TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Political Discussion / Debate
-- El Salvador: Americas Last Standing Western Ally
El Salvador: Americas Last Standing Western Ally
El Salvador continues to send troops to Iraq, mindful of how U.S. aid helped train and equip its armed forces during a civil war in the 1980s
SAN JUAN OPICO, El Salvador -- The insurgents lay low in a patch of tall grass as they waited for the three Humvees and a five-ton supply truck to approach. Then came two explosions, followed by intense crossfire and agonizing screams.
''We've got three injuries!'' someone shouted over a two-way radio as soldiers raced to tend to bleeding comrades. ``Two are in serious condition.''
''Calm, stay calm,'' U.S. Army Capt. Marta Artiga urged the scrambling soldiers in Spanish. ``Think fast, stay calm.''
It was only a practice and the injuries were simulated. But the scenario was real enough for the Salvadoran armed forces battalion that was about to head to Iraq to support its long-time U.S. ally and benefactor.
El Salvador, the size of Massachusetts and with about 6.9 million people, is the only other Western Hemisphere country that remains part of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq since Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic pulled out in 2004.
Over the summer, U.S. military officials offered a rare glimpse into what it takes to prepare the Salvadoran military for work in Iraq, where there have been more than 4,000 coalition deaths since the war began.
The soldiers said they are prepared for their mission to help reconstruct Iraq despite the risks.
''My obligation is to be where I'm needed,'' said Army physician Humberto Hern�ndez, 39, who was part of the medical support unit. ``Of course I'm a little nervous, but just slightly. I feel I have a duty to the military and my people.''
While El Salvador recently reduced its force in Iraq by 100 soldiers -- from 380 to 280 -- its leaders have vowed to remain part of the coalition for as long as necessary, a testament to the country's loyalty to the United States.
''El Salvador and the United States have been very close on a number of issues,'' President Tony Saca told The Miami Herald. ``We share the visions of democracy, of transparency, of free trade. The United States contributed much to the peace process in El Salvador, contributed much economically to the reconstruction of El Salvador.''
EXTENSIVE U.S. AID
During the 1980s, El Salvador was the largest recipient of U.S. aid in Latin America. The United States spent about $6 billion to train and equip the Salvadoran military as it held off leftist guerrillas in a civil war that left 75,000 dead and the economy in shambles. A peace accord, signed in 1992, allowed former rebels to form a political party and participate in elections.
''We maintain a contingent of soldiers in Iraq . . . as support against terrorism, believing that this will help improve the world, and besides, believing that when you begin a job, you must finish it,'' said Saca, a member of the right-of-center ARENA party.
Thomas Shannon, Washington's top Latin America diplomat, said the U.S. government is grateful for the Salvadoran deployments.
''It's an important show of political support in the Americas . . . especially from a country with whom we've had a long-term partnership,'' he told The Miami Herald. ``The Salvadorans are doing important work in Iraq in terms of reconstruction and in some basic security.''
The Salvadoran soldiers receive extra pay during the six-month rotations, and more than 3,000 have been deployed in nine groups since 2003. But it has not been an easy campaign.
At least five Salvadoran soldiers have been killed, and some polls show that as much as 70 percent of the population disapproves of the troops' presence in Iraq and wants them out.
Some analysts suggest that the overriding reason for the opposition to the involvement in Iraq is that El Salvador is still recovering from its own conflict.
''The marks of the war are still fresh. . . . The legacies remain alive,'' said Napole�n Campos, a political analyst and international relations professor. ``We are talking about a legacy of violence and polarization, a war-torn society that has not yet been fully structured as a democracy.''
''We aren't prepared to go to peacemaking operations, especially as difficult as Iraq,'' Campos added. ``That is a country with which we have no cultural or political ties.''
Herminia Ramos has more personal reasons for her opposition to the deployments. She is the mother of the first Salvadoran soldier killed in Iraq.
Natividad M�ndez Ramos died on April 4, 2004, when insurgents attacked a coalition garrison in southern Iraq housing Spanish and Salvadoran troops and an Iraqi police station. He was 19.
''I don't think we should be over there,'' said Ramos, 49, who has five other children, ages 7 to 27. ``The young men here join the military because of poverty. Why do they send them so far? It's not El Salvador's responsibility to fix that country.''
