Occasional Papers is a series published by

The Thomas J. Watson Jr.

Institute for International Studies

Brown University, Box 1970

2 Stimson Avenue

Providence, RI 02912

Telephone: (401) 863 2809

Fax: (401) 863 1270

E-mail: IlS@Brownvm.Bitnet

Vartan Gregorian, Ph.D., Acting Director

Thomas G. Weiss, Ph.D., Associate Director

Frederick F. Fullerton, Editorial Associate

Gregory Kazarian, Computer Coordinator

Amy M. Langlais, Staff Assistant

Statements of fact or opinion are solely those of the authors; their publication does not imply endorsement by the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies.

Copyright @ 1993 by the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies. All rights reserved under International and Pan American Convention. No part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Occasional Papers, Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies.

CONTENTS

Abbreviations v

Foreword ix

Map of Central American Region xiii (not available online)

The Conflicts 1

Humanitarian Access 19

Humanitarian Action 33

Peace 55

Conclusions and Recommendations 73

Annex 1 Categories of Institutional Humanitarian Actors 79

Annex 2 Persons Interviewed 81

Annex 3 Abbreviated Questionnaire 87

Annex 4 Sponsoring Institutions and Team Members 89

Annex 5 For Further Reading 93

ABBREVIATIONS

ARDE Democratic Revolutionary Alliance [Nicaragua]

ARENA National Republican Alliance [El Salvador]

ASAI Salvadorean Integral Support Association

CEAR National Commission to Attend to Returnees, Refugees and Displaced [Guatemala]

CEPA Center for Rural Education and Agricultural Promotion [Nicaragua]

CEPAD Evangelical Committee for Development Assistance [Nicaragua]

CERJ Council of Ethnic Communities Runjel Junam [Guatemala]

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CIAV/OEA International Support and Verification Commission [OAS]

CIREFCA International Conference on Refugees in Central America

CNR National Commission for Repopulation [El Salvador]

CNR National Reconciliation Commission [Guatemala]

COMECON Council of Mutual Economic Assistance [Soviet bloc]

CONARA National Commission for the Restoration of Areas [El Salvador]

COPAZ National Commission for the Consolidation of Peace [El Salvador]

CPR Communities of People in Resistance [Guatemala]

CRIPDES Christian Committee for the Displaced of El Salvador

CRS Catholic Relief Services

DNI National Intelligence Directorate [El Salvador]

EC European Community

EGP Guerrilla Army of the Poor [Guatemala]

ENABAS National Basic Grains Corporation [Nicaragua]

EPS Sandinista Popular Army [Nicaragua]

FACS Augusto César Sandino Foundation [Nicaragua]

FAES Salvadorean Armed Forces

FAR Revolutionary Armed Forces [Guatemala]

FDN Nicaraguan Democratic Force

FDR Democratic Revolutionary Front [El Salvador]

FMLN Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front [El Salvador]

FODES Fund for Displaced [Guatemala]

FONAPAZ National Peace Foundation [El Salvador]

FORELAP Fund for the Productive Reinsertion of the Repatriated Population [Guatemala]

FSLN Sandinista National Liberation Front [Nicaragua]

FUNDASAL Salvadorean Low Income Housing Foundation

GAM Mutual Support Group [Guatemala]

ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross

ICVA International Council of Voluntary Agencies

INPRUH Human Promotion Institute [Nicaragua]

INRA National Agrarian Reform Institute [Nicaragua]

INSSBI Nicaraguan Social Security and Welfare Institute

IRC International Rescue Committee

MCC Mennonite Central Committee

MSF Doctors without Borders [Médecins sans frontières]

NGO Nongovernmental Organization

OAS/OEA Organization of American States/Organización de Estados Americanos

ONUCA United Nations Observer Group in Central America

ONUSAL United Nations Observer Group in El Salvador

ONUVEN United Nations Mission for Verification of Elections in Nicaragua

ORPA Revolutionary Organization of the People in Arms [Guatemala]

OTARDE Technical Support Office for Refugees and Displaced [Guatemala]

PAC Peace and Autonomy Commissions [Nicaragua]

PADESCOMSM The Council for the Development of Communities of Morazán and San Miguel [El Salvador]

PDC Christian Democratic Party [Guatemala and El Salvador]

PNC National Civilian Police [El Salvador]

PRODERE Development Program for Refugee, Displaced and Returnees [Italian government]

PRRN National Reconstruction and Reconciliation Program [Nicaragua]

PVO Private Voluntary Organization

QIP Quick Impact Project [UNHCR]

RAAN North Atlantic Autonomous Region [Nicaragua]

SRN National Reconstruction Secretariat [El Salvador]

SSA Social Secretariat of the Archdiocese of San Salvador

UK United Kingdom

UN United Nations

UNAG National Agricultural and Ranchers Union [Nicaragua]

UNDP United Nations Development Programme

UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund

UNO National Opposition Union [Nicaragua]

URNG National Revolutionary Union of Guatemala

UPR United to Rebuild [El Salvador]

US United States

USAID United States Agency for International Development

WFP World Food Programme

FOREWORD

It is with great pleasure that we commend the present document to what we expect will be a large international readership of humanitarian policymakers and practitioners. The present version in English, and the Spanish edition to be published by the Arias Foundation later this year, have been made possible by a generous grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We acknowledge with gratitude their support.

