A NEW BATTLEFRONT FORMS FOR THE U.S. IN CENTRAL AMERICA

This Time, Troops Are Helping Fight Drugs, Not Rebels. The Militarized
Effort May Hurt Democracy, Critics Say.

ILOPANGO, El Salvador--In the 1990s, the U.S. presence in Central America
faded like the paint that demonstrators had sprayed on walls during the
previous decade: "Yankee Go Home."

The Cold War ended; the leftist guerrillas that Americans had helped fight
signed peace agreements and turned themselves into political parties. The
isthmus was no longer of much military interest.

Now the Yankees are back. In what critics call a militarization of the drug
war, U.S. soldiers and sailors are again appearing across Central America:

* Costa Ricans are boarding U.S. Coast Guard cutters to patrol their own
territorial waters.

* Guatemalans are catching rides on American helicopters to swoop down on
cocaine caravans detected by U.S. intelligence.

* In El Salvador, the legislature voted Thursday to let U.S. pilots fly
anti-drug spy planes out of the Comalapa air base.

* Even Nicaragua, whose armed forces were closely affiliated with the
Marxist Sandinista regime that the United States opposed in the 1980s, is
close to signing a military anti-narcotics cooperation agreement, according
to U.S. Ambassador Oliver P. Garza.

So far, the results have been as modest as the investment--just $4.3
million in military anti-drug aid last year for all of Central America. By
comparison, the new U.S. anti-drug package for Colombia, which also
includes military funds along with appropriations for Ecuador, Bolivia,
Peru and Venezuela, amounts to $1.3 billion.

But "the amount of money isn't as important as the revival of the military
mission," cautioned William O. Walker III, chairman of the history
department at Florida International University.

"Democracy isn't on sound footing in these countries," he added. "There may
be unintended consequences of U.S. drug policy," such as undermining the
civilian governments that have only recently taken control of their armed
forces.

In contrast, proponents--from national police chiefs and presidents to top
U.S. military officers and anti-narcotics officials--insist that a joint
effort is needed to solve a joint problem.

An estimated 59% of the cocaine bound for the United States--300 to 400
tons a year--is sent by land or sea through these tiny countries, which are
ill equipped to stop the trade. In addition, law enforcement officials have
in recent months found heroin tucked into the cocaine shipments.

U.S. officials want to intercept the illegal drugs before they get to
Mexico, an easy route into the United States. Central American officials
hope to halt the crack epidemic that has spread through countries along the
route from Colombia to the United States.

As one U.S. Defense Department employee posted in Central America
explained: "It's the difference between having a dog walk across your yard
to poop at the neighbor's house and when the dog decides to poop in your
yard. Then you want to stop it."

The Pacific Seen as Key Trafficking Route

Anti-narcotics officials believe that drugs are increasingly being
transported on speedboats across the Pacific, far offshore, where only
sophisticated tracking devices can detect the vessels and helicopters based
on ships are needed to intercept them.

The U.S. military is offering Central American countries the use of such
equipment and trained people to operate it.

"There is a clearly defined division of labor," said Gen. Charles E.
Wilhelm, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, which is responsible for
American military concerns in Latin America. "It is apparent that the U.S.
role is one of support. The local authorities do the hard part:
confronting, arresting and confiscating."

Wilhelm made the remarks a few hours after kicking off "Maya-Jaguar," a
U.S.-Guatemalan anti-drug exercise that began in early June. The United
States spent $1 million to lend Guatemala four helicopters, the Navy
coastal patrol boat Chinook and 85 soldiers and sailors to operate them.

During a similar operation last year, Guatemalan police received
information from the United States that allowed them to make the largest
land seizure of cocaine in Central American history. They stopped three
tractor-trailer rigs on the Pan American Highway, the isthmus' main
thoroughfare, carrying 2.5 tons of cocaine.

This year the results of the joint effort were less impressive. Unlike his
predecessor, President Alfonso Portillo asked the Guatemalan Congress for
permission to bring in the U.S. troops--and the ensuing publicity might
have had a chilling effect on drug activity for the duration of the exercise.

The annual exercise is part of a regional program called "Central Skies,"
the cornerstone of the joint anti-drug efforts.

The supporting cast of Central Skies is "Joint Task Force Bravo," which
shares the Enrique Soto Cano air base near Tegucigalpa, the Honduran
capital, with the Honduran Military Academy. Established in 1983 to support
the region's right-wing governments and the counterrevolutionaries who
fought Nicaragua's Sandinista government, the task force at one time was
assigned 2,000 troops.

Since 1996, about 550 U.S. military personnel have been posted to Honduras,
most on temporary duty. Lately, JTF Bravo has been best known for hosting
the 29,000 U.S. troops who worked on rescue and reconstruction in the
aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, which devastated Central America in late 1998.

