Rebels’ Attack Tarnishes Image of Salvadoran Army

Flush with optimism in 1985, El Salvador’s top military officer, Gen. Adolfo Blandon, announced that guerrillas battling the government were “wearing down” and had lost the capacity to undertake large military attacks.

Last summer, Blandon asserted that the guerrillas had been reduced to a third of their fighting force. And just last month, one of Blandon’s field commanders boasted that the rebels were nearly routed from the battle-worn province of Chalatenango.

But as Chalatenango’s other commander stood wounded among the charred bodies and smoldering ruins of his garrison this week, the military’s optimism seemed to fade.

Sixty-nine soldiers died and 60 others were wounded in Tuesday’s stunning guerrilla attack on the 4th Infantry Brigade garrison at El Paraiso. A U.S. Special Forces sergeant was killed, becoming the first American military adviser to die in combat here.

The heavily fortified base was largely destroyed, together with its intelligence files, communications equipment and armament.

Political and military analysts say the attack does not signal a major shift in the course of the war or the likelihood of a guerrilla victory. But the assault proved the guerrillas’ continued strength on the battlefield and underscored the inability so far of the U.S.-backed military to defeat them.

“What is evident is that the guerrillas are much stronger than has been estimated,” said Antonio Canas, director of the Center of Information and Documentation in Support of Research at the University of Central America. “This is not an army that is disbanded or suffering from low morale.”

Political Blow to Military

The attack came on top of four months of increased military activity by the Marxist-led guerrillas in the countryside and amid signs of their return to this capital city to step up political organizing and urban warfare. The military blow in Chalatenango is also a political blow to the armed forces that have been boldly proclaiming their superiority.

“Despite their helicopters, weapons and their numbers, the army can’t keep the guerrillas from carrying out an attack like this. Where is their superiority? It is a superiority of containment,” Canas said.

Military officials and observers said the attack on El Paraiso was a well-executed operation that demonstrated the guerrillas’ ability to penetrate heavy security, including a mine field, and to zero in on targets.

Rebels Infiltrated Base

Officials said that guerrilla infiltrators in the army helped in the attack and remained on the base afterward. A military observer said that intelligence officials picked up a guerrilla radio transmission from inside the base after the attack.

The action also demonstrates that the guerrillas have adapted their tactics to the armed forces’ use of helicopter transports and gunships, which for several years have hampered their ability to mass in large groups. Observers estimate that about 200 guerrillas took part in Tuesday’s attack, then quickly dispersed into the hills.

The United States has provided the Salvadoran military with about 75 helicopters, nine A-37 fighter jets and about a dozen O-2 observation planes. The aircraft forced the guerrillas to move in small groups to avoid attracting attacks from the air and gave the army fast troop mobility.

Shortcomings Continue

While the army’s performance has greatly improved in recent years with the U.S. equipment and training, the El Paraiso attack highlights several of its continued shortcomings.

“The armed forces do have an operations security problem that is of great concern,” a military observer said, asking not to be identified by name. He added that, as a result, the military may begin using lie-detector tests for soldiers in radio operations, tactical operations and intelligence work.

The observer said that the army had received information that a large group of guerrillas was moving through northern Chalatenango province several days before the attack but did not react. The reason is that such reports and are commonplace, he said, and the Salvadorans are still unable to weed out reliable intelligence reports from inaccurate ones.

“We still don’t know how to distinguish between all the indicators that say the sky is falling on the day that it does fall and on the day it doesn’t,” the observer said.

Ambush Abandoned

On the night of the El Paraiso attack, a 4th Infantry Brigade unit had abandoned an ambush that the soldiers were ordered to set up on what turned out to be one of the guerrillas’ main infiltration routes to the base, he added.

Guerrillas launched several other smaller attacks throughout the country on the night of the El Paraiso attack. In the capital, explosions were heard as the government bombed guerrilla positions on Guazapa Volcano, north of San Salvador.

The guerrillas stepped up sabotage of the country’s electricity system throughout the week.

Since December, the rebels have killed dozens of soldiers in at least four sizable attacks in the eastern provinces of La Union and Morazan and the central province of San Vicente. At least two of the actions led to prolonged battle with the government troops, signaling a switch in tactics for the guerrillas.

Some Combat Avoided

Because of the army’s use of air power, including helicopter gunships, the guerrillas had tended to avoid frontal combat in recent years, relying more heavily on ambushes and land mines to inflict casualties.

At the same time that they have quickened the pace of fighting in the countryside, the guerrillas have moved back into the capital in greater numbers, military officials say. In recent months, rebels have been stopping buses and attacking police in the capital.

Last month, the guerrillas ambushed a police patrol in downtown San Salvador, killing three and wounding two.

In a broadcast on their clandestine radio station this week, the guerrillas said, “Clandestine militia activity is operating successfully in San Salvador, annihilating repressive forces, recovering armaments and completing propaganda missions and sabotage to the war economy. There is a new contingent of forces that have risen from the fire of the impoverished masses.”

Focus of War Shifted

Pro-guerrilla urban organizations were destroyed in the early 1980s when right-wing death squads with military and police ties killed thousands of their leaders and rank-and-file members. Guerrillas working in the capital then moved into the countryside.

The guerrillas will probably find it more difficult to develop an urban base now, because police forces have improved their intelligence-gathering capabilities, and the level of urban violence generated by military and paramilitary elements has been greatly reduced, removing a factor that pushed many people into the guerrilla camp. The Christian Democratic government also has set up competing organizations.

But the number of workers, urban poor and unemployed for the guerrillas to draw on is also much larger than it was at the beginning of the war. The population in this capital city has nearly doubled to more than 1 million people because of an influx of refugees from war and economic hardship in the provinces.

Meanwhile, the army is analyzing its mistakes and losses at El Paraiso.

Army officials issued a statement estimating that there are 6,000 guerrillas in the country, about 1,000 to 2,000 more than previously estimated. The army launched a retaliatory operation to search for the rebels in northern Chalatenango, and a military observer said that guerrilla operations also could be expected to keep growing in the coming months when the rainy season begins to provide protective cover for guerrilla warfare.