This case study of the Central American experience in coping with the humanitarian consequences of recent armed conflicts is part of a global research initiative called the Humanitarianism and War Project. Since 1991, this undertaking has sought to understand the dynamics of humanitarian action in war zones. In this broader context, the lessons of the region are critical not only for Central Americans but also for civilians trapped in the throes of violence elsewhere.

The present volume is the latest in a series of analyses emerging from this project, which is co-sponsored by Brown University’s Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies of Providence, Rhode Island and the Refugee Policy Group of Washington, D.C. There is additional information about the sponsoring organizations in Annex 4. The Center for Peace and Reconciliation of the Arias Foundation, located in San José, Costa Rica, has been pleased to collaborate in this case study.

This study reviews humanitarian action from 1981 to 1993 in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, when more than 10 percent of the region’s 18 million people were displaced. During this period, an estimated 30,000 Nicaraguan, 75,000 Salvadoran, and 100,000 Guatemalan civilians lost their lives. Also a casualty of the conflicts and a constraint on post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation were the region’s economies and political discourse.

The study focuses on humanitarian challenges within the three countries, not to minimize problems in refugee-recipient countries such as Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize, Panama, and Mexico, but to allow for more detailed review and comparisons among the three. While it picks up the story in 1981 and carries it through early 1993 to focus on the conflicts at their height, it also notes that the conflicts and casualties began much earlier.

The study approaches humanitarian action in terms at once specific and comprehensive. Reviewing activities in a region in which aid to military and paramilitary forces had been termed "humanitarian, " the report looks at activities directed exclusively toward civilian populations. These include both humanitarian assistance (ranging from short-term emergency relief through reconstruction of essential infrastructure to medium and longer term development) and protection activities (ranging from efforts to help a threatened individual or community to protecting an entire population).

The timeliness of the issues and the keen interest of the international community is evident from the list of sponsors of the Humanitarianism and War Project. These include seven United Nations organizations (UNICEF, WFP, UNHCR, DHA, UNDRO, UNDP, and the Special Programme for the Horn of Africa); four governments (the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France); ten nongovernmental groups (Catholic Relief Services, Danish Refugee Council, International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development [Canada], International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Lutheran World Federation, Lutheran World Relief, Mennonite Central Committee, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam-UK, and Save the Children Fund-UK); and three foundations (the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Arias Foundation).

The report begins with an overview of the conflicts in regional and international perspective and then reviews the wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The section on Humanitarian Access focuses upon the concept of humanitarian space–that is, the room within which external and internal humanitarian organizations operate. The section on Humanitarian Action reviews germane subjects such as the strengths and weaknesses of the various actors. The section on Peace explores the relationships–direct and indirect, positive and negative–between humanitarian action and the processes of peace, reconciliation, and reconstruction. The final section summarizes the report’s findings and provides policy recommendations.

This study represents a collegial effort by five researchers from Costa Rica, Mexico, the United States, and the United Kingdom, whose backgrounds are noted in Annex 4. Central to the team’s work were the contributions of Cristina Eguizábal and Peter Sollis, whose professional and personal engagement over the years with political, economic, and social developments in Central America proved indispensable. Members of the team interviewed well over one hundred persons in the region from November 1992 through February 1993. Those consulted represented a range of external and internal actors from the categories identified in Annex 2. The survey instrument used (Annex 3) asked each to reflect upon the interaction between human need and humanitarian action, as well as political and military considerations.

Viewed in its widest terms, the Central American experience testifies to the ability of opposing parties to move beyond arms and toward conflict resolution. Of the many regions that bear the bruises of decades of superpower rivalry, Central America is leading the way in leaving the Cold War in the past and in establishing more durable internal and international relationships for the post-Cold War era. In Ws process, the rest of the world has much to learn from the roles played by the region’s war-affected people and the vibrant nongovernmental sector that supported their aspirations.

Humanitarian action has been a key element in the regional movement toward lasting peace that began in the mid-1980s. The importance of humanitarian concerns–both as an impetus to and as a beneficiary of diplomatic action–transcends the three countries involved. The contribution made by leaders from the region and the momentum toward peace sustained by their efforts should be of great interest to leaders in other parts of the world, where an easing of tensions now opens up the possibility of reconciliation and reconstruction.

