El Salvador Army - Civil War
Initially, the army used conventional warfare tactics against the insurgents. It typically would rely on massive frontal assaults or sweeps against guerrilla positions. These operations were less risky than the small-unit tactics urged by United States advisers but were ineffective against the more mobile guerrilla units, which easily evaded the army forces. At nightfall, the army invariably returned to the safety of its garrisons instead of pursuing the insurgents. Although army troops sometimes retook towns previously held by guerrillas, the army usually withdrew after a short stay, and FMLN forces returned.
Before 1982, the guerrilla organizations were dispersed, fighting independently and with different political concepts and ideologies. These organizations began their struggle for limited and specific objectives, such as the opening of political spaces within the closed ideology of government and changes in the economic system. Thanks to the international communist support, headed by Fidel Castro, the guerrilla organizations united and formed a "united front" (FMLN / FDR) with a new objective: EL PODER [power]. At the moment, the conflict began an escalation, quickly turning the FMLN into a guerrilla force with magnitude and characteristics of regular or conventional forces, putting in trouble the Armed Forces, mainly to the Army and also to the Government.
The Salvadoran-American alliance allowed the Armed Forces to grow and reach the magnitude necessary to counteract the military threat posed by the FMLN-Communist Countries alliance against the survival of the Salvadoran Government and State. United States military assistance helped to transform the army into a more capable force. During the second part of 1982, the Salvadoran government began deploying United States-trained and United States-equipped "hunter" counterinsurgency battalions, consisting of 220 members. "Hunter" tactics called for operations in highly mobile small units, carrying out night patrolling and night attacks in place of the army's ineffective massed assaults.
The army was slow to adopt these new tactics and largely continued to conduct the war in a lackadaisical manner. It responded to attacks by much larger FMLN units in 1983 by abandoning the United States-inspired concept of the "hunter" battalions. It replaced them with the 580-man Antiterrorist Infantry Battalions (Batallones de Infanteria Antiterrorista—BIAT) and 390-man Countersubversion Infantry Battalions (Batallones de Infanteria para Contrasubversion—BIC). Again, the guerrillas easily evaded these slow-moving forces in the field.
Badly needed organizational changes resulted from the May 1983 replacement of General Garcia by Vides. Within weeks, Vides's new chief of staff of the armed forces, Colonel Blandon, implemented United States-style organization and tactics in key combat units, adopting new counterinsurgency objectives of denying the guerrillas sanctuary, movement, and supplies. He also announced a 20 percent increase in troop strength for 1984 to bring the army's force level to 30,000. Blandon adopted more aggressive actions using small, air-mobile combat units. These moves turned the war in the army's favor, but subsequent adjustments by the FMLN frustrated government forces and again stalemated the conflict.
In mid- 1983 the army also launched a United States-designed and United States-funded pacification program consisting of military sweeps followed by civic action programs designed to reduce political violence. The army plan was to coordinate military operations in two eastern departments with government-sponsored economic development of the area and to establish local civil defense and social improvement programs. The persistent army presence, it was thought, would keep the guerrillas on the move and isolate them from the civilian population.
The first phase of the program, called Operation Well-Being (Operation Bienestar), focused on San Vicente and Usulutan departments, where guerrilla forces were particularly active. The program called for the organization of paramilitary networks and their integration into the counterinsurgency operations of the regular army and security forces. The army stationed 4,000 troops in central San Vicente Department with the objectives of forcing guerrilla units out of their bases in the northern sector and then establishing a buffer zone defended mainly by civil defense units.
In September 1984, Colonel Ochoa, then commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade in Chalatenango Department, attempted a similar campaign to clear guerrillas from the two northern departments of Chalatenango and Cabanas. Villagers, however, believing their safety depended on remaining neutral, were uncooperative. By the end of 1985, the campaign had failed, largely because the guerrilla forces easily evaded the army troops and then frustrated implementation of civic action programs.
