<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="container font-size5 content-width3">
<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"
dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/05/the-salvador-option-the-us-is-once-again-supporting-death-squads-in-central-america/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/05/the-salvador-option-the-us-is-once-again-supporting-death-squads-in-central-america/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The Salvador Option: the US is Once
Again Supporting Death Squads in Central America</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/l2l4l54ldlc/"
rel="nofollow">Brett Wilkins</a> - June 5, 2018</span></div>
<hr>
<div class="content">
<div class="moz-reader-content line-height4" dir="ltr"
style="display: block;">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div itemprop="articleBody">
<p><span><br>
The United States has been quietly funding and
equipping elite paramilitary police units in El
Salvador accused of extrajudicially murdering
suspected gang members, according to a forthcoming
United Nations report reviewed in advance </span><span><a
href="https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/05/world/el-salvador-police-intl/">by
CNN</a></span><span>. </span></p>
<p><span>Beginning with George W. Bush in 2003, successive
US administrations have provided tens of millions of
dollars in aid for Salvadoran military and police in
support of the government’s “Mano Dura” (“Firm Hand”)
security program, an aggressive campaign to combat
out-of-control gang violence in a country with one of
the world’s highest homicide rates. </span></p>
<p><span>“Mano Dura” aid increased significantly during
the Obama administration, which compared the effort to
</span><span><a
href="https://nacla.org/news/2015/07/17/rewriting-history-plan-colombia">Plan
Colombia</a></span><span>, the decades-long
anti-drug campaign in which billions of US aid dollars
funded mafia-like army units that, along with allied
paramilitary death squads, kidnapped, tortured and
murdered thousands of innocent civilians with
impunity. As was the case with Plan Colombia, the new
UN report will accuse Salvadoran security forces, in
this case some of its elite police units, of “a
pattern of behavior by security personnel amounting to
extrajudicial executions” and a “cycle of impunity” in
which such killings go unpunished. </span></p>
<p><span>One police unit, the Special Reaction Forces
(FES), killed 43 suspected gang members during the
first half of 2017, according to the UN report. While
FES officers were executing suspects in the streets,
the US government continued to fund and equip the
unit. Washington’s total assistance increased from
$67.9 million in 2016 to $72.7 million last year. The
deportation of members of MS-13 — </span><span><a
href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/31/1737546/-MS-13-Made-in-and-by-the-USA">formed
in Los Angeles</a> </span><span>by young Salvadoran
refugees fleeing civil war in a homeland ruled by a
US-backed military dictatorship — and other gangs has
further exacerbated the crisis. </span></p>
<p><span>A spokesman for the US Embassy in San Salvador
assured CNN that “the US government takes allegations
of extrajudicial killings extremely seriously,” that
it has “consistently expressed concerns” regarding
human rights abuses and that it heavily vets units
receiving aid. These assurances ring hollow to many
Salvadorans who recall how the Ronald Reagan
administration </span><span><a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/21/world/how-us-actions-helped-hide-salvador-human-rights-abuses.html">covered
up</a> </span><span>horrific human rights violations
in order to keep military aid flowing to the
anti-communist military regime during the 1980s civil
war. </span></p>
<p><span>That aid, which included forming, training,
funding and arming military death squads, began during
the Carter administration and dramatically increased
under Reagan. Officers, troops and police were </span><span><a
href="http://www.lawg.org/our-publications/72-general/319-declassified-army-and-cia-manuals">trained</a> </span><span>in
kidnapping, torture, assassination and democracy
suppression at the US Army </span><span><a
href="http://www.soaw.org/about-the-soawhinsec/what-is-the-soawhinsec">School
of the Americas</a> </span><span>(SOA), also known
as the School of Coups and School of Assassins because
it produced so many of both. </span></p>
<p><span>SOA graduates and other US-backed Salvadoran
security forces planned, ordered and committed the
most heinous atrocities of the 12-year civil war,
including the kidnapping, torture, rape and </span><span><a
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/02/el-salvador-churchwomen-murders/460320/">murder</a> </span><span>of
four American nuns and church volunteers in 1980, the
</span><span><a
href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/13/1748718/-Pope-approves-sainthood-for-scar-Romero-Salvadoran-archbishop-slain-by-US-backed-death-squad">assassination</a> </span><span>of
the country’s beloved Catholic archbishop, Oscar
Romero, that same year and the</span><span><a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-17/world/la-fg-salvadorpriests89_1_president-alfredo-cristiani-central-american-university-father-ignacio-ellacuria">massacre</a> </span><span>of
six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter
in 1989. After the four churchwomen were slain, the
Reagan administration undertook a </span><span><a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/03/world/4-salvadorans-say-they-killed-us-nuns-on-orders-of-military.html">shameful
effort</a> </span><span>to place blame on the
victims. </span></p>
<p><span>The most notorious Salvadoran army unit, the
Atlacatl Battalion, was created in 1980 at the SOA and
hailed as “the pride of the United States military
team in El Salvador.” As a rite of passage its new
troops collected roadkill carcasses — “dogs, vultures,
anything,” according to one former member — and boiled
them into a soup they all drank. Atlacatl Battalion’s
human victims fared even worse than the dead animals