This case study will serve as the starting point for discussions by politicians and practitioners in San José later this year. We also hope that it will be examined by others who seek to address humanitarian challenges and to learn lessons from recent armed conflicts. We welcome comments from readers to guide our continued reflection on these issues.

Luis Guillermo Sollis
Director, Center for Peace and Reconciliation
Arias Foundation
San Jose, Costa Rica

Thomas G. Weiss
Associate Director, Watson Institute
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island

July 1993

Map of Central American Region–National Boundaries and capital Cities

Not available online

THE CONFLICTS

The humanitarian challenges facing the international community in Central America between 1981 and 1993 grew out of the particular situation of countries in the region. The civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala were imbedded in the histories of their respective populations and reflected deep-seated political, economic, and social tensions. The conflicts span the height of the Cold War and its waning, and also were overlaid with a burdened international geopolitical dimension Our study necessarily begins with a review of the broader setting within which the conflicts took place.

The term "banana republic" was coined to describe Central America’s poor and small nations. Strategically located and vulnerable to outside interventions, Central America has a history shaped by a complex interplay of internal and external forces. Though subject to numerous US pressures, Central American elites also have manipulated US perceptions of American security interests to guarantee their own status and reinforce their rule. With the exception of Costa Rica, Central American countries created closed polities that excluded large sectors of the population and exacerbated class differences.

The process of modernization that began in the 1960s profoundly changed economic, social, and political relations throughout the region. Ironically, it also created conditions for violent conflict. Import substitution and the advent of a Central American common market contributed to high growth rates. Economic growth also benefited from high prices for traditional agricultural cash crops and the creation of new markets for cotton and sugar, the latter resulting from the US embargo on Cuban sugar exports.

Central America’s economic boom was accompanied by limited social reforms rather then by a redistribution of assets. Expenditures on health and education increased as government income expanded and in response to pressure from the US-created Alliance for Progress. Though this program facilitated the expansion of health and education services into most rural areas, many of them spurred by hundreds of Peace Corps volunteers, it also highlighted for Central American elites the overriding US strategic goal of preventing the sort of violent revolution that might lead to communist regimes similar to Castro’s Cuba.

Along with modernization came an opening of the region’s political systems. Twelve years of military rule in Guatemala after the overthrow in 1954 of the elected Arbenz government were followed by civilian rule under President Julio César Méndez Montenegro. As a reformer, he initially was able to deal politically with the insurgency threat of the Guatemalan Communist Party. But with Méndez Montenegro unable to cleanse the military of its repressive counterinsurgency thinking, increased human rights violations characterized the latter years of his term

El Salvador’s 1962 constitution also allowed a limited political pluralism Civilian reformist parties gained national prominence after Christian Democrat José Napoléon Duarte won San Salvador’s mayorship. By the early 1970s, the Social and Christian Democrat parties had strengthened their support so that together with the National Democratic Union, closely allied to the Salvadoran Communist Party, they were able to challenge military rule and win the 1972 presidential elections. The opposition coalition was prevented from taking office by blatant fraud, however, a development that convinced many that elections would not lead to political change end left armed revolution as the sole possibility.

Even Nicaragua’s political system, dominated since the mid-1930s by the personal rule of the Somoza family, was not immune from change. Though obliged to accept the presidency of Rene Shick, the Somozas refused to relinquish control of the country’s economy. Political reforms suggesting the possibility of elite accommodation with the Somozas were rejected initially only by radical elements such as the small group of students, who in 1964 formed the Sandinista National Liberation Front to fight a Cuban-style insurgency in the mountains of northern Nicaragua.

After the 1972 Managua earthquake, however, traditional economic elites were increasingly disillusioned with the Somoza family’s political control. The problem was less the blatant diversion of humanitarian assistance than the greed demonstrated by their expansion into the construction, building materials, service, and financial sectors, previously the near-exclusive preserve of the Somozas’ economic competitors.

Rapid economic growth throughout the region, which led to increased prosperity for a few and rising expectations in an expanding middle class, also generated large impoverished rural and urban populations. Throughout Central America, the process of agricultural modernization forced thousands of peasant families to abandon production of basic staples such as beans and maize, either to join those migrating to the large cities or to remain as landless rural laborers. Those leaving the land invariably were unable to find factory jobs and had little option but to pin the urban informal economy. Most of those remaining in rural areas found seasonal work harvesting coffee, sugar cane, and cotton. The situation of the landless was grim. In El Salvador, for example, the rural landless labor force increased from 12 to 41 percent of the rural population from 1960 to 1975. With surplus rural labor both the number of days worked and wage rates fell. The Salvadoran population became one of the hemisphere’s most malnourished.

