El Salvador: Hope Born of Despair

At a conference in El Salvador that brought leftist rebel politicians and pro-government activists together, one speaker identified a “paradox of despair and opportunity” that is evident as the civil war grinds into its ninth year.

The despair is pervasive; after $3 billion of U.S. aid, the military balance is virtually unchanged, while economic and social conditions have deteriorated dramatically. But the very occurence of a public conference including the rebels engenders some optimism about the possibilities for peace. More and more Salvadorans see continuation of the war as unacceptable, creating a sense of re-evaluation that has extended even to the U.S. Congress. The first legislative fight over U.S. policy in the four years since the inauguration of President Jose Napoleon Duarte erupted in June in Washington.

The U.S. policy of “marginalizing” the rebels with military pressure while making political and economic reforms to defuse the roots of the conflict has not worked, lending credibility to moderate voices in El Salvador who have urged both sides to give up hopes of victory and negotiate an end to the war. There are a thousand casualties annually on each side; neither the rebels nor the army are any closer to winning.

The “dirty” war has escalated sharply this year; both military-sanctioned death squads and rebels kill unarmed civilian opponents. Unemployment has soared to 50% and average income has fallen 40% since the start of the war, as the economy has suffered from constant rebel attacks on infrastructure and the cost of a fivefold military increase. The war has driven 10% of the population from the country and another 10% to refugee and squatter camps. The country is kept afloat only by record U.S. aid.

On top of these military and economic woes, the government’s political leadership had fragmented badly, even before outgoing President Duarte’s recent hospitalization for cancer. No one knows just who has the authority to cut the war-ending deal that El Salvador needs. The public is disillusioned with Duarte; he failed to end the war and his party’s staggering corruption led to victory for the right-wing ARENA party in the Assembly elections this spring. ARENA, the party of reputed death-squad leader Roberto D’Aubuisson, is expected to win the presidency next spring as well, taking advantage of a split in Duarte’s party.

Remarkably, in the midst of all this is the first glimmer of hope for El Salvador since Duarte traveled to La Palma to meet with rebel leaders soon after his election in 1984. That meeting came to naught, and both sides have held to the positions they presented there: The government says the rebels should lay down arms and run for office; the rebels say that first they need a restructured government that can protect their supporters from the death squads. No member of the military has been tried for abuses of human rights, not even the one who recently killed the only judge who tried to bring the army to justice.

A wide spectrum of Salvadorans now appears to believe that the deadly stalemate requires--and may even generate--creative thinking and concessions on both sides. One important step in that direction is the recent announcement by rebel political leaders that, contrary to the advice of their military leaders, they will contest the presidential elections next spring. Another is the rebels’ recent decision to propose a mutual de-escalation of the war, to be followed by a three-month truce for negotiations.

The man who organized the June conference on negotiations, Father Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of a Catholic university, is one of the few Salvadorans who commands enough respect on both sides to serve as a mediator. He told both sides they must believe the alternative to concessions is an unwinnable war.

Certainly most civilian leaders on both sides have come to believe this; unfortunately, many military leaders--both rebel and army--have become inured to war. They hope against all the evidence that the stalemate can be broken in their favor. The Salvadoran officers now moving into top leadership and the right-wing leaders who recently took control of the Legislature speak ominously of “total” war, beyond the control of U.S. policy-makers and their concern for human rights. Rebel military leaders speak once more of an “urban uprising” this fall to sweep the military from the country. To head off such bloody campaigns, civilians on both sides must be able to offer some proof that a negotiated settlement is possible. For this, the United States must provide active encouragement.

Unfortunately, U.S. policy appears to be drifting in El Salvador, waiting for new presidents to be elected in both countries. The U.S. Embassy reportedly agreed to attend the conference on negotiations, but then received other orders from Washington--not to appear with rebel politicians until they first break their alliance with the rebel military, so as not to “legitimize” their presence.

If the goal of U.S. policy is to end the war with some prospect for democracy, this refusal to bring rebel politicians as far as possible into the political process appears to be self-defeating. The political wing of the rebels is led by some of the most “legitimate” politicians in Salvadoran history, whose participation will be required for any settlement to be successful. Their president, Guillermo Ungo, was Duarte’s vice-presidential running mate in the 1972 election that was stolen by the military, and served in the civilian-military junta that tried to chart a course back to civilian rule in 1979.

The rebel vice president, Ruben Zamora, was a top official in Duarte’s party until 1980, when the military raided a party meeting and assassinated his brother, a Cabinet minister, and he fled for his life. These men have allied with the Marxist-led rebel military because it is the only force capable of challenging military rule--and of offering, through the threat of retribution, protection from the military and the death squads. Their roots are in political rather than military action--they have shown a far greater willingness than their military wing to seek a negotiated settlement.

The recent deterioration of the political situation in Nicaragua makes it hard to conceive of negotiating a solution to any of the deep-seated political problems in Central America. Nonetheless, the military resiliency of both sides in El Salvador shows that negotiations are the only way out. If El Salvador could establish the same kind of uneasy truce that for more than six months has stopped most of the killing in Nicaragua, it might be tough for the combatants to restart the war.

To try to bring the same urgency to the search for a truce and negotiated settlement in El Salvador that was brought to bear in Nicaragua, U.S. Sens. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) recently took the issue before the Senate committee that prepares the funding bill for foreign aid. The senators proposed withholding half of El Salvador’s military aid until the Administration reports on Salvadoran and U.S. efforts to promote a negotiated settlement, and redirecting a third of U.S. cash aid (which indirectly pays for the expanded Salvadoran army) to health and water projects--directly addressing the needs of the poor.

The Administration’s response to this largely symbolic proposal was instructive. Declining to debate the senators’ claim that U.S. policy has failed to bring El Salvador any closer to peace or reform, the Administration cast the measure as a personal slap at Duarte, whose signature appeared on a letter from his bed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center asking the committee to reject it. After a full-court press by Secretary of State George P. Shultz and a State Department roundup of absent senators, the provision was dropped from the bill by a 15-14 vote. Instead, the sponsors accepted a provision redirecting a quarter of cash aid to basic needs. For the first time in four years, Congress had taken away some of the Administration’s ability to bankroll El Salvador as it had planned.

As the situation in El Salvador continues to deteriorate, this legislative fight was probably the first step in reopening congressional debate. The next occupant of the White House will find Congress already asking why the issue it thought had been settled with massive aid has come back. There will be increasing pressure to drop the pursuit of a military victory as the primary U.S. goal. Congress will probably push tough measures to encourage negotiations, and to create a safe environment for rebel participation in a government that would throw murderers out of the Salvadoran military and bring them to justice in court.

The only apparent alternative to this course is another eight years of war.