The Battle for Usulut

Troops try to win not only firefights but hearts and minds

The success of U.S. policy in Central America rests in large part on the performance of the 25,000-man Salvadoran army. After repeated setbacks at the hands of antigovernment guerrillas, it has been widely criticized as a 9-to-5 fighting force lacking both skill and determination. Last week 4,000 U.S.-trained Salvadoran troops were combing the fields and volcanic mountains of the rich agricultural department of Usulutan, seeking to dislodge elusive units of the Marxist-led Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.), whose hit-and-run tactics have virtually crippled the economy of the strategic area. TIME Mexico City Bureau Chief David DeVoss accompanied the government forces and sent this assessment:

Sitting inches from the prop wash of his UH-1H ("Huey") helicopter, Salvadoran Army Colonel Julio Cesar Yanez Lopez stared with satisfaction at the thin plumes of smoke coiling across the scrubby landscape below. "We're fighting terrorists, not guerrillas with a noble cause," he announced as the chopper settled to earth alongside a cornfield crackling with flames. "We're going to integrate Usulutan back into the economic life of this country."

Yanez was following the smoke signals of destruction in the dry foothills around Usulutan's dominant landmark, a 4,700-ft. dormant volcano. Wherever the fires burned, 1,300 troops of the elite U.S.-trained Atlacatl mobile battalion were rooting out base camps occupied by the Peoples' Revolutionary Army (E.R.P.), the largest and most aggressive of the five guerrilla groups that constitute the 10,000-strong F.M.L.N. As Yanez made the rounds of the battlefront, he delivered a message of encouragement. "Your being out here means that the campesinos now have a chance to work," he told his men.

Winning scattered firefights is the first and least of the goals of Operation Well-Being, a protracted campaign that involves two other U.S.-trained Salvadoran battalions, the Atonal and the Bayoso, along with the Atlacatl unit. Their sweep through Usulutan was a long-awaited extension of El Salvador's ambitious National Plan, a combined civilian-military offensive that aims to drive the guerrillas out permanently. Conceived with the help of U.S. military advisers, the National Plan was initially tested, with mixed results, last summer in the neighboring department of San Vicente. The plan's success or failure in Usulutan could prove to be the decisive event in the Salvadoran conflict, which is now dragging through its fifth inconclusive year.

Usulutan is vital to the Salvadoran government, not only because of its important cash crops of cotton and coffee but also because of its geography. The Pan American and Littoral highways, which traverse the department, are the country's economic lifelines. For the past two years, the highways and the harvests have borne the brunt of guerrilla sabotage. An estimated 2,000 E.R.P. rebels, with strongholds along the meandering Lempa River and near the towns of Jucuaran, San Agustin and Santa Maria, have dominated the department. Not a single culvert or bridge along the Littoral Highway has escaped F.M.L.N. bombings, while agricultural production has plummeted.

The novelty of the National Plan is its emphasis on reconstruction. Within 18 hours after the Atonal battalion recaptured the town of San Agustin, engineers were beginning to recobble the settlement's rutted main street. Painters were applying bright pastel colors to walls formerly covered with E.R.P. slogans. Outside San Agustin, graders were widening a six-mile stretch of dirt road leading to the Littoral Highway. Said Jose Oscar Chavarria, the road-crew foreman: "Now perhaps a place that wasn't worth entering can become fertile again."

The response from the people of San Agustin was thankful but tentative. During a lightning visit to the town, Colonel Adolfo Blandon, recently appointed Chief of the Army General Staff, quizzed an aged woman in front of a tiny local store. "Is the school functioning yet?" he asked. "How are my soldiers behaving?" Her answer: "Very well so far."

The woman had reason to be cautious. With all the emphasis on security and reconstruction, the Salvadoran army was not pursuing the guerrillas as hard as it could. As a result, the retreating insurgents left a trail of destruction in their wake. Near the town of Jucuapa, the guerrillas torched a local coffee-drying station, putting 800 local residents out of work. Another guerrilla blow that could have reverberated in Washington was narrowly averted when five U.S. military advisers canceled a planned inspection tour of the nearby department of San Miguel. Their aircraft left without them, and was blown up while landing at the departmental capital. Warned the F.M.L.N.'s Radio Venceremos: "Many North Americans soon will begin to die in our land, far from their grieving families."*

The final and most difficult step of the National Plan calls for the molding of campesinos and police into a trustworthy local civil guard, capable of holding off a guerrilla attack until regular troops come to the rescue. U.S. advisers, however, are prohibited by law from training civil defense units, and the Salvadoran army, fearing guerrilla infiltration, is reluctant to equip such forces. The consequences of failing to resolve these dilemmas are apparent in neighboring San Vicente. Despite the same kind of strenuous army efforts as those now under way in Usulutan, the F.M.L.N. has returned to the hills north of San Vicente's capital. Once again it is attacking sections of the Pan American Highway.

*The first victim of that threat last week was an American tourist, Linda Cancel, 23. She was shot, apparently by F.M.L.N. guerrillas as they attempted to extort "war taxes" along the Pan American Highway.