run out in July. Future aid is likely to be tied to congressional demands for unconditional discussions between El Salvador’s Government and the guerrillas who are fighting it. During a visit to Washington last month, El Salvador’s President Alvaro Magana said that, rather than agree to this, he would prefer to do without American aid.

There are no obvious signs in El Salvador that the Government is heading for military defeat. An ambitious new plan has been launched to clear San Vicente province of guerrillas and then to

win the “hearts and minds” of the peasants there by economic improvements. A Presidential election will be held this year; the country’s peace commission says that it is ready to negotiate with the guerrillas over guarantees for Left-wing candidates who could speak for them. About 420 of El Salvador’s officially reported 700 political prisoners have been released under an amnesty law designed to persuade the guerrillas to return to civilian life.

Nevertheless, the war goes on; and although Salvadoreans are a tough and hard-working people, the apparent unendingness of it is wearing them down. Their country is virtually bankrupt and bereft of investment. It depends on the United States for about 25 per cent of its imports as well as for its arms, ammunition and military advisers.

Although the rebels are said to have plenty of arms, the Americans claim they are still being supplied with ammunition and medicine from Cuba and Nicaragua. The Salvadorean Government says it has closed off the Gulf of Fonseca as a supply route by sea, and the Nicaraguan Government’s troubles on the border with Honduras may have closed off the land route by which arms from Nicaragua used to reach the guerrillas in El Salvador.

Now, the Americans report, supplies are coming from Cuba to the beaches of southern Mexico and sent on to El Salvador by light aircraft and helicopters. The Americans say that they have tracked down the new route by radar, and told the Mexicans about it; but have been unable to enlist Mexican support to stop the traffic.

If American aid to El Salvador is cut off, or even much reduced, the Salvadorean army could easily lose heart. To keep up its morale while the aid is still flowing, a training camp for 2400 Salva-

dorean soldiers is being set up at Puerto Castilla in neighbouring Honduras. Late last month, 114 Green Beret soldiers from the American army’s special forces arrived at the camp to start the training courses.

American generals are starting to think about what to do if things get worse in El Salvador. If it did collapse, they believe that a shaken Congress in Washington would then authorise a far bigger American effort to prevent the rest of Central America falling too. The generals’ idea would be to base this expanded effort in Honduras, and direct it from the headquarters of the Southern Command of the American army in Panama.

The expansion in Honduras is well under way. The American embassy in Tegucigalpa, the capital, has a staff of 149, and the number of military advisers in the country, excluding Green Berets, has grown to a sizeable 176 for Honduras’s 16,000-strong army.

More than 50 American airmen are running a radar station 15 miles south-east of Tegucigalpa, and 70 army engineers are supervising the expansion of the military airport at Comayaguela. Honduras, one of the world’s poorest countries, has received more American military aid in the past two years than it did in all previous years.

At the same time, the Americans are using Honduras as a base to arm and aid some 8000 guerrillas fighting against the Sandinist Government in Nicaragua. The extent of this aid is unknown; in Tegucigalpa, it is said that the operation is run by about 150 officers of the Central Intelligence Agency. Even this expanding American presence in Honduras does not match the growth of Soviet and Cuban influence in Nicaragua. Satellite pictures are said to show that military equipment from Russia and Cuba, including heavy weapons, continues to arrive in

Nicaragua’s remote Caribbean port of Prinzapolka. About 20 Nicaraguan pilots, trained in Bulgaria, have returned to Cuba with their Mig-21s and are ready to fly them on to Nicaragua.

Cuba’s top military commander, General Arnaldo Ochoa, who has seen service in Angola and Ethiopia, is reported to have arrived in Nicaragua to co-ordinate Cuban assistance to the Sandinists. The number of Cubans in Nicaragua — previously put at about 4000 — is now estimated by the C.I.A. at double that figure: 2000 of them military advisers and technicians, 2000 teachers, and the rest members of construction brigades and civilian aid teams. A Sandinist defector who worked in Nicaragua’s security service, Mr Miguel Bolanos, has told the “Washington Post” that his department received advice from about 70 Russians, 400 Cubans, 40-50 East Germans and 20-25 Bulgarians.

The Americans say the Cubans have established large base camps which they make no effort to hide from satellite reconnaissance; identifying initials are painted on some roofs to provide navigational aid for low-flying aircraft. A framework for a peace settlement in Central America still exists, but looks unlikely to come to anything. The idea is that all five Central American countries should agree to a withdrawal of all foreign military advisers, a supervised ban on the import of heavy weapons, an end to aid for guerrillas, and the holding of free elections.

This is favoured by Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala but rejected by the Sandinists in Nicaragua, who are prepared to talk only to Honduras about stopping the operations of the anti-Sandinist guerrillas.

It looks as if the Central American issue will be settled by the gun rather than the pen.