M�ndez Ramos, who dropped out of school at 15 to join the military, told his mother of his deployment just a few days before he left.
''I knew he wouldn't come back,'' Ramos said outside her modest home in a small, impoverished town in Ahauchap�n in western El Salvador.
''They told him they would be there for construction, to build roads and construct buildings, not for war,'' Ramos said as tears filled her eyes. ``I blame both governments for his death: one for asking Salvadorans to go and the other one for sending them.''
But defenders of the deployments say the fight in Iraq is much like the fight that the Salvadoran armed forces waged against the guerrillas of the Farabundo Mart� National Liberation Front in the 1980s.
`EFFECTS OF TERRORISM'
''We have felt the effects of terrorism,'' said Army Col. Jos� Atilio Ben�tez Parada, commander of the Cuzcatl�n Battalion being sent to Iraq. ``We also know the benefits of help from a brother country. . . . We are all conscious of the need for our participation.''
Back at the Cuzcatl�n Batallion's training exercises, held at an artillery base a 45-minute drive west of the capital city, San Salvador, 19 U.S. military trainers based in neighboring Honduras spent a week preparing Salvadoran soldiers for their assignments in Iraq. The lessons: combat first aid, convoy driving, how to recognize improvised explosive devices, reacting to an ambush, interaction with civilians, and fixing vehicles.
Yet, at least on paper, their mission in Iraq is to help with reconstruction efforts, not engage in combat. They are working on about 30 projects. They also must provide security in and out of their main base in Kut, a predominantly Shiite city about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad along the Tigris River, which was briefly overrun in 2004 by a militia led by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr.
Projects include fixing a road, repairing buildings such as a police station or medical center, and conducting security and rescue operations.
But their U.S. trainers told them that their practice exercises are not enough. ''When you arrive, the most important thing to do is to speak to the [coalition] people who have been there,'' the soldiers were told by U.S. Army Lt. Col. Gregory Jicha, a training supervisor who served as commander of military operations in southern Afghanistan in 2001-02. ``Find the leaders and work with them.''
''If the local populace sees things getting better, they are less likely to create problems,'' Jicha said. ``Stability and support is important to any military operation. . . . When a person has an ability to take care of themselves, that reduces our need to provide for them. It's about building up their capability.''
But the training exercise also reminded the Salvadoran troops of the dangers of Iraq.
In the combat simulation, the three soldiers ''injured'' during the ambush exercise were battered by improvised explosive devices. One had an open compound fracture in the right leg, another was in shock with possible internal injuries, and a third suffered wounds to the stomach.
Many of the Salvadoran soldiers said they are nevertheless determined to make their contribution.
''The idea is to help the community of a new republic that's being built and to help our friends in the international coalition,'' said Navy 2nd Lt. Rigoberto V�squez, 26, designated to be the unit's English translator.
''We know a war is bad stuff,'' he said. ``We suffered more than 10 years of war. Anything we can do to help, we will do.''
SOURCE
Click here to view a VIDEO
of the heroic efforts of these warriors 
Too bad the strategic strategy is a farce...
Ever read "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu? Obviously, the commander in chief hasn't...
its so funny, the smallest country in central america has the 2nd largest us embassy in the world. its so massive. sad really.
