Word: morazan
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...fate of their crusade, the Salvadoran high command exhorted them to lay down their arms and "join the fight the people want, the struggle for peace." But the unspoken truce did not last long. After a two-month lull in the fighting, the guerrillas launched an offensive in northern Morazan department, claiming to have killed 200 soldiers in five days, and seized two towns before retreating under intense bombing raids by the government's new A-37B Dragonfly jets. "The guerrillas' latest offensive has not been a sterling success," said a top U.S. official last week...
...been at least that. The rebels captured the biggest prize of their arduous struggle when they shot down a helicopter near the Honduran border carrying Deputy Defense Minister Colonel Francisco Adolfo Castillo, 45, and the military commander of Morazan department, Colonel Salvador Beltran Luna, 45. The two officers were flying over rebel-held territory on a reconnaissance mission when their craft was struck by automatic-weapons fire. Beltran Luna was killed in the crash, but Castillo survived and was taken prisoner by the guerrillas. Several days later, Castillo was interviewed during a broadcast on the rebels' clandestine radio station...
Also disconcerting to the U.S. was the weak performance of Salvadoran infantrymen who had just returned from 14 weeks of training by U.S. 82nd Airborne Division instructors at Fort Bragg, N.C. Many of those troops were pinned down by the rebels in Morazan until the Dragonfly jets forced the guerrillas to abandon their positions. U.S. military advisers in El Salvador have been trying to persuade army troops to move in five-man patrols as they comb the countryside. Instead, the Salvadorans travel in vulnerable column formations along main roads. Says a frustrated U.S. aide in San Salvador...
...that the army should make every effort to consolidate control of the nation's highways, where guerrillas have robbed motorists and burned some 80 vehicles in the past two weeks. Instead, the Defense Minister, General Jose Guillermo Garcia, decided to commit crack regiments to chase after guerrillas in Morazan. "It was a stupid, macho decision," said a Western ambassador in San Salvador. "They have to clean out the vital areas of the country before going up into that wasteland...
Concern over El Salvador is also dividing the U.S. press. The Wall Street Journal last week editorially criticized the New York Times and the Washington Post for their reporting Jan. 27 of large-scale killings of civilians by the Salvadoran army in the department of Morazan. The Journal complained that the relatively uncritical handling of the story, especially by the Times, amounted to a "propaganda exercise" for the guerrillas...