Photo: CHRISTIAN POVEDA FMLN fighers the visit.
AFTER A DECADE in which Vietnamisation had • become American politics, , Central •Reagan's backyard — is becoming another Vietnam. Some of the facts are already well-known. Major In Honduras, the United States has already undertaken two major manoeuvres Big Pine One and Two airstrips, training troops notoriously giving succou sup port to the contras in their vocallul These are exercises by occupying forces over which the Honduran government has little or no control.
When we asked the deputy foreign minister two senior Foreign Office officials they Come that Big Pine Thrée would be in the bordering El Salvador and Guatemala, they replied: 'We don't know yet, the was only the papers yesterday'! The Americans are an occupying power; their ambassador proconsuls and the government a puppet regime. Picture In El Salvador the picture is the same, but difwell-organised popular army or guerilla force — the FDR/FMLN — can take almost any territory outside the capital and hold it for some of the time. The 25,000-strong Sy deploy 8,0000 men to deploy men fight, and only 2,000 crack troops recently cracked menserves • Dy ine popula army which last month retook Cacahuatique the north eastern Morazan province (near where Big Pine Three in neighbourHonduras is scheduled).
The notorious death squads frequently soldiers in 'civies' • plus Guernica-style bombing of civilian population, as in 'Tenancingo in september are not gaining hearts or minds.
Meanwhile, the FDR/FMLN's policy of returning government troops who surrender through the Red Cross has both increased the army's willingness to Stuart Holland, shadow spokesperson for overseas development and cooperation, and Donald Anderson, a shadow spokesperson for foreign affairs, have recently returned from an eight-day official Labour Party visit to Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras. Below, Stuart records his impressions of arms and thereby swelled the guerillas' arsenal. The situation is so serious in E Salvador that the Americans may well have to intervene directly with ground troops forthcoming elections on stage in the Vietnamisation of the region The FDR/FMLN present plan to boycott the elections. reason, when assurances physical safety other than bars be call given to opposition politicians, and when more than 5,400 people have been killed last year alone.
Prospect It is possible that even President will at the prospect of US troops directly involvHonduras Salvador and Nicaragua in pre-election year, that this take the pressure off the near future The reported CIA evaluation casualties in the of to 20,000 US event of an invasion of Nicaragua is a more powerful longterm deterrent.
Meanwhile, the commitments recently made by the Sandinistas on the timing ot elections, and their proposals to the Contradora states for mutual non-aggression also make it more difficult for the US 'legitimate' style invasion allegedly designed to restore democracy. It certainly is FSLN leader Borge talks to Miskito indians US adviser in San Salvador clear that the American discovery of the importance of human rights. land reform elections Central America was provoked by the Sandinist: revolution.
Decade For decades, the US have neglected such issues with the partial exception of the Carter administration, LaLlI America. Demanding land reform today salvador. has development programme Ior Honduras ana nas cul both aid and trade with Pressing. for action to restrain the death squads. it still subsidises the Salvadorean regime and plans 'to double military aid to El Salvador.
Obsessed with claims of Soviet-Cuban destabilisation, it will not recognise reems of Central America that the are north-south, not east west. The US will use any Issue - including pressure on human rights for elections as an instrument of counter-insurgency in the region.
It is the United States which threatens the peac and destabilises the securiof the region, and the United which should be pressured, from Europe wel the Americas, to withdraw.