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“Salvador
Option”
Reports are circulating that the Pentagon
is discussing the possibility of funding and
training counterinsurgency forces in Iraq, referred
to as the “Salvador Option.” The
logic behind this policy is that the counterinsurgency
forces helped bring peace and democracy to El
Salvador- and they will do the same in Iraq.
The following article, “The ‘Democracy
Option’ disappears in Iraq” by David
Batstone (Sojourner’s, http://www.sojo.net/sojomail,
1/19/05) recalls how death squads terrorized
Salvadoran society, particularly those who worked
for social reform in Central America. Batstone
asks, what happened to the “democracy
option” in Iraq?
The "Democracy
Option" disappears in Iraq
by David Batstone
(Reprinted from the Sojourners Newsletter on
1/19/05 at SojoMail http://www.sojo.net/sojomail)
The Pentagon is clearly worried about a deepening
quagmire in Iraq. Nearly two years after the
invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, the presence
of U.S. forces does not appear to be moving
Iraq toward a stable, civic society. A frustrated
Pentagon is exploring new strategies.
Newsweek magazine reported last week that
Pentagon insiders are touting a plan code-named
the "Salvador Option." The plan refers
to the secret support of the Reagan administration
in the 1980s for hit squads in El Salvador that
targeted rebel militia and their civilian sympathizers.
Many Pentagon conservatives credit these so-called
"death squads" with turning the tide
against a strong revolutionary movement in El
Salvador.
I worked in human rights in Central America
for nearly 12 years. My tenure began in the
early 1980s when I launched and then ran a non-governmental
group concerned with economic and community
development.
Death squads roamed freely in El Salvador and
Guatemala at the time. In these two countries
alone, they assassinated or "disappeared"
more than 150,000 civilians. They targeted anyone
- church pastors, literacy teachers, community
development workers - who appeared to support
social reform.
My organization arranged for volunteers from
the United States to live with civilians threatened
by the death squads. Our effort was successful
because the death squads were made up largely
of members of the military or police working
clandestinely. They realized that brazenly killing
civilians through official channels would threaten
U.S. aid. More risky still would be the murder
of U.S. citizens - the temporary cessation of
U.S. military aid to El Salvador after the rape
and murder of four U.S. religious women in 1980
proved that point.
All the same, I witnessed countless cases
of military abuse. The security units regularly
justified the murder of civilian suspects as
a necessary defense in the fight against "terrorists."
The military acted as judge, jury, and executioner.
The police worked hand in hand with the military.
The police investigated community leaders working
for social change during the day, and would
turn that information over to the army hit squads
who made the civilians "disappear"
in the middle of the night.
How chilling that the Pentagon is seriously
considering a plan to take us back to those
dark days. According to Newsweek, "the
Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces
teams to advise, support, and possibly train
Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish
Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to
target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers,
even across the border into Syria...."
The Pentagon's affinity for a "Salvadoran
Option" in Iraq appears consistent with
its broader shift to promote a strong state
security apparatus internationally in the fight
against terrorism. In a summit of Latin American
defense ministers held in Quito, Ecuador, in
late 2004, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld unveiled
his campaign to reverse nearly two decades of
military reform in Latin America. Though the
summit went largely unreported in the U.S. media,
we may look back at it in years to come as a
significant watershed for American foreign policy.
Central to Rumsfeld's Quito doctrine is the
re-integration of the military and police, reversing
a major reform objective in the hemisphere during
the last two decades. Both U.S. and Latin American
human rights agencies deem that separation of
powers necessary to bring military activity
under civilian accountability.
During the drafting of the final summit statement,
the Canadian delegation tried to salvage the
gains for civilian freedoms once absent in the
region's former security states. Backed by Brazil
and Chile, the Canadian defense ministry introduced
language that would reaffirm a commitment to
international human rights and civil protections.
The Pentagon team, however, successfully blocked
this corrective from being added to the summit's
final documents.
The nostalgia for the military strongmen of
Latin America appears to be growing in Washington.
Is it merely coincidence that President Bush
appointed Elliot Abrams in mid-2003 to be his
senior advisor on the Middle East? Abrams was
a key player in the crafting of Reagan's "Salvador
Option" in Central America. When confronted
in the mid-'80s with a United Nations report
that the vast majority of "atrocities in
El Salvador's civil war were committed by Reagan-assisted
death squads," Abrams energetically defended
U.S. foreign policy: "The administration's
record on El Salvador is one of fabulous achievements."
Abrams soon thereafter was convicted of lying
to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, only
to be pardoned five years later by President
George H.W. Bush.
The invasion of Iraq was sold to the American
public as a necessary means to arrest the spread
of terrorism. We were told that Saddam Hussein
could no longer be allowed to deploy security
forces to terrorize the Iraqi people and eliminate
movements for democratic reform. Yet here we
are today, two years later, and the United States
is on the verge of initiating its own death
squads. I wonder at what point over the past
two years we gave up on the "Democracy
Option" in Iraq?
Sign
a letter asking Condaleeza Rice to reject the
“Salvador Option” for Iraq
Read a press statement from
SHARE Foundation, School of the Americas Watch
and others on the Salvador Option.
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