The plight of disadvantaged sectors did not go unnoticed. Effectively disenfranchised by the political system, small peasant farmers and landless laborers found an advocate in the Roman Catholic Church. While the church previously had been supportive of the status quo, major theological debates had reinvigorated its role, shifting emphasis towards the organizing base of Christian communities, peasants associations, production and savings cooperatives, and women’s groups. The church’s emphasis on training leaders to articulate and represent the demands of those marginalized by the process of economic growth significantly rivaled this move to organize the poorest sectors.

Economic growth rates slowed by the end of the 1960s and faltered in the 1970s under the weight of increased oil prices. Political institutions that had barely coped with limited reforms now faced growing middle class dissatisfaction, reflecting unmet expectations, as well as increasingly vocal claims by popular sectors for a political role. Central American elites and armed forces reacted violently to these demands for greater political participation. Growing political instability provoked increased repression against popular organizations. Security forces in all three countries employed repression to quell the threat of communist revolution. However, arbitrary arrests, assassinations, disappearances, and torture of trade union, peasant, and community leaders during the 1970s produced, unlike previous waves of repression, vocal and active opposition from the Catholic Church.

By the mid 1970s, the main ingredients of violent conflict were in place. Economic elites and the armed forces had backed away from political reforms, deciding instead to counter demands for political participation with force. Popular organizations and reformist political parties maintained the pressure for change, receiving critical support from the Church. As the repression of democratic politics grew, so did the level of political polarization. The lack of viable alternatives precipitated rapid and widespread growth of support for revolutionary politics, committed to the violent overthrow of discredited regimes. Although Central America’s multiple crises stemmed from structural and national factors, the situations were nevertheless rapidly internationalized, particularly those in Nicaragua and El Salvador. After nearly two decades of neglect, US policymakers began to turn their attention once again to Central America, fearing that it was about to become an arena for superpower confrontation.

US concern with Soviet expansionism in its own "backyard" escalated with the Reagan administration. Conservatives determined to "draw the line" in El Salvador and to "go to the source" of the violent unrest, identifying Cuba, the Soviet Union, and the Sandinista regime as directly responsible for the spread of revolution throughout the region. Covert action against Nicaragua to interdict the flow of arms to Salvadoran guerrillas also sought to undermine the Sandinistas. The US administration also sought to promote democracy as a counterweight to revolution.

Once Central America had been elevated among US foreign policy priorities, Latin American countries–especially Mexico, Venezuela, Panama, and Colombia–became alarmed at the prospect that violent conflict would spill over into adjacent areas. Their concern that growing conflicts in the isthmus would eventually provoke direct US military involvement animated diplomatic activity that eventually coalesced in the Contadora process. Recognizing "ideological pluralism" and advocating political solutions to the Central American crisis, Contadora discouraged interventions by Central Americans themselves.

Growing US involvement, however, also sharpened ties between Central American revolutionaries and Cuba. Cuba’s logistical, material, and moral support provided the rationale for greater US efforts to meet demands for political changes with policies designed to produce military victories for the US’s Central American protégés. By strengthening the Salvadoran and Honduran military, the United States undermined the relative authority of civilian institutions. Elections to constituent assemblies that would draft new constitutions and establish new regimes in Honduras in 1980, El Salvador in 1982, and Guatemala in 1984 were followed by the election of civilian presidents in each country. With such changes the Reagan administration claimed success in its policy to foster democratic change.

Civilian governments, however, had limited powers. With the wars in El Salvador and against Nicaragua continuing and with US military assistance pouring into the region, the region’s armed forces were transformed. Outside overt and covert resources consolidated their position. Without the restraint that might have been provided by civilian control and lacking a firm belief in human rights, counterinsurgency campaigns by Central American militaries produced spiraling abuses against civilians.

The European allies of the US shared neither its analysis of the problem nor its response. From their perspective, the emergence of progressive political forces converged with rather than endangered Western security interests. As European involvement increased in the region, it tended to support Latin American diplomatic efforts. Nordic governments provided critical economic and political help to the Nicaraguan government and were also generous political supporters of El Salvador’s opposition revolutionary coalition. The European Community’s consistent support for negotiated solutions was stepped up after the San Jose initiative in 1988, which agreed on an aid package to complement the Contadora group’s political initiatives.

Although growing European involvement in Central America was primarily a reaction to heightened US interest, it also responded to, and promoted, an expanding presence of European NGOs. Not wishing to confront the United States directly on matters of such national importance and sensitivity, many European governments expressed their opposition more subtly through increased allocations of humanitarian assistance to NGOs.