Frustrated at its failure to defeat the FMLN after five years of fighting, the army reportedly turned increasingly to the forced relocation of the rebels' civilian supporters, particularly in the Guazapa Volcano area some twenty kilometers north of San Salvador, in northern Chalatenango Department, and in the eastern departments. The Ministry of Interior's National Commission to Assist the Displaced Persons of El Salvador (Comision Nacional de Asistencia a los Desplazadas de El Salvador—Conades) reported in July 1985 that 412,000 of El Salvador's population of about 5 million had been displaced from their homes by the war since 1981. According to some estimates, an additional 500,000 had left the country altogether. Although army officers suggested that the government's main concern was to deprive the rebels of political and logistical support, Duarte claimed that the new policy was designed to ensure the safety of civilians.
In October 1986, Blandon introduced a second United Statesfinanced pacification plan, United to Rebuild (Unidos para Reconstruir). In addition to giving the military control over repopulation and reconstruction programs nationwide, it contained a public relations element that gave the military the potential to build a popular support base of its own. Although intended to reassert army control and begin economic recuperation in war-torn areas, it too failed as a result of a lack of resources, incompetence in its implementation, and insufficient cooperation from the population.
By mid- 1988, according to some observers, the army had become burdened by conventional tactics, mediocre officers, over-reliance on air power, and the need to defend against economic sabotage. For example, fully a third of the government's troops were tied down guarding bridges, electrical plants, and other economic targets.
That fall Colonel Ponce launched a new counterinsurgency campaign in rebel territory. Designed without the assistance of United States military advisers, it relied heavily on night patrols by fifteen-man groups of highly trained commandos. It also took a new approach to civic action efforts. Instead of merely handing out supplies to villagers, the new campaign, called United to Work (Unidos para Trabajar), put greater emphasis on forcibly evicting left-wing community groups and replacing them with new organizations responsible for allocating army donations of food and medicine.
The army imposed two main conditions for this aid: that the village establish a civil defense unit and that it make its young men available for conscription. The army's civic action efforts were not reassuring, however, to more than 7,000 Salvadoran refugees who had returned from Honduran camps since the previous October to abandoned villages in northern El Salvador. Suspicious of the returning Salvadorans, the army prevented church and other outside relief workers from delivering supplies to them.
The 1989 offensive was a means to a political end. This offensive did not expect a military victory, but a propaganda impact that had an effect at diplomatic level. Although the guerrilla forces suffered a great military fatigue without obtaining the victory, the main objective was achieved. The mere fact of having introduced his forces in the capital and other departmental heads assured him the achievement of his objective: The strategic initiative in the table of negotiations. The response of the Armed Forces was not indiscriminate, the massive evacuations of the population and their collaboration with information to the Armed Forces not only demonstrated to the FMLN how far it was from obtaining popular support, but also allowed the Armed Forces to operate with great precision in urban combat.
Finally, the FMLN signed the peace accords in 1992, pledging to surrender their arms, not without first obtaining concessions that assured their participation and prepared the way to achieve political power (by electoral means). Ironically, his goal was still to achieve power, just like any other political party, but now uses non-military means to achieve it.
The strategic center of gravity of the FMLN was not the support of the population, as it is typical in some writings on insurgency war. The strategic center of gravity was in the diplomatic, political and logistical support that the FMLN received from the communist countries. Without such support, the insurgent struggle would never have grown to the point of becoming a threat to the survival of the Salvadoran Government. However, it can be said that for the Government popular support was the Strategic Center of Gravity. At a time when the FMLN had some military superiority and the government was diplomatically isolated, even from American support, the people did not take to the streets to proclaim an insurgent victory, which was the main objective of the insurgents.
The United Nations-sponsored peace accords signed in January 1992 ended the civil war that had plagued El Salvador since the late 1970s. The years of armed conflict between Salvadoran government forces and the FMLN devastated the Salvadoran economy. Salvadoran military and police forces have undergone drastic force reductions and restructuring while the FMLN demobilized.
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