Similar topic:
| quote: |
| What You Don't Know: Our Third-World Mercenaries in Iraq Wed Oct 17, 2007 at 06:03:45 PM PDT If you read or listen to most of the top-headline news about mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan, you've no doubt encountered the usual hair-raising, eyeball-popping material. You've read how contractors (read: taxpayer-funded mercenaries) now account for more than our total post-surge troop strength in Iraq; our soldiers in Iraq often receive 1/6th the pay of a contractor/mercenary, while the military puts in place extra incentives to stop our best-trained troops from leaving the armed forces to join the money parade; the outrageous contracts being given to these mercenary outfits; the high number of shootings and other lawless actions taken by Blackwater; the fact that contractor deaths are not counted on the official toll of U.S. dead in the Occupation, nor are the deaths of those Iraqi "others" they senselessly murder; the fact that America is paying millions of increasingly inflated dollars to pay for contractors in order to keep our Republican Executive from demanding the shared blood sacrifice of a military draft. By now, all of this is well-known to those paying attention (though whether America will wake from its doldrums and cease playing the Good German remains to be seen). But here's what you may not know: It's not just American mercenaries we are hiring with our tax dollars. In fact, over half of the mercenary forces in Iraq are from outside the United States--most of them from third-world nations. Unbelievable as it may sound, you and your government are paying for third-world security guards, support staff and mercenaries to supplement the scandalous number of homegrown "contractors" already serving in Iraq so you and your sons and daughters don't have to--and we're pissing off third-world governments in the process. Not content with decimating third-world populations with inaction on global warming and morally repugnant trade and international debt policies, we are also attempting to employ their most violent elements against the wishes of their governments. Case in point? This largely overlooked story on the deportation of two American security contractors in Namibia: Namibia said it had deported two Americans who, allied with a South African firm, were said to be recruiting Namibians as guards for United States operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. News reports said that the two were accused of violating Namibian law by trying to enlist Namibians as mercenaries in foreign conflicts without the government�s written permission. Their recently formed company, Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group, was reported to be trying to hire as many as 4,000 guards. Southern Africa is a prime recruiting territory for mercenaries and security guards because of the large number of former soldiers who fought in regional conflicts in the 1980s and �90s. This is not an isolated incident, nor is the company involved a ragtag group of shadowy mercs-for-hire. The company website is here. Their client list includes (you guessed it!), the U.S. Department of Defense, Multi-National Forces, Iraq/Afghanistan (MNF-I/A), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Tetra Tech, Inc., the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Marine Corp, the U.S. Army Special Forces, the U.S. Naval Special Warfare, the DNI-Office of National Director of Intelligence, and several other government agencies. Humorously, they've also worked for Microsoft. Their management team includes a past president of the Aladema Chief of Police; a man who "was Division Chief, High Threat Protection for the US Department of State, Diplomatic Security Service...[and] directed, supervised, and coordinated the State Department�s Worldwide Personal Protective Services (WPPS) operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Bosnia, and Haiti"; a Project Manager, Worldwide Personal Protection Services, for global merc contractor DynCorp, and a variety of other "gentlemen" with experience in tactical forces jobs in Central and South America, and guys responsible for startup operations in Afghanistan. That's who just got themselves deported--from Namibia. For hiring Namibian mercenaries. The company, for its part in preserving its tattered "honor", claims that they had permission from the Namibian government to recruit mercenaries there, and that they had been finagling this operation for some time. Apparently, that's supposed to make the world feel better about it. Nor is this the firm's first entanglement with African governments over its hiring practices for Iraq--they're also being sued by Ugandan citizens for Ugandan mercenary contracts currently in operation in Iraq: An estimated 1,500 Ugandans work for an American security firm called Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group (SOC-SMG). The company is based in Minden, Nev., and was founded by two ex-Navy SEALs. Over the past two years, SOC-SMG has racked up nearly $30 million in Pentagon contracts in Iraq alone. SOC-SMG is now the target of litigation in Uganda among former employees, many of whom claim they were misled about the amount of money they would be paid. The average Ugandan guard will earn about $3.33 an hour, leaving the bulk of the rest of the contract money in the hands of their American employers. SOC-SMG disputes the claims and says it will fight the litigants in court. Now, presuming your hair is still attached to your head at this point, try to understand for a moment what it means that we are hiring Namibian mercenaries who "fought in regional conflicts in the 1980s and �90s". Namibian mercenaries were caught in 2004 attempting to travel to Equitorial Guinea to participate in a coup. Namibian mercenaries have been involved in destabilization efforts in Angola for years. Most of all, Namibian mercenaries are involved in the guarding of diamond mines througout Southern Africa--many of them blood diamonds. Not only that, but the blood money from those diamonds is alleged to have been directed straight into the coffers of Osama Bin Laden. As Jonathan Randal says in his excellent book Osama, the Making of a Terrorist, speaking about