In sum, the backdrop for the conflicts of the 1980s was provided by pre-existing historical divisions within the societies of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Tensions were accelerated by economic trends during the 1960s and early 1970s and by differential perceptions and agendas of Latin American, US, and European governments. The views of those governments also would affect clearly the contours and dynamics of the international response to the wars and attendant suffering of civilians. The wars fought in Central America generated disproportionate casualties among civilians. Responding to the insurgents’ perceived support from the rural peasant population, military planners made them an explicit target. Large areas of the countryside were cleared of people. Hundreds were killed, thousands more fled their countries as refugees, and tens of thousands relocated within their countries as internally displaced persons. We now turn to the wars.

There were two conflicts in Nicaragua in the 1980s. One was on the Atlantic coast, the other was on the Pacific coast, mainly in the northern and central highlands. The Atlantic coast conflict was an ethnic struggle pitting the government against the Miskito Indians, the largest of three indigenous groups. Tensions began immediately after Somoza’s fall from power in 1979, reflecting in part Sandinista ignorance and in part historical antagonisms between the English-speaking Atlantic coast and the Spanish-speaking Pacific coast. When social, economic, and cultural policies designed for a ladino peasantry were transferred by the new regime wholesale, Atlantic coast peoples saw Ws as an attempt to undermine their autonomy. Sandinista-created indigenous organizations such as Misurasata failed to overcome the suspicions sown by initial policy failures and were eventually taken over by radical Miskitos and used to promote separation from the rest of Nicaragua.

Violent confrontation between government security forces and Miskitos began in mid-1980 and escalated throughout 1981. With increased US involvement in Atlantic coast affairs, the government by 1982 feared the region might be recognized as an independent country. As a pre-emptive measure, the government evacuated Miskito villages along the Coco River, the center of Miskito culture and also the border of Honduras. While critics decried the move as a violation of basic human rights, others pointed out that the evacuation was undertaken within established international norms. Nearly 10,000 persons were moved to new settlements inland; another 10,000 fled as refugees to Honduras; and still others moved to Puerto Cabezas, the district capital, and to Managua. Relations between the regime and Miskitos worsened and conflict escalated. Villages were militarized, Miskitos suspected as guerrilla sympathizers were arrested, and dozens were assassinated.

Policy change in 1985 reflected the growing realization that political problems could not be resolved with military solutions. Discussions on Atlantic coast autonomy provided the impetus for internally displaced people to go home to the Coco River, for refugees to begin to return to Nicaragua, and for Miskito combatants to star/negotiations on resuming civilian life. Approval of the Autonomy Law in 1987 quickened normalization and provided greater opportunity to plan the reconstruction of war-damaged communities. Yet fighting was never entirely absent from the Atlantic coast, even after the return to the Coco River and the passage of the Autonomy Law. Nevertheless, conceived and implemented by Nicaraguans themselves, the peace process took root.

The war on the Pacific coast was different The core anti-Sandinista fighters were ax-National Guard members who had fled to Honduras after Somoza’s overthrow. Organized by 1981 into the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), they received US financial assistance, training from the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Argentinean government, and logistic and intelligence support from the Honduran military. Former Sandinista supporters disillusioned by the revolutionary course created the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) in 1982, an armed opposition movement based in Costa Rica. While the FDN operated throughout northern and central regions, ARDE operations were confined to the Rio San Juan region and southern parts of the central highlands.

Sporadic FDN raids began in 1982. With literacy and health workers as primary targets, government adult literacy and preventative health care programs soon closed. Despite approval by the US Congress of the Boland Amendment in 1985 to stop the use of US funds for activities designed to overthrow the government or provoke hostilities between Nicaragua and Honduras, counterrevolutionary or "contra" activities increased in number.

By using infiltration routes employed earlier by the Sandinistas, the FDN succeeded in disrupting productive life throughout northern Nicaragua with attacks against development projects. Government workers were assassinated, often after torture. Peasants suspected of Sandinista sympathies were murdered. Many hundreds were kidnapped and taken to Honduras, where an uncertain fate awaited them. Schools, health centers, farms and machinery, bridges, communications, and electricity supplies were targeted for sabotage and disruption.

Nicaraguan defense policy, organized around a small standing army supported by reserve battalions recruited locally, shifted significantly in 1983. The government introduced the draft and enlarged, restructured, and re-equipped the army. With enhanced fighting capacity, the army was able to chase the contras throughout Nicaragua and into Honduras. Yet the policy stirred political opposition because, unlike El Salvador and Guatemala, obligatory military service was not a Nicaraguan tradition. Hot pursuit raids and greater fighting capacity spurred large joint US-Honduran army border maneuvers, related as much to Honduran battle readiness as to positioning equipment for contra use.

