PEACE : A Farewell to Arms in El Salvador : Country’s demobilization leaves rebels vulnerable, skilled only in warfare.

One by one, men like veteran guerrilla Manuel de Jesus Lopez Najarro are putting down their guns and going home.

The separation of fighter from weapon is a painful one, Lopez says, like losing a hand. But it’s time, time to move on and join a battered society struggling to recover from 12 years of civil war.

Lopez is one of approximately 6,000 rebels who have been demobilized since the signing in January of U.N.-mediated peace accords between leftist guerrillas and the conservative government of President Alfredo Cristiani. Lopez’s was the most recent group, and the final 2,000 rebels are supposed to demobilize by Dec. 15, the formal end of the war.

As the men and women who fought a powerful U.S.-backed army for more than a decade return now to civilian life, a host of new challenges is emerging. Many of the former fighters are unskilled in anything but warfare. Many abandoned families, property, studies; resuming their lives will take time, considerable effort and more money than seems readily available.

Lopez, who spent eight of the last 13 years in combat, has a couple of plans. He dreams of receiving a few acres from the nearby Valle Verde farm (“the best hacienda around”) and aspires to learning an auto mechanic’s trade.

“My desire is to reincorporate myself in civilian life and work to improve things for me and my family,” he said. “I want to get ahead.”

The 29-year-old father of two boys turned in his AK-47 automatic rifle late last month in a ceremony at the foot of the Guazapa Volcano, a rebel stronghold and scene of some of the heaviest fighting and military strafing during the war. The following day he returned to his family, a few miles up a rock-and-dust road in a hamlet known as Los Almendros.

There he drank several beers in celebration of his new civilian status and passed his first unarmed night in years.

He slept, uneasily, in the mud hut of his parents. Although happy with the war’s end, Lopez said he felt uncomfortable at giving up a weapon that many times had saved his life.

“I feel very insecure,” Lopez said, seated on a crude bench as chickens clucked across a dirt floor. “They have not given us any kind of guarantees.”

Under the peace agreement, fighters from both sides of the war who lay down their weapons are to be given land, training and food. Up to 47,500 people--former army soldiers, former guerrillas and squatters who occupied war-zone farmland--are to receive up to 400,000 acres.

Disputes over the distribution of this land are still being resolved and recently posed a threat to the demobilization. Perhaps more significantly, about half the land has yet to be purchased, and there currently is no money for it, according to U.N. officials.

With those problems and others, adjusting to civilian life is proving very difficult for many former combatants.

Lopez, at least, has ideas and expectations. A friend, 20-year-old Jose Alfredo Bonilla, was demobilized with Lopez after six years as a rebel.

Sitting around the Lopez hut, Bonilla seemed lost and dejected. Asked about the kind of work he intends to pursue, Bonilla shrugged his shoulders.

“They (the guerrilla leaders) don’t need us anymore,” he said bitterly. “We served them. But if this thing (the war) heats up again, they’ll call on us again.”

As with everything else involving the peace process, the demobilization has been used as political leverage. The rebels have suspended it on several occasions in response to what they perceived as the government’s delay in meeting peace accord requirements.

Many in the government and military believe that the guerrillas, while publicly demobilizing some troops, will maintain armed groups ready to attack. A number of hidden stockpiles of rebel weaponry have been discovered around the country.

Many of the guerrillas who stood down in the first phases of the demobilization were, in fact, not combatants but support troops--cooks, political officers, the elderly. And the weaponry being turned in consisted of rusty guns and useless materiel.

This began to change last month, U.N. observers said. The guerrillas began to discharge more of their hardened, experienced fighters and to relinquish better arms. This week, the first of these guns and grenade launchers were destroyed.