TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121189/12118900.035

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 7.1 KB | 136 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 53

CENTRAL AMERICA

No Place to Hide


Now armed with missiles, the rebels bring the war to the wealthy
and increase tensions between San Salvador and Managua


    The pattern would be tedious if it were not so deadly.
Every time the government of El Salvador announces that, yes,
the rebel offensive is finally over and the capital of San
Salvador is safe again, the guerrillas pop up in yet another
neighborhood.

    Last week the troops of the Farabundo Marti National
Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) embarrassed President Alfredo
Cristiani by seizing control of the wealthy Escalon district and
then melting away again. As rebels burned several luxurious
homes and sniped at slowly advancing government troops from
windows, hundreds of foreigners and wealthy Salvadorans fled the
country. The F.M.L.N. even carried the battle to the skies: for
the first time in the ten-year-old conflict, the insurgents
fired a surface-to-air missile at an air force jet. The sharply
escalating violence not only raised fresh questions about
Nicaragua's role in arming the Salvadoran guerrillas, but proved
an unwelcome irritant for the U.S. and the Soviet Union on the
eve of their Malta summit.

    By targeting the lush and peaceful enclave of Escalon,
which spreads elegantly along the western fringes of the
capital, the insurgents brought the war home to the wealthy.
Using luxury cars as barricades against the army's armored
personnel carriers and light tanks, the rebels seized about 40
houses. For the most part, they carefully obeyed F.M.L.N. orders
not to harm  civilians. American officials warned F.M.L.N.
representatives in Mexico City and San Salvador against
endangering the lives of U.S. diplomats. None were hurt, but
some envoys had close calls. On Thursday a chartered jet
evacuated 234 civilian workers and dependents of U.S. officials.
"The Bush Administration keeps saying that we are acting out of
desperation, that the offensive will end soon," says an F.M.L.N.
officer. "But the actions of the last few days will be a
permanent feature as long as there is war in El Salvador."

    The Escalon offensive rattled Cristiani, who only three
days earlier had held a press conference to display a cache of
weapons, including 24 surface-to-air missiles, found in the
wreckage of a twin-engine Cessna that had crashed some 70 miles
east of San Salvador. The plane almost certainly took off from
Nicaragua, bolstering Cristiani's conviction that Ortega's
Sandinista government was supplying arms to the F.M.L.N. despite
a personal promise to Cristiani last August not to do so.
Cristiani suspended diplomatic relations with Nicaragua and
refused to attend a summit of Central American Presidents
scheduled for this weekend unless it was moved from Managua.

    The rebels were not known to have the heat-seeking SA-7s
until they fired one at a Salvadoran jet last week. The
shoulder-held SA-7 is a Soviet-designed cousin of the more
advanced U.S. Stinger rocket that significantly boosted the
power of the mujahedin in the Afghan war. "These missiles could
really make a difference," says a key U.S. Senate staffer. The
insurgents offered to sheathe the weapon if the air force
stopped bombing and strafing ground targets, but Cristiani is
unlikely to accept the deal.

    Although SA-7s can be obtained in arms bazaars around the
world, there was little doubt that the weapons were shipped
from Nicaragua. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez firmly
backed Cristiani in blaming Ortega, who did not even bother to
deny the charge. Instead, Ortega noted the many flights that
originated from San Salvador's Ilopango airport to ferry weapons
to the contras fighting his government. "So what's the scandal?"
he asked.

    The Sandinistas have admitted supplying the F.M.L.N. with
other types of weapons in the past. But U.S. intelligence
agencies have not been able to come up with hard information
about the nature of these shipments or how they have changed
over time. Some Washington officials believe Managua's military
aid to the F.M.L.N. was fairly modest from the early 1980s until
mid-1988, when plans were first laid for the current offensive
and arms shipments were cranked up. If Ortega is indeed the
purveyor of SA-7s to the F.M.L.N., why did he choose to send
them now? One plausible hypothesis assumes that a demand for the
rockets was created by the current rebel offensive. Another is
that both Ortega and Castro are rushing to help the F.M.L.N.
before Gorbachev pressures them to cut off the rebels as part
of his larger rapprochement with Washington. Foreign diplomats,
confirming a report in the French daily Le Monde, said that a
Soviet emissary told Sandinista and Cuban officials in Managua
last week to stop arming the F.M.L.N. Salvadoran diplomats
closed their Managua embassy on Wednesday and left the country
in protest over the SA-7 shipments. But they stressed that
relations were being suspended, not terminated. Ortega pointedly
did not suspend his government's ties with San Salvador. The
flap between the two countries will probably blow over.

    The much graver danger to the region is that El Salvador
will slip completely into chaos as the government discovers that
it cannot control even the streets around its offices in San
Salvador. "The military is showing itself to be incompetent,"
says a U.S. official. "Unless there's some radical and magical
improvement, the guerrillas are going to keep coming in at will.
It's really nightmarish."

    A grisly fantasy of a different sort may soon be conjured
up out of the frustration of ultra-rightists in the Salvadoran
army and government who are considering a campaign of terror to
suppress the insurgents. Between 1980 and 1985, confirmed
killings by death squads linked to the military or National
Guard liquidated 0.3% of El Salvador's population, and many
far-right members of the President's ARENA party would like to
resume that strategy. The rightists have reportedly stockpiled
enough weapons and ammunition to pursue a terror campaign for
several months after a cutoff of U.S. aid.

    Already the government is betraying distressingly fascist
leanings. Strict, vaguely worded laws curbing dissent were
rammed through the legislature last week. Death squads are on
the rise; evidence collected by human-rights groups strongly
implicates the army in the killing of six Jesuit priests three
weeks ago. Predictably, the criminal investigation of the
Jesuits' slaying -- in contrast to the official probe of the
SA-7s' origin -- has got nowhere.

    George Bush journeyed to San Salvador as Vice President in
1983 to tell its leaders that the U.S. was prepared to drop aid
to the country if they did not act against the death squads. He
could make the same speech today. The country's center,
enfeebled by vast poverty and the effects of a decade of war,
is crumbling under the prodding of the offensive. The future for
El Salvador looks to be a free-for-all between a buoyant and
rearmed F.M.L.N. and generals willing to make the country a
boneyard.