The pilots and air crews of JTF Bravo are the chauffeurs in the regional
anti-drug exercises. For the first time this year, Salvadoran
anti-narcotics police trained with U.S. helicopter pilots here at the
Ilopango air base.

Sweat pouring from their faces and black uniforms clinging to their backs
in the tropical sun, they jumped from the helicopters and surrounded the
choppers, guns pointing outward. At a thumbs-up from the U.S. crew chief,
they reboarded and repeated the exercise, taking full advantage of the
two-day practice session.

Six Central American countries agreed to participate in the 2000 edition of
Central Skies, despite objections from legislators, many of them former
guerrillas whom the United States was helping oppose a decade ago.

Officials in Nicaragua, the only nation on the isthmus left out of the
exercise, refused to comment on why their country didn't participate.

A source close to the government in Managua says Nicaragua's armed forces
have resisted U.S. overtures because of continuing resentment of American
support for the counterrevolutionaries in the 1980s. But that rancor is
abating, he says, citing the recent appointment of a military attache to
the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington, the first time in a decade that the
post has been filled.

Further, public pressure is on the side of cooperation. A CID-Gallup survey
conducted in March found that 78% of Nicaraguans questioned favor joint
anti-drug patrols with the United States.

Agreement With Nicaragua in Sight

Garza, the U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua, said in late June that "we are
very close to reaching [a maritime cooperation] agreement with Nicaragua."
That would make Nicaragua the fourth Central American nation to agree to
some form of cooperation on the sea.

Both Belize and Panama have signed "ship-rider" agreements that allow U.S.
vessels to patrol their waters as long as members of their police are on
board. In November, the most extensive anti-narcotics maritime agreement
between the U.S. and a Central American nation took effect in Costa Rica.

The agreement permits both air and sea patrols and, in some circumstances,
even detentions of boats and passengers until Costa Rican authorities can
arrive on the scene to make arrests. U.S. Coast Guard ships are also
allowed to make port calls in Costa Rica to resupply and give their crews
free time.

In the first joint exercise under the agreement, 134 boats were boarded in
Costa Rican waters. No drugs were found, but U.S. helicopters did sight a
20-mile oil slick coming from a Mexican fishing boat that was dumping
bilge, resulting in Costa Rica's first successful prosecution of a marine
pollution case.

The agreement was rejected twice by the Costa Rican legislature before it
was modified enough to be passed on the third try, despite opposition from
the leftist Democratic Force Party.

"The United States is putting too much emphasis on the military aspect,"
said lawmaker Jose Merino del Rio. "We don't think that this is the most
effective way to fight drugs."

Anti-narcotics authorities, however, insist that they need help.

"Costa Rica does not have the capacity to struggle with the Hydra of drug
trafficking that grows two new heads every time we cut off one," said Allan
Solano, director of Costa Rica's anti-narcotics police. "U.S. technology is
indispensable to even up the struggle."

U.S. officials hope to make the Costa Rica agreement a model for the rest
of the region. Wilhelm says he discussed that idea with Portillo and
members of the Guatemalan legislature during his two-day visit there.

But for now, the marine agreements have taken a back seat to Washington's
first priority in Central America: a place to land and service
anti-narcotics surveillance planes.

The Salvadoran Legislative Assembly's passage of an agreement for a
permanent U.S. presence at the Comalapa air base, which shares a runway
with the country's international airport in San Salvador, makes this
country the third leg of a strategy to replace the anti-drug air coverage
that was lost when the U.S. military bases in Panama closed last year.

U.S. spy planes are already flying out of Ecuador and the Caribbean islands
of Aruba and Curacao to detect drug production and smuggling. But planes
flying from those airports can't adequately cover the Pacific.

A hangar in El Salvador will close that gap, U.S. drug enforcement
authorities say. The ability to fly from all three locations, Wilhelm said,
"is crucial to our overall success."

Eight people will be based permanently in El Salvador, and that number will
increase to 50 or 60 when the air crews come in, says U.S. Ambassador Anne
W. Patterson. She has offered to take Salvadoran legislators to see U.S.
operations in Ecuador and the Caribbean to reassure them that the proposed
landing area is not a disguised military base.

"There are concerns, and we are going to discuss them," she said.

Nevertheless, the guerrillas-turned-politicians of the Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front, or FMLN, strongly has opposed the agreement,
which was negotiated by the country's foreign minister.

"We cannot pawn our sovereignty with the excuse of fighting drug
trafficking," lawmaker Manuel Melgar said. The FMLN, didn't have enough
votes to block the agreement, has vowed to take the case to the country's
Supreme Court.

"We are going to do all that is necessary to prevent this affront to the
Salvadoran fatherland, this intervention," legislator Shafick Handal said
in an impassioned speech during the debate.

Other Salvadorans worry that a U.S. presence at Comalapa would reinforce
the Salvadoran air force's own nascent anti-drug role, which began when the
international airport's civilian authorities installed new radar equipment
in December 1998.