its recruits consumed. The unit committed countless
massacres, including the </span><span><a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/18/world/salvadoran-troops-reported-to-kill-100-rebel-supporters.html">slaughter</a> </span><span>of
117 men, women and children at Lake Suchitlan in 1983
and the </span><span><a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/09/world/salvadoran-villagers-report-army-massacre.html">mass
murder</a> </span><span>of 68 civilians, many of
them children, at Los Llanitos the following year. </span></p>
<p><span>But even these massacres paled in comparison to
Atlacatl’s deadliest crime, the wholesale slaughter of
more than 900 villagers, mostly women, children and
the elderly, at </span><span><a
href="http://www.markdanner.com/articles/the-truth-of-el-mozote">El
Mozote</a> </span><span>on December 11, 1981. There,
soldiers shot, stabbed, hacked, smashed, and hung
helpless villagers to death. They gang-raped women and
girls before killing them. They skewered babies on
bayonets. They dropped large rocks on the bellies of
pregnant women. When the raping and murdering
finished, they burned El Mozote to the ground,
reducing the village to what one witness called “a
moving black carpet” of scavenging vultures, flies and
dogs feasting on the victims. </span></p>
<p><span>The day after El Mozote made front page headlines
in the US, President Reagan officially certified that
El Salvador was “making a concerted and significant
effort to comply with internationally recognized human
rights,” and was working to “bring an end to the
indiscriminate torture and murder of Salvadoran
citizens.” Meanwhile, Elliott Abrams, then a State
Department human rights official who was later
convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal before serving as
a special assistant to President George W. Bush,
helped lead an effort to deny the El Mozote massacre
ever happened. </span></p>
<p><span>US aid to El Salvador was doubled, and heinous
atrocities continued through the end of the civil war.
</span></p>
<p><span>It wasn’t just El Salvador. The United States
also supported or covered up death squad activity
throughout Central and South America in the 1970s and
‘80s. In Guatemala, it backed right-wing military
dictators including </span><span><a
href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/04/03/former-us-backed-guatemalan-dictator-efrain-rios-montt-dies-facing-genocide-charges">Efraín
Ríos Montt</a></span><span>, who recently died
facing genocide charges, as well as brutal death
squads like the army’s elite Kaibiles unit, which
tortured, raped and murdered more than 200 villagers
at </span><span><a
href="https://iachr.lls.edu/cases/las-dos-erres-massacre-v-guatemala">Dos
Erres</a> </span><span>in December, 1982. </span></p>
<p><span>In Honduras, Reagan’s ambassador, </span><span><a
href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/12/1559556/-Hillary-Clinton-Touts-Endorsement-by-John-Negroponte-Reagan-s-Death-Squad-Ambassador">John
Negroponte</a></span><span>, supervised the creation
of the notorious </span><span><a
href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bal-negroponte1a-story.html">Battalion
316</a></span><span>, which was tasked with
eliminating students, academics, labor unionists,
clergy, journalists, indigenous rights activists and
others deemed a threat to the dictatorship. Negroponte
also played a key role in supporting the US-backed
Contra army as it waged a </span><span><a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/03/07/inquiry-finds-atrocities-by-nicaraguan-contras/c23917ec-4da1-4202-86b6-1c7e16b9c723/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7ad8e0bd1d14">terrorist
war</a> </span><span>against the people of
Nicaragua. </span></p>
<p><span>It also wasn’t just in the past. After a 2009
military coup deposed the progressive Honduran
president José Manuel Zelaya, Obama and his secretary
of state Hillary Clinton </span><span><a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/how-hillary-clinton-militarized-us-policy-in-honduras/">backed</a> </span><span>the
repressive right-wing regime even as reports of its
brutality, which included forced disappearances,
torture and extrajudicial executions of opponents,
were revealed. Despite the assassination of
high-profile critics including the environmental
activist </span><span><a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/chronicle-of-a-honduran-assassination-foretold/">Berta
Cáceres</a></span><span>, the Obama administration </span><span><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2016/04/12/death-squads-are-back-in-honduras-honduran-activists-tell-congress/">lavished</a> </span><span>the
Honduran coup regime and its murderous security forces
with tens of millions of dollars in military and
other assistance. </span></p>
<p><span>The United States has long operated or supported
death squads, from the CIA’s </span><span><a
href="https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no2/a-retrospective-on-counterinsurgency-operations.html">Phoenix
Program</a> </span><span>in Vietnam (40,000 killed)
through the implementation of the “Salvador option”
during the recent invasion and occupation of Iraq. The
latter effort was run by </span><span><a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/el-salvador-iraq-police-squads-washington">Col.
James Steele</a></span><span>, a decorated veteran
of Central America’s dirty wars, including a stint
training Salvadoran death squad units during the civil
war. Unsurprisingly, secret prisons, torture and
extrajudicial killings became commonplace throughout
occupied Iraq. </span></p>
<p><span>It now appears that the “Salvador option” has
made its way back home from halfway around the world,
further terrorizing guilty and innocent alike in what
was already one of the most frightful corners of the
planet. </span></p>
</div>
<p> <i><strong>Brett Wilkins</strong> is editor-at-large
for US news at Digital Journal. Based in San Francisco,
his work covers issues of social justice, human rights
and war and peace. </i> </p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>