Honduras sucked into El Salvador’s war

Press, 9 August 1982, Page 12

Honduras sucked into El Salvador’s war

From “The Economist”, London

Honduras has been sucked into El Salvador’s civil war. It has been confirmed that a contingent of 2000 Honduran soldiers has been sent to help the Salvadorean army in its biggest antiguerrilla offensive since 1979. The Hondurans are operating behind the backs of the guerrillas, who have been pressed against the border by the Salvadoreans.

The Salvadorean army’s offensive against guerrilla strongholds in Morazan province has lasted a month. Some 6000 Salvadorean soldiers, a quarter of the country’s armed forces, are involved. They have met stiff resistance. Some 40 soldiers are said to have been killed last week and up to 400 men may have died on. both sides since the offensive began. The guerrilla forces are said to number around 3000.

The army has recaptured two towns, Perquin and Suchitoto, which were briefly occupied by the guerrillas. Constant sorties have been made from San Salvador by six Dragonfly fighter-bombers recently delivered by the United States, as well as by the army's small fleet of helicopters. However, Morazan is the guerrilla heartland, and government lines of

communication have been stretched. The soldiers are haring trouble keeping the road from Suchitoto to San Salvador open. The Salvadorean army is unlikely to have looked to the Hondurans for help if it had been confident of winning. The Honduran intervention was apparently sought by El Salvador's President Alvaro Maganaza on a recent visit to Tegucigalpa. The Hondurans dislike the way Salvadorean guerrillas have been operating out of the bolzones, the stilldisputed pockets of territory which El Salvador and Honduras fought for in the "football war” of 1969. The Honduran army is at present confining its operations to these pockets — and may take the opportunity to stay there. Earlier this year, the local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees persuaded the Hondurans to move some 35,000 s Salvadoreans encamped just inside the Honduran border to a single large camp at Mesa Grande. The guerrillas were said to be using the old camps as sanctuaries. The refugee commission feared that the border

area would soon become a battle zone. The Hondurans now have more freedom to act along the border without inflicting casualties among the refugees. El Salvador's guerrillas have long threatened to carry the war into Honduras if its army joined in. The Honduran army is small and ill-equipped, and faces a growing terrorist problem on its home ground. On July 5 five bombs knocked out its capital’s power supply and caused some $3 million worth of damage. Honduras has been a democracy for less than a year, and its civilian leaders exert little restraint on the army, which has begun to take the antiterrorist campaign into its own hands. It was probably responsible for the decision to cooperate with the Salvadorean armed forces.

The Salvadorean army’s troubles in Morazan reinforce the guerrillas’ claim that they cannot be defeated by military means, even if their attempts to take over the whole country have so far failed. Officially, the powerful farright president of the constituent assembly, Major Roberto d’Aubuisson, refuses to negotiate with the guerrillas. Yet talks are said to have taken

place last month in Panama City between guerrilla leaders and Major d’Aubuisson. Also present was a personal representative sent by Cuba’s President Castro. Senior Cubans have recently been urging the guerrjllas to talk and even to take part in internationallysupervised elections in El Salvador. It seems unlikely that this will be acceptable to Major d’Aubuisson, who won an election on March 28 boycotted by the left. Right-wing death quads in El Salvador have been extending their range to include members of the middle-of-the-road Christian Democratic party, which came second in the March election. After the murder of 16 Christian Democratic officials, many party members are said to be defecting to the guerrillas, and since the constituent assembly suspended a law to 'hand plots of land to tenant farmers, a few farmers are trickling off to the guerrillas. .

The suspension of land reform caused the United States senate foreign relations committee. to recommend that military aid to El Salvador over the next fiscal year be kept to $66 million, a third of the sum sought by President

Reagan. Congress is likely to accept the committee's recommendation unless land reform is resumed and the killings abate. Congressional approval of President Reagan’s $350 million Caribbean basin programme, from which El Salvador stands to -collect $l2B million, is also hanging in the balance.

A congressional thumbsdown might mark the beginning' of the end of American

involvement in El Salvador and could cause a further spiral of violence. Major d’Aubuisson’s supporters would feel they had nothing to lose in embarking on a full-scale slaughter of their opponents in the centre and on the left. The centre would probably join rannks with the left, prcipitating a full-scale civil war. The talks in Panama City seemed to offer the only slender hope of averting this catastrophe.