Word: salvadoran
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...wide variety of human rights organizations. The legal aid office of the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador has set the number of deaths in 1981 at 13,353. Human rights researchers at El Salvador's Central American University put the figure at 13,500. The Salvadoran Human Rights Commission claims that the real number is 16,267. Amnesty International, the highly respected international human rights organization, sent a telegram to President Reagan saying that "we cannot concur" with Washington's assessment that the Salvadoran government is beginning to control the excesses of its own armed forces...
Normally, the men in the foxholes at Fort Bragg, N.C., would be American G.I.s. But these were Spanish-speaking members of the Salvadoran army taking part in a novel experiment. The soldiers are among 1,466 members of the 15,000-man Salvadoran force who are starting to receive a crash course in basic U.S. Army fighting skills at two of the country's most important military installations, Fort Bragg and Georgia's Fort Benning. The $15 million program is by far the largest basic training exercise for foreign troops ever undertaken at one time on American soil...
...Some 900 Salvadorans arrived last week at Fort Bragg's John F. Kennedy Center for Military Assistance, joining the 60 Salvadoran officers and NCOs who were already on the post. During the next three months, 185 Spanish-speaking U.S. Special Forces and 82nd Airborne Division instructors will teach them the light-infantry skills that an average G.I. might absorb in nearly a full year. The program includes everything from basic physical training to communications to the use of American weapons. Much of the emphasis will be on training the Salvadorans to operate as coordinated units on the squad, platoon...
...Fort Benning, about 500 other Salvadoran trainees last month began a combined 14-week basic training and officers candidate course. American soldiers normally spend 38 weeks in these courses, emerging as combat infantry platoon leaders. The special program puts a high emphasis on tactics: how to deploy men in combat, techniques of patrol and arranging fields of fire to provide the best defensive protection...
Another difference between now and then: the Viet Cong had spent decades building up their cadres, fighting skills, command structure and supply lines; they also had North Viet Nam, with its huge regular army, first backing them up, then leading them in their conquest. The Salvadoran insurgency, by contrast, is limited to about 6,000 active fighters, many of whom are recent converts to the cause. The closest analogue to a North Viet Nam in Central America is Nicaragua, which is not really very close at all. The Sandinista regime there is still young and insecure. True, it is gravitating...