Air traffic controllers noticed an alarming number of planes flying without
flight plans and landing at locations other than the country's two
airports. Airport authorities notified the police.

That information coincided with reports that U.S. Embassy anti-drug and
military officials had been receiving from intelligence sources. In
response, with support from U.S. diplomats, airport officials,
anti-narcotics police and the air force formed the "Cuscatlan Group."

Police surveyed the country's landing strips, many of them unregistered.
The air force developed a plan to defend Salvadoran airspace from
unidentified planes.

That plan proved its effectiveness in March, when two air force fighters
left over from El Salvador's civil war surrounded a suspicious-looking
plane and escorted it out of Salvadoran airspace. Notified by their
neighbors, two Guatemalan planes met the aircraft at the border and
accompanied it until it crash-landed on a small airstrip.

Police found empty fuel tanks and 470 pounds of cocaine.

"We have become the roadblock of the Pacific," airport manager Armando
Estrada said proudly.

While El Salvador patrols its skies, Costa Rica is taking steps to better
patrol its own waters by passing a law to make its coast guard more
professional. It began by appointing U.S. Naval Academy graduate Claudio
Pacheco as director.

Wariness About Military Resurgence

Those new roles worry Central Americans who are wary about the resurgence
of military power. Proud of having abolished their army in 1948, Costa
Ricans are suspicious of any form of armed forces, while other countries
still remember years of military rule.

"It is difficult to understand why the United States, after working to help
us develop a civilian police force, would want to have the military
involved again," said Salvadoran senior statesman Hector Dada. "Our
democratic institutions are still weak, and the armed forces remain the
strongest institution in the country."

Even Central Americans who support the U.S. military anti-drug effort worry
about American fickleness, wondering how deep the U.S. commitment really is.

At the same time that the maritime agreement was signed, the United States
promised Costa Rica two helicopters and four Coast Guard cutters as they
became available. So far, one ship has been delivered.

"I don't think that we are going to get the others," predicted former
Defense Minister Juan Rafael Lizano Saenz. One reason is that, even if the
United States is willing to donate new equipment, these countries cannot
afford the maintenance.

In Costa Rica's case, the government has already rescinded the request for
helicopters because it couldn't pay the $1 million a year it would take to
keep them flying.

During the Central American civil wars, donations of U.S. equipment
included funding for maintenance. The unwillingness to provide that money
leads Central Americans such as Lizano who support the joint anti-narcotics
effort to worry about the level and dependability of the U.S. commitment.

Further, they insist that the problem has become serious because the United
States tolerated drug trafficking at a time when it could have been more
easily brought under control. The most notorious example was the U.S.
complicity with CIA informant and Panamanian dictator Gen. Manuel A.
Noriega until late 1989, when U.S. forces invaded his country to arrest him
on drug charges.

Even more recently, in 1992, says Leonel Gomez, a Salvadoran investigator
who has worked for both the U.S. Embassy and American congressmen, the U.S.
government gave in to pressure to withhold evidence that would have sent a
young oligarch here to prison for his part in a 3-ton shipment of cocaine
that was seized in the port of Acajutla.

William Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, who isn't related
to the historian, remembers the incident differently.

"He was held at my insistence," he said of the suspected drug trafficker.
"The day after I left the country, they released him."

Still, Walker says that he was shocked by the parade of prominent
Salvadorans who came to his office to ask for the man's release. "Many were
people I had respected," he said. "I must say, I had to reappraise my
opinion of them."

Gomez warns that Walker's successors did not learn from that lesson and
that, in the intervening eight years, the United States has continued "to
look for allies among the most corrupt people in El Salvador."

That undermines U.S. credibility, he said, because "it is difficult to
believe that they will stop drug trafficking when their allies are involved."

Still, faced with the seemingly unlimited funds of the drug traffickers and
their own tight budgets, if Central Americans want to stop narcotics
trafficking through their region, they appear to have few choices but to
accept U.S. help, with its risks and shortcomings.

Pacheco estimates that, at any one time, only seven or eight of his coast
guard's 30 boats are working properly. "It's not that we can't fix
them--it's just not worth fixing them," he said.

Similarly, pilots say it doesn't make sense to upgrade the radar of El
Salvador's nine old A-37 aircraft. U.S. officials talk about supporting the
Salvadoran pilots, but when asked for specifics, they mention night-vision
goggles, not new airplanes.

Funding is the biggest difference between the current war against drugs and
the war against communism that was waged here in the 1980s, according to
U.S. and Central American officials familiar with both efforts.

"Back then, we were training people to use equipment they had just
received," another Defense Department employee said. "Now we are training
them first, and the requests for equipment will come later."

Anti-Drug Aid to Central America

An estimated 59% of the cocaine bound for the U.S. passes over the land or
through the territorial waters of the tiny countries of Central America.
U.S. troops have begun appearing across Central America to help fight the
drug war.