Contra strategy by 1984 had also changed. No longer intent on capturing territory in order to proclaim a provisional government, the contras began a war of attrition to weaken the regime’s resolve by intensified economic sabotage and widespread intimidation of peasant farmers organized by the Sandinista government. Contra leadership was buoyed by the enlargement and composition of forces in which ex-Somoza national guard soldiers were outnumbered by peasants, many of whom were recruited because they opposed Sandinista policies. By mid-1984, more than 5,000 contra soldiers were engaged in operations in the country as contrasted with fewer than 1,000 in late 1983.

Forces increased on both sides and an already brutal war became more savage. Fighting spread to new areas and contra atrocities continued to increase. In response to the altered strategy and changed composition of contra forces, however, the Sandinistas introduced more draconian policies. No longer assured of a friendly or even a neutral peasantry, forced displacement of entire communities became commonplace. Government security forces detained larger numbers of suspected contra sympathizers and took severe reprisals against communities in which army units suffered casualties in ambushes.

Nicaragua’s economy was hit hard by the war. Exports of coffee, timber, tobacco, fish, and precious metals fell sharply. In 1984, half of the country’s maize and bean crop was lost due to contra attacks on grain silos, transport facilities, and cooperatives and labor shortages. Large numbers of people had fled the agricultural regions for the safety of Managua and other cities. By 1985, the Social Welfare Institute was providing emergency relief to nearly 50,000 people. Managua, a city of 550,000 in 1979, had nearly doubled in size by the end of the 1 980s. Spending on health, education, and nutrition fell sharply as defense expenditures escalated.

By the end of 1985, the balances of forces had shifted in the government’s favor. The army had gained a battlefield advantage with the overwhelming firepower of Soviet Hind helicopter gunships. Although the Reagan administration sought to nullify this advantage by supplying the contras with missiles, US congressional support eroded in 1986 with the Iran-contra revelations and documentation of the involvement by CIA, Salvadoran, and Honduran armed forces in covert contra supply operations. Regional peace initiatives had also begun to ripen and by the end of 1987had born fruit with the signing of the Esquipulas Accords.

El Salvador became the test case for US resolve in halting perceived Soviet expansionism in the hemisphere. Anticipating massive military aid for the Salvadoran armed forces from the incoming Reagan administration and responding to growing human rights violations, the FMLN in January 1981 launched its ill-fated "final offensive." Those murdered in retaliation by security forces included thousands of ordinary Salvadorans as well as peasant, community, political, and trade union leaders. In January 1981 alone, Salvadoran armed forces, paramilitary forces, and death squads murdered 2,644 civilian non-combatants.

Assassinations continued at high levels throughout 1981 and 1982, with over 30,000 persons killed. Those considered security threats were murdered. The Christian Democratic Party (PDC) denounced the murders of thirty-five of its mayors, nine in 1982. Political victimization of the PDC was, however, exceeded by the attacks on FDR leaders and on pro-FDR labor leaders brave enough to remain in the country. In a single two-week period in October 1982,17 trade union leaders were kidnapped by heavily armed men dressed in civilian clothes. Six never reappeared; the rest fumed up in prison after being severely tortured. Human rights organizations were also particular targets; several workers disappeared at the hands of security forces. Employees of religious organizations who provided humanitarian services to internally displaced persons were frequent victims of abductions, torture, and disappearances.

Government strategy after the failed insurrection of early 1981 was premised on a quick military victory. Army strategists perfected several operations that resulted in maximum casualties and destruction of physical infrastructure in guerrilla-dominated territory. The belief in some quarters was that the insurrection could be put down using the methods of 1932, when 30,000 peasants and indigenous people were slaughtered in the aftermath of a peasant uprising.

Salvadoran national security doctrine provided the rationale for selective urban killings. In the countryside, many were killed during indiscriminate ground and air attacks on conflict areas and guerrilla-controlled zones. Few distinctions were made between armed FMLN combatants and unarmed civilians who, living in close proximity to the guerrilla fighters, fled army operations in their company. The armed forces considered everyone in conflict zones the enemy. However, even more deliberate were army operations that specifically targeted the civilian population. The Mozote massacre in 1982 was the largest murder of unarmed men, women, and children, although it was only one of many such attacks across the country in a systematic pattern of abuses against unarmed civilians.

The insurgents also committed abuses. However, government forces were responsible for the majority of the human rights violations. The human rights office of the Archdiocese of San Salvador reported 5,143 political killings of civilian non-combatants by national and paramilitary armed forces during 1983. Another 535 people "disappeared" after abductions by the same forces. A total of 0 assassinations of civilian non-combatants were attributed to the guerrillas. The net effect of the government’s military strategy was the creation of a large population of refugees and internally displaced persons. The estimated 750,000 who fled the country because of the war and 500,000 who were internally displaced together comprised roughly one fifth of El Salvador’s total population.

