http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4209595.stm
Thursday, 27 January, 2005, 11:31 GMT
'Salvador Option' mooted for Iraq
By Tom Gibb
BBC, South America
With no end to the Iraq conflict in sight, some US military
strategists have been considering tactics used during the civil war in
El Salvador, a brutal and bloody campaign that lasted for years.
The US colonel in charge at the close of El Salvador's civil war was a
tall man with a shaven head, which, as a colleague put it, "looked as
if it would repel cannonballs".
I remember him commenting on how he had been glad to serve in El
Salvador because he believed the United States had corrected the
mistakes of Vietnam, learning at last the formula to defeat future
insurgencies.
This, he said, required pouring in resources to build up the local
army as a shield against hostile guerrillas behind which
democracy-building could work its magic.
He was, he said, going to write it all up in case of another such war.
So it has been with little surprise that I have read articles coming
out of Washington in recent weeks, with US officials talking about a
"Salvador Option" in Iraq, not only for democracy-building, but also
for a more aggressive campaign to eliminate Iraqi insurgents and their
supporters.
Brutal dictatorships
El Salvador was the last long counter-insurgency war fought by the
United States.
It is one of a collection of small republics in the US backyard which,
during the Cold War, Washington considered too strategically important
to fall to communism.
For decades the US propped up brutal dictatorships. But repression
created fertile ground for Marxist guerrillas.
So in the 1980s, the US belatedly switched to democracy-building to
stop the revolutions sweeping the region.
President Reagan promised to draw the line against further communist
expansion in El Salvador.
There followed a bloody 12-year stalemate between the US-funded and
organised Salvadoran army, and Cuban-backed guerrillas.
Between one and two percent of the population - more than 70,000
people - died.
Terror tactics
I still find it extraordinary that US officials like the colonel, saw
this as a success.
The shield which stopped a guerrilla victory in El Salvador was in
reality a reign of terror.
Tens of thousands of those killed in the war were rebel sympathisers,
tortured and murdered by the security forces.
It was a well-organised, dirty war in which the CIA was heavily involved.
Horrendously mutilated corpses - sometimes decapitated - were left in
full public view.
Using fear, the policy succeeded in denying the rebels open civilian
support.
Some in the Pentagon have now been mooting the idea of training Iraqi
hit squads to target insurgents and their sympathisers to quash open
civilian support for them.
But for this to work would mean out-terrorising the Iraqi rebels, a
difficult task indeed.
Nor is success for a Salvador-style death squad democracy guaranteed.
Horrific memories
Constituent assembly elections, like those taking place in Iraq, were
held in 1982.
But the war continued for another decade with the rebels rebuilding
their strength.
In November 1989, they launched an all-out offensive to win, taking
over suburbs of the capital for 10 days.
Fearing defeat, the US-backed army set out to kill not only guerrillas
but also those they viewed as sympathisers.
Of the memories of death and mutilation I witnessed in El Salvador,
the sight of six Jesuit priests, their cook and her 16-year-old
daughter with their brains blown across the neatly cropped lawn of
their house, is the one that still haunts the most.
They were among the country's leading intellectuals, and I knew them
well.
They were murdered by an elite US-trained unit, part of an
extermination list approved by the high command, a dirty war taken to
the limit.
The failure of US strategy in El Salvador is perhaps measured by its
inability in 12 years to capture or kill a single top guerrilla
commander in a country only the size of Belgium.
In the end, years more bloodshed and a potentially humiliating US
defeat were only prevented by the Soviet collapse, which pulled the
rug from under the guerrillas' feet.
George Bush Snr called in the United Nations to mediate peace and sort
out the mess.
It seems a strange model to choose now for Iraq.
>From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 27 January,
2005, at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules
for World Service transmission times.
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