STATEMENT BY THOMAS O. ENDERS ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INTER-AMERICAN AFFAIRS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON FOREIGN OPERATIONS OF THE HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE FEBRUARY 1, 1982

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00049R000902300012-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 12, 2007
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: February 1, 1982
• Content Type: REPORT

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STATEMENT BY
THOMAS O. ENDERS
ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INTER-AMERICAN AFFAIRS
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FOREIGN OPERATIONS
OF THE
HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE
February 1, 1982
The President is expected shortly to sign.a determi-
nation under Section 506(A) of the Foreign Assistance
Act of 1961, as amended, allocating up to $55 million
in emergency security assistance to El Salvador. This
assistance will be in the form of U.S. military materiel,
services and training.
Why was this action taken?
First, because thereis.an unforeseen emergency
requiring immediate security assistance.
After the failure of their much-heralded "final
offensive" in January 1981, insurgent cadres appear to
have rethought their strategy, concluding that the FMLN/FDR
did not have the broad popular support necessary to achieve
victory by frontal attack on the government and armed
forces. They abandoned the strategy of building popular
support and instead turned to attacking the economy in
a "guerra prolongada" or war of attrition. The new stra-
tegy calls for hit-and-run attacks against small military
units and lightly-defended economic targets, such as
bridges, electrical transmission lines, and dams. The
intention is to damage severely an economy that was already
in crisis and to undermine the morale of the government
and popular confidence in it. Since then, attacks on
El Salvador's economic infrastructure have caused almost
$50 million damage to electrical and communications sytems,
bridges and rail lines, bringing increased hardship to
the Salvadoran people.
We watched this tactic develop, concluding by year-
end that it was endangering not the Salvadoran armed
forces, but people's livelihood. An economic emergency
was resulting..
Meanwhile Nicaragua was being transformed into an
ever more efficient platform for supporting insurgency
in El Salvador. We have watched as the FMLN headquarters
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unit was developed on Nicaraguan soil, clandestine logis-
tics routes perfected, guerrilla training camps set up.
The number of Cuban military and security advisors in
Nicaragua doubled during 1981 to between 1800 and 2000.
Munitions and weapons resupply to the insurgents in El
Salvador is again approaching levels reached before the
"final offensive." Nicaragua also brought in modern
tanks and is preparing for the introduction of supersonic
aircraft, thus acquiring an offensive capability. Nicaragua
has become a two-fold threat to its neighbors: as the
support-system for insurrection, and because of..the dev-
elopment of its offensive capacity.
Another factor is the FMLN/FDR's use of force and
intimidation to disrupt the election campaign that began
last week and will conclude March 28 with voting for
a Constituent Assembly. This will be El Salvador's first
step toward the establishment of a fully legitimate gov=-
ernment -- one elected by the people. After nearly 50 .
years of military rule, this is a bold but vulnerable
move. The guerrilla FMLN is determined to sabotage and
block the establishment of an elected government.
Finally, we faced an emergency of an even more urgent
character. In the early morning of January 27, a guerrilla
attack on the Ilopango Air Base outside San Salvador
severely damaged a large part of the Salvadoran Air Force
including a number of the Huey helicopters we provided
to El Salvador early last year at the direction of Presidents
Carter and Reagan. The Hueys are El Salvador's only
transport helicopters, and they are critically important
to the mobility and rapid response capability of the
Salvadoran Army -- even more so in the wake of bridge
and rail sabotage. The guerrilla success on January
27 will undoubtedly be followed by additional high-visi-
bility raids on key military and civilian targets. Unless
the helicopters are replaced quickly, the Salvadoran
armed forces will be unable to respond effectively.
The magnitude of the military and economic challenge
from the guerrillas could not be foreseen at the time
the Administration's revised FY 82 security assistance
request was submitted to the Congress in early 1981.
As a result, we have had to commit all of the $25 million
in Foreign Military Sales credits and MAP grants made
available by the Congress in the 1982 appropriation.
Most of this assistance, $15 million, is financing the
training in the United States of some 500 Salvadoran
officer candidates and the 1,000 members of a second
quick reaction battalion. Additional junior officers
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are essential to a modest expansion of the army; enlisted
volunteers are plentiful, trained officers are not.
Over the longer term, this training will improve Salvadoran
military capability and command and control. It was
not designed to meet, and will not meet, the short-term
threat so graphically illustrated by the Ilopango attack.
But having fully committed available funds, we have no
means of replacing the equipment lost in that attack
or of supplying the weapons and ground vehicles and com-
munications gear urgently needed now to meet the mounting
guerrilla effort to sabotage the elections. To.-withhold
506(A) assistance at this point would be to abandon El
Salvador.
Second, because the decisive battle for Central
America is underway in Salvador.
Cuba is systematically expanding its capacity to ?
project military power beyond its own shores. The arrival
this year of a second squadron of MiG-23/Floggers and
the 63,000 tons of war supplies imported from the Soviet
Union in 1981 have added substantially to an air, land
and sea arsenal that was already the area's most power-
ful.
Nicaragua is being exploited as a base for the export
of subversion and armed intervention throughout Central
America.
If, after Nicaragua, El Salvador is captured by
a violent minority, who in Central America would not
live in fear? How long would it be before major strategic
U.S. interests -- the canal, sea lanes, oil supplies
-- were at risk?
For most of its life as a nation, our country has
faced no threat from its neighbors. But, unless we act
decisively now, the future could well bring more Cubas:
totalitarian regimes so linked to the Soviet Union that
they become factors in the military balance, and so
incompetent economically that their citizens' only hope
becomes that of one day migrating to the United States.
Third, because if we do not sustain the struggle
now, we shall a ac in o at errs a vicious circle,
in w is in en ra merica a only a erna ive to ri t
wing ictators ip is a t-wing dictatorship.
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General Romero's traditionalist military government
was overturned two years ago by a military-civilian coali-
tion committed to reform -- land reform and the transfor-
mation of El Salvador into a democracy. We supported
the reforms then, we support them now. And real progress
has been made -- for all the civil strife, even though
there is.a long way to go, above all in bringing violence
under control.
Let, me say a word more about violence before closing.
Violence has always been high in El Salvador, but it
became epidemic after the extreme left obtained"outside
support for armed warfare. The issue of violence and
counterviolence has been and is at the center of our
dealings with the Salvadoran government. Some of it
has been brought under control. Charges against the
murderers of our countrywomen are about to be brought
-- at last our best estimates show a steady decline in
non-combatant deaths over the past year, a thousand offi-
cers and men from the security forces have been transfer=
red, punished, or retired, the extremist organization
ORDEN abolished.
But it is not necessary to believe every alleged
massacre story -- in particular reports by the insurgent
radio station of the killing of more than`900 people
people in Morazan appear highly exaggerated -- to know
that massive problems remain. This morning's report
of the killing of 17 alleged guerrillas in San Salvador
is a case in point. We do not know whether this was
a guerrilla organization or not, whether arms were seized
or not, but we are not ready to buy the notion that a
firefight occurred and deeply deplore the excessive vio-
lence used against those involved. And of course, violence
by the guerrillas -- who boast of of the casualties they
inflict -- goes on.
Our intention is to keep up the pressure, to get
the problem of violence under as much control as it can
be in circumstances of civil strife, in order to promote
the full scope of our interests in the region, interests
we believe are widely shared in this country:
Defense of our national security interests
against the Soviet/Cuban challenge;
Promotion of democratic, open societies in
our immediate neighborhood. =
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