trol over the movements and access of the press corps in El Salvador, who have a difficult time getting out of the capital unless it's on a government-conducted junket. But more fundamentally, the shape of the war is no longer the simple and violent sort of story that neatly fits the format of those compiling our news. The change is not accidental, but by design— the distillation of the Pentagon’s experience during and since Vietnam. The newly sanitized war in El Salvador has shifted into a more grueling, less voraciously violent mode —low-intensity conflict. It’s a far more sophisticated and light handed approach to contending with revolution in the Third World than direct military intervention. Many concerns about our policies in Central America revolve around it becoming another Vietnam. Oddly enough, these concerns are shared by the Pentagon. One mistake the U.S. military feels it made in Southeast Asia was giving largely free rein to the press. Pictures of our boys in bodybags and napalm fires on the evening news helped mobilize domestic opposition. The smart military man’s response to this threat is twofold: first, keep the jou rn a lis ts out of the f ie ld a ltogether—the news blackout of the invasion of Grenada was a proving ground— and second, maintain levels of conflict below the point that they draw the attention of the press. It means digging in for a longer war of lesser intensity, one step back to take two steps forward, a war that can be maintained without interference from the home front. This also fits into the other side of the lesson of Vietnam, the need to win over the hearts and minds of those within a country at war. Overwhelming superiority in a conventional military sense does not guarantee victory in wars that are less for territory than for the loyalty or obedience of a people. As Col. John Waghelstein, Commander of the Army’s Seventh Special Forces explains, “This type of conflict involves political, economic and psychological warfare with the military being a distant fourth in many cases. It’s total war on the grassroots level.” Instead of pursuing a quick and perhaps fleeting victory by wielding the big military stick, a lasting triumph is only secured by commiting to a more all-encompassing strategy that recognizes insurgency as permanent ideological warfare. The lesson is beginning to be learned by the Salvadoran Army, which has modified its conduct of the war in the countryside. Operation Phoenix, appropriately named for the grandaddy of all counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam, opened with the customary heavy aerial bombardment and sweeps of ground troops into the area around the Guazapa Volcano, a pivotally important, guerrilla-controlled zone 30 kilometers north of San Salvador. The ground troops didn’t pull out this time after burning homes and crops, but instead waited for the civilian population to reappear, which due to a long history of massacres by these same troops was not something the civilians would do willingly. During these operations the civilians withdraw to tatus, caves they’ve dug into the slopes of the volcano stocked with enough food and water to get them through the 4-7 days the Army would usually devote to these scorched earth sweeps. But in the case of Phoenix, the Army moved in to stay and waited the civilians out. When people emerged to replenish their supplies they were apprehended by the occupying troops. To their surprise they weren’t killed but instead rounded up in holding areas where officers from the Army’s psy-ops division told them that the military was now their friend and that they should cooperate. The campesinos were then loaded into helicopters and airlifted to refugee camps in and around the capital where they joined the nearly half million desplazados — displaced people. It’s estimated that another one million Salvadorans have fled the country entirely. Operation Phoenix netted the Army 1,000 campesinos who were forcibly relocated in this manner. This “civic action program” is modeled after experiences elsewhere. In the case of El Salvador, the scorched earth operations are followed up with Army-run medical and dental clinics, passing candy out to kids, and generally tailoring economic and humanitarian relief to support the low-intensity strategy. Douglas Blaufarb, former CIA station chief, explained how U.S. aid is tied into the military pacification program: “All of this was done under the rubric of refugee emergency assistance, resettlement and rural development in order to conform to AID (Agency for International Development) categories of approved activity. In actual fact, it constituted the civilian front of an unconventional war which could not have been prosecuted without the aid program.” The more coercive side of such an unconventional war falls to the military and police forces. If economic assistance programs and other forms of “ nation building” fail to cobpt civilian opposition, then it's important that alternative nation builders not be given the space to organize. This strategy underlies the Salvadoran government’s offensive against union, student and human rights groups and the Catholic Church, and what ultimately puts individuals like the Centeno brothers in Mariona. Building Democracy ZA s the economy of El Salvador con- J. Atinues to fail and unrest begins to boil again, this sort of repression becomes more essential to the government’s survival. This year, aside from the $513 million in aid (85 percent of which goes to the military), the U.S. Congress is also considering directing an additional $22 million to the Salvadoran police forces. This would be the first such aid since direct support of foreign police forces was banned in 1974 after U.S. involvement in torture and assassination by the police in such places as Iran, Uganda and Vietnam came to light. This time around, the police aid comes in the currently popular form of “counterInstead o fpursuing a quick and perhaps fleeting victory by wielding the big military stick, a lasting triumph is only secured by committing to a more all-encompassing strategy that recognizes insurgency as permanent ideological warfare. terrorist” support which, according to its sponsors, is designed to help professionalize the police and aid them in their fight against urban terrorists. The killings of U.S. Marines in San Salvador’s Zona Rosa in June, 1985 is provided as a rationale. The police forces already received $4.5 million to prime the pumps from monies reprogramnmed this year from military assistance funds. At the end of May the Duarte administration arrested 10 leaders from four prominent human rights organizations and accused them of being terrorists. If the $22 million in direct assistance to the police is approved, such tactics are bound to increase. The question facing policy makers, and finally all of us, is how far we can go in aiding and directing the erection of another police state in El Salvador and still delude ourselves that we are also building and supporting the cause of democracy. The discrepancy is currently accepted much the same way that we accept different standards in our economic relations with the Third World. Products that we’ve banned at home— Daikon shields, DDT, and other chemicals, foods and pharmaceuticals we’ve found too dangerous to live with —are dumped on overseas markets. We seem willing to export retrogade political systems that similarly would not be tolerated at home. At the heart of the problem is an attitude that clouds the way the U.S. views, and relates to, the rest of the less- developed world. One Embassy staffer, voicing her reluctance to get overly concerned about deaths and detentions, exposed her deepest feelings about the people of this Third World nation: “The Salvadoran culture is a violent one that also has big problems with alcoholism. If you should see a body lying in the gutter, I wouldn’t get upset. It’s probably just some poor drunk. . . . After all, you can’t just push a button or something and have them tu rn Ang lo -S a xon overnight.” This disregard for the lives and hopes of our neighbors may ultimately bear a heavy cost. Just as the DDT we’ve banned from our shores is now returning in our food and showing up in our water, the sordid political ideologies we tolerate and cultivate overseas may unfortunately also find their way home. Artist Matt Wuerker has recently visited El Salvador. A former Portland resident, he now lives in Los Angeles where he works with El Rescate, a project for Central American refugees. VISIT THE NORWESTER BOOKSHOP AT NEW MARKET VILLAGE We specialize in architecture & design, the British Isles, classical music, cookbooks, literature & mysteries. 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