diamond mines in Sierra Leone: The [Namibian] mercenaries made sure the government got a share of the diamonds and they got theirs. Kenema and other diamond towns were notorious for trafficking with Lebanese--and sometimes Israeli--dealers in these illegal, so-called blood or conflict diamonds. Sharing the lucrative spoils were Charles Taylor, the rebels-turned-president of Liberia, and his ally Foday Sankoh, the sanguinary leader in neighboring Sierra Leone of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). In the months before its attacks on New York and Washington, Al-Qaeda transferred millions of dollars of potentially vulnerable funds from Switzerland and elsewhere to Taylor, who paid Osama back in diamonds. Taylor's links with Pat Robertson and other influential members of the Christian Right apparently accounted for FBI and CIA reluctance to seriously investigate his involvement with Al-Qaeda. So in Namibia, the United States is hiring the very same people who assisted Charles Taylor in funneling cash to Osama bin Laden and have been involved in destabilization efforts throughout the African continent, to terrorize Iraqi civilians into not looking twice at Americans holed up in Baghdad's Green Zone. And the third-world mercenary proselytizing efforts go far beyond this little-noticed incident in Nambia. There have been numerous reports since early 2004 of the involvement of South African mercenaries in Iraq--a great many of whom are bitter white leftovers from the Apartheid era. That's right: angry white South African racists demoted from their positions in post-Apartheid Africa, looking for better pay and a chance to take out their aggressions in the fortune-hunting Wild West culture of lawlessness that is Iraq. Nor is the third-world hiring just in Africa: it extends to other middle-eastern nations (such as our good friend Pakistan) and throughout the world. Now, why would our American government take the risk of hiring Pakistanis to serve as mercenary bodyguards and military support teams in Iraq and Afghanistan, when the allegiance of many such people would be impossible to determine? As always, it's about the money: just like Wal-Mart outsourcing the production of its goods to China for pittance wages, KBR is doing the same with the lives of Iraqis and Americans throughout the Middle East. As NPR reported in a segment on October 10th: If you thought all contractors in Iraq were gun-toting American mercenaries, think again. Only a fraction of the estimated 180,000 contractors working on behalf of the U.S. government are security contractors � and the overwhelming majority aren't even from the U.S. Consider Salim Khan, a dishwasher at a forward operating base in the volatile Iraqi province of Diyala. For about $1.25 an hour, the Pakistan native will work two years for a Saudi-based food-services firm, Tamimi. Tamimi is a subcontractor to KBR, which itself was, until recently, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the mega-corporation that has won most of the big money contracts in Iraq. Across the heavily fortified American bases in Iraq, men and women like Salim Khan cook the food, clean the dishes, chop the vegetables, take out the garbage and clean the latrines. In military parlance, they're known as "TCNs" or "third country nationals," but they might as well be called third-world nationals. Most of the cheap U.S. labor in Iraq comes from places like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines and India. The average wage for these workers is about $20 a day; most work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. The Pentagon and the State Department, under fire for the use of security contractors, have largely ignored the issue of fair labor practices among its contractors and subcontractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently noted contractors "take the place of soldiers" to do other, more pressing work. So next time you hear or read a story about military contractors in Iraq, remember that it goes far beyond the waste of American taxpayer dollars, the injustice to our soldiers, the criminal murders of innocent Iraqi civilians, the graft and corruption in the awarding of contracts, and the sleazy shirking of collective sacrifice for continuting the Occupation. Understand that the issue also extends to the hiring of murderers, assassins, racists, ne'er-do-wells and just plain desperate people from across the world--many of whom were indirectly responsible (along with Pat Robertson) for financing the 9/11 attacks--hired at fractional pittance wages, against the outraged objections of third-world nations, to serve as intimidation muscle and cannon fodder in the boiling cauldron of Iraq. "Good Germans" doesn't even begin to describe the American people and the American press if we ignore this despicable state of affairs. |
I dont know what you guys think, but Salvador has been plagued by massive conflicts, corruption and political changes over the last few decades, United States front and center focused on this country. Not that I am saying that United States is negatively contributing, though I have my suspicions since I havent followed their sitution in detail, but its quite possibly true when taking into account American political interference in other countries. I am not sure about the country's situation today, but it comes to no surprise to me that the current El Salvadoran elite than was given life by United States is one its biggest Iraq supporters.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Magnetonium I dont know what you guys think, but Salvador has been plagued by massive conflicts, corruption and political changes over the last few decades, United States front and center focused on this country. Not that I am saying that United States is negatively contributing, though I have my suspicions since I havent followed their sitution in detail, but its quite possibly true when taking into account American political interference in other countries. I am not sure about the country's situation today, but it comes to no surprise to me that the current El Salvadoran elite than was given life by United States is one its biggest Iraq supporters. |
Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.