U.S. EFFORT TO WIN 'HEART AND MINDS' GAINS IN EL SALVADOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560003-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: September 8, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560003-4
WALL STREET JOURNAL
~~~.E A~~
l 8 September 1986
ON PA
Latin Lesson
U.S. Effort to Win
`Hearts and Minds' -
Gains in El Salvador
Tactics Will Get Next Test
In the Nicaragua Conflict;
Peru, Ecuador Mentioned
A Mariachi Band and Barbers
By Cun 'oa KnAuss
And TIM CARRINGTON
Staff Re ners of TX6 WALL STRECr JOURNAL
SAN FRANCISCO MORAZAN-In this
small El Salvador town on the edge of one
of Central America's bloodiest war zones,
an army operation accompanied by U.S.
advisers looks like a festival.
Clowns, a mariachi band and skimpily
clad dancers perform between speeches by
Salvadoran army officers and social
workers calling on peasants to reject the
guerrillas. Meanwhile, army barbers cut
hair, and soldiers pass out rice, dresses
and medicine.
An a ent of the U.S. Central Intelli-
gence Agency, clad in battle fatigues and
carrying an carbine, inspects tills
"p Woloca opera on" with obvious
satisfaction. "You wowan't nave seen triis
in 1981 and 1 You see the army winning
hearts an mm he says. "This is low-
intensity-conflict doctrine in a ction. '
San Francisco orazan, like s of
other Salvadoran towns, serves as a test-
ing ground for an emerging U.S. military
strategy for the Third World. The "low in-
tensity conflict" strategy, or LIC (pro-
nounced "lick"), is designed to win pro-
longed "small" wars without escalating
them and engaging U.S. ground forces.
Building Bridges
By integrating humanitarian activities
such as bridge-building and veterinary in-
struction with jungle-warfare tactics, LIC
attempts to convince civilians that anti-
Communist forces are fighting to improve
both local security and living standards.
Low-intensity-conflict operations aren't
new, and they failed to bring an American
victory in Vietnam. Now, however, they
appear to be bearing fruit in El Salvador,
where Washington has worked for several
years to tailor LIC doctrine to Central
American conditions.
Although the Salvadoran war isn't yet
won, LIC operations guided by U.S. ad-
visers have helped the pro-American gov-
ernment here to push back Communist
guerrillas. Many of those same tactics are
about to be employed under President Rea-
gan's Contra aid program in Nicaragua,
? where the challenges are greater. And if
the strategy works in Nicaragua, LIC pro-
ponents say, that could fuel interest in in-
creasing aid to anti-Communist insurgents
in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, Laos and
Vietnam.
Useful in Philippines?
Already officials from the Pentagon's
Pacific Command are studying propa-
ganda operations in El Salvador to see if
they could work in the Philippines, where a
Marxist insurgency also opposes an ally.
Others mention Peru and Ecuador as coun-
tries where LIC might work. "You see a
developing theater and a developing doc-
trine," says Gen. John Galvin, chief of the
U.S. Southern Command in Panama. Maj.
David Petraeus, a Galvin adviser, says,
"LIC is a growth industry."
LIC fits comfortably with the "Reagan
Doctrine," the president's determination to
support anti-Soviet, pro-American insur-
gencies in the Third World. But it isn't
clear that the U.S. has the patience or the-
political will to carry out the long wars-
often marked by setbacks and inconclusive
battles-that LIC is designed for.
When the U.S. tried to "win hearts and
minds" in Vietnam, it lost to a more tena-
cious force. "We fought a war in Vietnam
that we knew how to fight, not the war that
there was in the rice paddies," complains
Col. John Waghelstein, a Special Forces
commander with wide experience in Asia
and Latin America. But Pentagon strate-
gists say they have learned from the fail-
ure in Vietnam, and they insist they can
make LIC work this time.
In El Salvador and Nicaragua, unlike
Vietnam, the U.S. is limiting its involve-
ment to funding, advising and training lo-
cal forces to fight. And U.S. officials point
to the improving military situation in El
Salvador as evidence that LIC can work.
"The big danger is that once you make
a commitment to a side in a military con-
flict-even if it starts as a low-intensity
conflict-it's hard to back out," says Wil-
liam LeoGrande, a political-science profes-
sor at American University in Washington.
"Remember, Vietnam began as a low-in-
tensity conflict. All we were going to do
was train the South Vietnamese army to
fight the war by themselves."
El Salvador easily could have become
another Vietnam. The army and govern-
ment were brutal, corrupt and unpopular;
the guerrillas, up until mid-1983, were
gaining military strength even though their
popularity waned after late 1980. For a
time it looked as though large-scale U.S.
involvement would be needed to stop the
left, but congressional opposition stymied
that possibility.
