Salvadoran Rebels Halt Demobilization

Three weeks from the conclusion of a fragile peace process, El Salvador’s leftist guerrillas Tuesday suspended the demobilization of their army, charging that the government has failed to make good on promises to give land to squatters.

Guerrilla commander Shafik Handal said no more rebels will lay down their weapons until the government gives legal guarantees that peasants and some former fighters who have occupied farmland will not be evicted.

Under U.N.-brokered peace accords signed in January, rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front are required to disarm in stages by Dec. 15, in exchange for sweeping reforms in El Salvador’s military, judicial and land-distribution systems.

But “the government has not fulfilled its part,” Handal told reporters. By suspending the demobilization now, he said, “we are exerting pressure so that the government will act.”

While it is unlikely that Tuesday’s setback will derail the peace process, the dispute illustrates the increasingly complex nature of negotiations as the deadline for ending hostilities draws near. Mutual distrust abounds as each side continues to accuse the other of erecting obstacles and failing to obey terms of the accords that close more than 12 years of civil war.

The government of President Alfredo Cristiani did not react immediately to the suspension of the rebel demobilization. But Cristiani and other government officials have accused the guerrillas of finding pretexts to delay the process. “The FMLN should not be looking for excuses,” Cristiani said Monday. “The moment of truth has arrived: Do they or do they not want peace? And if they want peace, why do they want weapons?”

Until Tuesday’s suspension, the guerrillas had disarmed and sent home about 60% of their 8,000-member force, although most of these were support troops including cooks, political officers and the elderly. Only in the last month did the rebels begin to take the more meaningful step of discharging hardened, experienced fighters, according to the U.N. officials monitoring the peace process.

The guerrillas also had finally begun to relinquish important weapons, including some of their highly prized surface-to-air missiles, instead of the rusty guns and useless materiel they turned in during the first demobilizations, U.N. monitors say.

Rebels say they have been slow to hand in their weapons because the government has been slow to implement reforms.

The guerrilla front further slowed down its demobilization last week when Cristiani announced that he planned to deploy the army to protect the ongoing coffee harvest from robberies.

Angry rebel leaders argued that the deployment would violate the peace accords and provoke skirmishes with armed rebel fighters. Angry military officers responded that Cristiani had the right to deploy troops.

Finally, U.N. officials secured assurances from the government that the army would not be deployed until after Dec. 15.