The plight of those displaced continued after they were uprooted. The government provided inadequate assistance and systematically violated the displaced persons’ human rights. In 1984, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and Americas Watch reported that the Salvadoran air force had bombed sites where displaced persons in conflict zones had gathered to obtain medical assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Obliged to give the military advance notice of where it would be providing such assistance, the ICRC discontinued much of its aid in conflict zones to avoid endangering the displaced. It was only after pressure from the US embassy that the air force ended such attacks.

Strategy had changed by 1983 to a more political approach. The creation of a National Campaign Plan, to be implemented by a National Commission for Restoration of Areas (CONARA), acknowledged the failure of a purely military strategy. The Plan coordinated military with central and municipal government activities in a new counterinsurgency effort. It called for the military to saturate and expel the guerrillas from a given district end then to recruit and train civil defense detachments to maintain security. Local governments would be restored to provide services and conduct civic action projects. A first operation, "Welfare for San Vicente," was launched in mid-1983 and extended shortly after to Usulután. Both failed because when the troops withdrew, the guerrillas returned.

Counterinsurgency efforts also failed because the intended beneficiaries were automatically considered suspect for having fled the army in the first place. Those residing in camps were virtual prisoners because of the extreme danger that they faced from the armed forces if they left their sanctuaries. More than 200,000 internally displaced persons were also suspect because they feared the consequences of registration with government agencies. Refugee workers, medical personnel, and others who came in contact with the displaced were viewed with great suspicion and faced harassment and direct attacks by the Salvadoran armed forces.

The armed forces maintained similarly ambivalent attitudes towards civilians living in the guerrilla-controlled zones. By 1984, the guerrillas effectively controlled about one-third of the country, mainly in Morazán, Chalatenango, Usulután, Cabañas, San Vicente, and Cusculán districts. An estimated 200,000 civilians remained in these areas, about30 percent of the number five years earlier. But territorial control did not translate into military strength and by 1987 a military stalemate had developed. The military’s low intensity strategy, which depended on counterinsurgency civic action and smaller hit-and-run operations, had failed to dislodge the FMLN. Conversely, while the FMLN was able to inflict heavy casualties, it was unable to defeat the Salvadoran army militarily.

Initiatives for a negotiated solution began in 1982. The Venezuelan, Panamanian, and Mexican governments called for negotiations. France and Mexico also recognized the FMLN-FDR as a representative political force. However, with the Salvadoran and US governments intent on the FMLN’s military defeat, no progress was made. Army opposition to a negotiated peace overshadowed the failed talks sponsored by President Duarte at La Palma and Ayagualo in 1984. Though the Esquipulas process in 1987 laid the foundations for negotiations, the framework it provided was not utilized until after President Cristiani came to power in 1989 and, following the offensive that year, realized that the rebel forces could not be defeated militarily.

The armed forces nevertheless continued to wage war against civilians throughout the peace negotiations. Strafing, bombing, and ground operations against guerrilla positions during 1990 produced civilian casualties. Even as the peace talks were concluding in late 1991, harassment of repatriated communities and of the humanitarian workers remained commonplace.

Guatemala’s war has passed through numerous stages since the violent military overthrow in 1954 of the reformist Arbenz government, each marked by its own characteristics of repression.

The violence that followed the 1954 coup was a response to what was interpreted as an attempt to establish a Marxist regime. Significant support for the counterrevolution came from the Catholic Church, bolstered by an influx of priests from Franco’s Spain. Perceived by landowning elites to have saved the country, the army began to establish itself as the country’s largest and most influential political institution.

Oppression relaxed somewhat in the early 1960s as the Alliance for Progress and Peace Corps established their presence. The period of relative calm was short-lived, however. By 1966, the country was plunged into a localized but significant guerrilla war. Located in a fairly remote eastern part of Guatemala, characterized by small peasant farmers producing maize and beans, and isolated from the central highlands inhabited by Guatemala’s indigenous majority, the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Edgar Ibarra Guerrilla Front expected to repeat the Cuban success. Yet with US counterinsurgency training, the Guatemala Army crushed the guerrillas in a scorched earth campaign. Thousands of peasant farmers were killed or disappeared, and many others suspected of guerrilla sympathies were murdered by paramilitary death squads.

Disappearances and death squad activities were refined as a means of political control during the relative political opening in the mid-1960s, when Mendez Montenegro, a civilian, was elected president. As urban terrorist activity increased in the late 1960s and early 1970s and claimed prominent victims such as the German Ambassador and the US military attaché, the ferocity of the response was predictable. The term of the new president Carlos Arana, defense minister under Mendez Montenegro, was marked by selective repression against political parties, trade unions, and student groups, and by consolidation of the army as a political institution and as an economic force in its own right.