Now, aersistence and LIC training-in-
cluding CIA-financed Propaganda
stressing the importance of ui ding popu-
lar su rt-ave considerably improved
the v oran army's efficiency and be-
havior. The U.S. pushed the Salvadoran
army to rid its ranks of officers who par-
ticipated in right-wing "death squads" that
killed many Salvadorans who opposed
them. Washington also called for elections,
and they helped give the government of
Jose Napoleon Duarte legitimacy at home
and abroad.
"The precedent has been set in El Sal-
vador," says Col. Waghelstein, "to allow
us to use the doctrine without looking over
our shoulder at Vietnam."
Gen. Galvin claims that the same kind
of LIC tactics that weakened the guerrillas
in El Salvador can be used to help anti-
communist Contra rebels win in Nicara-
gua. U.S. military officials say that under
the aid package recently passed by Con-
gress, U.S. advisers will train the Contras
to fight in small units and to organize po-
tential followers among the peasants.
Attrition and Rights
The Contras, these officials say, will be
taught how to fight a slow war of attrition
and will be trained both to respect human
rights and to improve the lives of civilians
by digging wells and treating routine
health problems.
They also will learn to train their civil-
ian supporters to aid the war effort without
exposing themselves to Sandinista repres-
sion. Civilians would learn, for instance,
how to let the Contras know that a Sandin-
ista unit is around by sending secret sig-
nals, such as leaving a tray of red peppers
at a particular spot.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560003-4
 a Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560003-4
But it will be hard for the U.S. to sell
the Contras a program that weds jungle
warfare to Peace Corps-type development
and building projects. Many Contra offi-
cials are unimpressed by LIC doctrine.
"We aren't going to have the time to be-
come engineers, constructors and enter-
tainers," argues Contra spokesman Frank
Arana. And a CIA-trained Contra platoon
leader who goes by the name ecos Hill"
disparages the Green Beret trainers who
Will soon be advising the Contras. He calls
them reen canes who "don't- know
the tactics of the rabid-dog Sandinistas."
Even if the Contras were prepared to
cooperate, it would be difficult for them to
build the type of popular support the U.S.
expects. Although economic shortages and
political repression have eroded support
for the Sandinistas, the Contras have failed
to gain much backing, particularly in the
cities. While people have doubts about the
Managua regime, they fear the Contras be-
cause many Contra leaders are former sol-
diers in the National Guard of deposed dic-
tator Anastasio Somoza. Some U.S. offi-
cials want an El Salvador-style shakeup of
the Contra leadership to dilute the power
of former Guard officers.
Reminder of Occupation
Another problem is that the American
financing of the Contras reminds most Nic-
araguans, whatever their ideology, of the
unpopular U.S. Marine occupation of their
country in 1912-25 and 1926-33. This allows
the Sandinistas to paint the Contras as for-
eign-backed mercenaries, while presenting
themselves as nationalists despite their
own ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Overcoming these legacies won't be
easy. Even LIC proponents worry that the
U.S. lacks the patience for a prolonged
guerrilla war. The U.S., they fear, could
stumble before Soviet-backed Sandinista
forces that are better equipped than the
Contras. Soviet leaders can set long-term
goals and stick to them, even when things
go badly, as in Afghanistan, they note,
while U.S. leaders must deal with a frac-
tious Congress and an impatient public.
Gen. Edward Meyer. ea retired Army
wo es that e a
chief o s n s ra-
tion may forget an imoo an esson of
Vietnam: Ambiffu ous ars can produce
ambiguous objectives w are difficult for
the public to support. "Take, for example,
the non-clandestine clandestine war in Nic-
ara a. People are con he says. "If
you ask director William Casey and
[Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger
what our as are in Nicaragua. you still
couldn' ge a co eren answer."
'
'A Classic Case'-If
But retired Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, a
former commander of U.S. forces in Korea
and currently an adviser to the Contras,
believes that Nicaragua "can be a really
classic case to be taught in future classes
at our service schools in how to overthrow
a Communist government-if it's success-
ful." If it isn't. Nicaragua could set LIC
doctrine back for years, as Vietnam did.
In El Salvador, where the U.S. is lim-
ited by Congress to 55 permanent military
advisers to prevent a buildup of American
troops, LIC activities evolved slowly-and
haven't always worked as planned.
The much-vaunted National Plan, which
was hatched by officials in the U.S. em-
bassy in San Salvador in late 1982, was de-
signed to clean out guerrillas in targeted
areas, then reestablish public services,
which would be defended by government
civil-defense units. But the plan's first two
years were disastrous. Guerrillas stole
medicines from National Plan hospitals
and held night classes at National Plan
schools.
The U.S. made adjustments and perse-
vered. It also was lucky. The guerrillas
fighting the Salvadoran army were weak
and disorganized. The left's constant inter-
nal bickering and insensitive
economic-sabotage campaign eroded its
popular support. Meanwhile, bombings by
the Salvadoran air force-a tactic of con-
ventional war rather than of low-intensity
conflict-forced the guerrillas to disperse
their battalion-size units, and their
strength faded.
a
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560003-4