U.S.-Salvadoran Drug Surveillance Pact Draws Fire

Ghosts of the U.S. role in El Salvador’s civil war are haunting a pact that would give this tiny Central American country a crucial presence in international anti-drug efforts.

Under a 10-year agreement signed by the two governments two weeks ago, Americans would fly drug surveillance missions out of Comalapa International Airport, U.S. and Salvadoran officials confirmed Thursday. The operations would close a gap in anti-narcotics monitoring that opened when the last U.S. bases in Panama closed Dec. 31, according to a U.S. military official.

But opposition politicians, speaking out Thursday, saw a different purpose for the renewed U.S. presence in this country where Washington supported the government throughout a 12-year civil war that left 75,000 people dead before it ended in 1992.

“It is practically an occupation,” charged lawmaker Manuel Melgar of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, a political party formed by former Marxist guerrillas. Such objections put the agreement in peril because it is subject to ratification by the Legislative Assembly, where no political party has a majority.

The accord is similar to protocols already in place that permit the United States to use the airfield in Manta, Ecuador, and airports on the Dutch Caribbean island colonies of Aruba and Curacao. Those sites, however, do not share El Salvador’s history of U.S. intervention.

In planning for the U.S. pullout from Panama, a result of handing over to that country control of the Panama Canal, U.S. military and drug enforcement officials had noted that they would need access to a Central American airport for surveillance missions. But negotiating an agreement has been difficult.

A location in northern Costa Rica was rejected because of objections from local residents, and existing U.S. bases in Honduras were deemed too far away to effectively monitor the growing drug traffic through the Pacific.

“El Salvador is further south and further west,” said Steve Lucas, spokesman for the Miami-based Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military activities in Latin America. “It gives us reach further into the Pacific. This is going to improve the effectiveness of our counter-narcotics efforts.”

He said $10.4 million has been budgeted for improvements at the airport, but a State Department spokesman said the costs will probably be much less. “It is analogous to an airline having a dedicated terminal at an airport,” Lucas said.

Between 10 and 20 Americans will be permanently stationed in El Salvador as liaisons, while air crews, including pilots and maintenance technicians, will rotate through the country, he said. As many as 100 U.S. military and civilian employees might be in El Salvador at one time, he said.

U.S. and Salvadoran officials emphasized that the missions will be limited to surveillance and providing information that local drug enforcement officers can use to arrest suspected traffickers. Salvadoran military and police officers will be aboard most flights to coordinate with local law enforcement.

“It is in El Salvador’s interest to take action against the corridors that drug traffickers have been using through Central America and the Pacific Ocean,” said Justice and Security Minister Francisco Bertrand Galindo, one of the Salvadoran negotiators.

Crack cocaine use has been a growing problem in El Salvador and the rest of Central America in recent years, a byproduct of drug transit through the region. An estimated 60% of the cocaine traffic from South America to the United States passes through Central America and the Pacific coast, according to U.S. drug enforcement officials.

“This is not the direction we should be taking to fight drugs,” said lawmaker Eugenio Chicas of the FMLN. Chicas had warned a year ago--after 20,000 U.S. troops were sent here to rescue and rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Mitch, which struck in October 1998, the most devastating storm to hit the region in two centuries--that the humanitarian mission might be a prelude to renewed U.S. military involvement.

“This is leading toward establishing bases,” he predicted. “The U.S. interest is in a sustained military presence. Instead of helping develop our law enforcement agencies, this castrates them.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Cesar Martinez argued that the agreement gives El Salvador much-needed technology.

“The Foreign Ministry is willing to listen to the FMLN,” he said. But he added, “If the foreign minister thought that this agreement violated our sovereignty, she would not have signed it.”