U.S. to Finance Salvadoran Army Retraining : Foreign aid: The program is a response to bitterness among middle-level officers as civil war winds down.

By KENNETH FREED

May 27, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SAN SALVADOR — In what Western diplomats say is an attempt to “buy off” dissatisfied Salvadoran army officers, the United States is planning a multimillion-dollar educational and job training program for soldiers who will be dismissed when the country’s civil war ends.

The officials say the money for it will come from whatever is left from this year’s U.S. military aid program of $85 million and will make up a large part of the $92 million that the Bush Administration is seeking for 1992.

The plan--likened by foreign military experts and diplomats to the U.S. post-World War II G.I. Bill--is a response to rising bitterness and opposition by middle-ranking Salvadoran officers to negotiations with Salvador’s leftist guerrilla movement over proposals calling for a large-scale military demobilization.

Government officials and foreign experts expect the negotiations, which resumed Friday in Caracas, Venezuela, to result in a reduction of the Salvadoran military from 57,000 to 18,000 troops. Almost all of the reduction in the officer corps would come from those at the rank of captain and below.

Western diplomats say the program also will cover demobilized guerrillas. “We are going to try to offer the combatants on both sides reasons to quit fighting,” said one official.

Some of the money also is designated for a job corps, employing former enlisted men for reforestation and other public works projects to restore the battered Salvadoran economy and infrastructure.

But some diplomats see the inclusion of rebels and the financing of public works as window dressing designed to placate U.S. opponents of Salvadoran military aid. They say the essence of the plan is to pacify restless military officers who have grown loud and threatening. “I guess it is buying them off, if this means giving aid to those who have no marketable skills,” said a Western diplomat. “Yes, it is buying them off.”

The dissent in the Salvadoran military reached a peak earlier this month when captains demanded and got a meeting with President Alfredo Cristiani and Defense Minister Gen. Rene Emilio Ponce. The two leaders met with 85 army captains who demanded that their jobs not be eliminated and that government negotiators toughen their stance in the cease-fire talks.

Participants report that the angry session, which lasted almost five hours, focused on the perception that the captains, the members of the officer corps who bear the brunt of combat, are being sacrificed while higher-ranking officers are being protected.

The captains’ concern was legitimized by government officials, who said that nearly all the current generals, colonels and majors will be retained.

“In reality, the army is understaffed at the top,” said a foreign military expert, adding that “the number they have now will be appropriate for an 18,000-man army, which won’t need many field combat officers.”

The prospect that they will be unneeded has not eased the officers’ resentment. Salvadoran officials worry that dissident officers will join radical, right-wing forces opposed to any settlement with the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

“If something isn’t done for these officers I am afraid we might not be able to get the armed forces to support a cease-fire,” said one government official.

Most of the captains now seem more concerned with what a European diplomat described as “the greed factor”--that they will be dismissed with little or no ability to assimilate into civilian life.

“I’ve been in the army 10 years,” said one captain based in one of the country’s most combat-ridden zones, “and just when it’s my turn” for the benefits and power that come with advancement, “they want to take it all away.”

For such an officer, who makes only a few hundred dollars a month, a promotion to major would offer the opportunity for more than just an increased salary. It is a ticket into the murky world of Salvadoran military corruption and privilege where the favored accumulate cash, luxury homes, cars and shares in businesses owned or controlled by the armed forces.

“You can make $75,000 (a year) without even trying,” said a Salvadoran expert on the military. “If you want to get into serious corruption, you get very wealthy. So these guys are being asked to give up a lot.”

Some foreign officials want to put the situation in a better light. “They were asked to pay the price of the war,” a foreign military expert said of the officers, “and now they have to pay the price of the peace. They have reasons for their concern. They are the ones who have the scars of bullets in their bodies. They want something for that.”

Arguing that a Salvadoran officer has only the equivalent of a high school degree and few skills beyond combat, this expert said it will be difficult for former captains to find jobs, a problem made worse by “the institutional baggage” of having belonged to an organization seen by many as a brutal violator of human rights.

“They feel abandoned and their resentment is real,” he said. “They are disorganized now and there is no danger of a coup, but given enough pressure, a leader might emerge” who could organize a threat against the government.

Some cynics see less than altruism behind the aid program. “It really doesn’t matter if these people (the former soldiers) actually get a degree or learn a trade,” said one Salvadoran politician. “After a year out of the army, they will have lost the capacity and probably the will to do anything. They might become criminals. But they won’t be a threat to the government.”

Foreign officials acknowledge that their plan may face opposition in the U.S. Congress, which must approve the aid, particularly at a time when the Bush Administration is shifting its interest from El Salvador and Central America and is being called on for economic aid from many quarters.

But the contrary view to that here is the hope that after 10 years of heavy American involvement and more than $3 billion in U.S. aid to fight a war, the United States will be willing now to invest in a plan to promote peace.

“It would be criminal if, when this ends, the (Americans) just walk out of here,” said a Western diplomat. “If (the Americans) bobble it by cutting and running, it will be a tragedy.”