Is Iraq going the way of El Salvador?
The blogger known only as “Lenin” has discovered that the US may be planning to go for the Salvador Option in Iraq and describes what this means, exactly:
These death squads were partially home-grown, developing out of a long-standing collusion between landowners, businessmen and the military elite. But crucial too was the activity of the United States government, specifically through the CIA. Testimony from Salvadoran army officials reveals that the CIA involved them in regular briefings, trained them in torture methods, provided a monthly budget and even funded little expenses like having black window panes installed on vans so that executions and the like could be carried out in secret. One former officer named Richard Castro described how, after training with the US, he had been told by his fellow officers of two towns that had been captured, each with a population of roughly three hundred. He was told that its inhabitants would be tortured for information, then executed. He later discovered that all six hundred had been killed. According to Rene Hurtado, who worked as an intelligence agent for the Treasury Police (one of three Salvadoran paramilitary forces) before fleeing to Minnesota, the US had taught interesting torture techniques to his colleagues at Army Staff headquarters. In particular favour among torture methods were electric shock, suffocation, mutilation, the tearing of skin from the body and sticking needles into the flesh. He also describes the use of US-manufactured torture equipment, including something that looked like a radio “with General Electric written on it”. Witnesses describe how Colonel Nicolas Carranza, who took to death squad activity with unusual facility and enthusiasm, was funded by the CIA to the tune of $90,000 a year. The Atlacatl Battalion, created under US pressure, was responsible for some of the worst atrocities, including the murder of Jesuit priests and the El Mozote massacre.
The activities of US-Salvadoran paramilitaries did not end there, however. In the US, Frank Varelli worked for the FBI tracking the activities of domestic opponents of Reagan’s policies in Central America, focusing in particular on Salvadoran immigrants facing deportation – he would match his lists with ‘death lists’ supplied by the Salvadoran junta.
In all, the repression in El Salvador took 75,000 lives. Duarte’s regime, funded to the tune of $6 billion by the US, became one of the most notorious and bloody governments in the region. In 1992, a peace agreement was reached, and since then the FMLN has dominated in elections, despite thinly-veiled threats from Arena (the party of the old junta) that votes for the FMLN would lead to reprisals from Washington.
That conveys some of what, apparently, awaits Iraq.