Under Arana’s guidance, senior officers began to move into urban real estate, banking, service, construction activities, and lands on the agricultural frontier. Expansion of army economic interests did not lead to confrontation with established economic elites, whose interests were found in coffee, sugar cane, and cotton estates on the Pacific coast, and who depended on the army to maintain political stability. Army economic activities did, however, lead to conflict with the country’s indigenous population.

Guatemala’s Indian population is the nation’s largest, poorest, and also most divided sector. Interest and concern in their plight increased with the arrival of American missionaries and Peace Corps volunteers, who introduced new farming techniques, better seeds, fertilizer, and new forms of social organization. With land reform not politically feasible, colonization of the frontier was the preferred option. Large numbers of Indian farmers and their families, with the support of religious orders such as the Maryknoll Fathers, moved to form cooperatives on lands for which they had tenuous legal titles.

The Catholic Church identified with the oppressed Indian majority and trained Indian leaders and contributed to an awakening of Indian identity. As the Church’s pastoral work grew, the guerrilla movement, defeated but not totally eradicated in the 1960s, also reorganized. The guerrilla opposition emphasized the central role of the Indian majority in their revolutionary strategy. The FAR and two new organizations, the Revolutionary Organization of the People in Arms (ORPA) and the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), located their work in indigenous regions: the agricultural frontier areas of the Peten district and the western and central highlands. As a result, the Indian population, long marginalized from the political, social, and economic life of the country, was thrust onto center stage.

The army continued to encroach onto lands considered their own by indigenous communities. Small-scale problems escalated in the Alta Verapaz district until the massacre at Panzos in 1978, when hundreds of Indian peasants were killed while protesting the army’s trespass. Panzos marked the beginning in the deterioration of the security situation in the central highlands.

Indigenous populations seeking redress for their deteriorating security and economic situation found little sympathy in the existing political system. The lessons of the growing Nicaraguan conflict suggested the need for violent repression. In the countryside, the targets most heavily hit were agricultural, savings, and other cooperatives, which in the aftermath of the 1976 Guatemalan earthquake had flourished as effective reconstruction agents. Also badly affected were health promoters and catechists associated with the Catholic Church. In the urban areas, the favored targets were trade union leaders, student organizers, and reformist politicians from the Social Democrat and Christian Democrat parties.

The murders of Colom Argueta and Alberto Fuentes Mohr in 1979 not only deprived Guatemala of two outstanding civilian politicians but also hastened the political polarization of the country. At a time when the Carter administration was seeking new political allies to replace the military governments that had served as loyal counterparts, the Guatemalan Army took a calculated gamble. It concluded that, faced with a choice between a revolutionary movement and a military government, the Carter administration would prefer the latter. Without a centrist option, the Guatemalan Army simply closed the space for consensus politics. Whole sectors of the labor and student movements were wiped out. An attempt to create a Human Rights Commission similar to those in El Salvador and Nicaragua was doomed after armed civilians abducted the leading organizers in broad daylight in downtown Guatemala City.

The culminating event for the indigenous population, however, occurred at the Spanish Embassy in January 1981. A peaceful demonstration to publicize the army’s occupation of Indian villages and the murder and disappearance of community leaders met a violent response. Although the Spanish Ambassador urged negotiation, security forces burned down the embassy, resulting in the death of 39 people, including an ax-foreign minister of Guatemala. Only the ambassador and one demonstrator escaped. The demonstrator was murdered in the hospital the next day. The overthrow of the existing political system became a more attractive option and many indigenous people pined the guerrilla opposition.

Drawing strength from the influx of support, the revolutionary movement anticipated quick victory. Despite initial advances that surprised the armed forces, the army recovered. Search and destroy operations in the central highlands left a trail of death and destruction. Lacking the necessary military strength, the guerrillas abandoned whole villages to their fate. From 1981 to 1984 an estimated 440 villages were totally destroyed; 50,000 persons were killed; 150,000 were forced to flee into Mexico as refugees; and perhaps another 500,000 were displaced within Guatemala. Although the guerrillas were not totally defeated and subsequently have managed to maintain low-level operations, they lost their strategic advantage.

Government control over rural areas tightened with a nationwide system of civil patrols organized by the army in each community. A total of about 900,000 men were enrolled, but the numbers later fell because of external pressure and because the army revised its security assessment in some regions. The experience of the patrols profoundly altered community attitudes toward greater suspicion of outsiders.

Political reforms that had seemed impossible in the early 1980s gradually came to Guatemala. As with other countries in the region, the Reagan administration voiced its preference for civilian governments, but in Guatemala it supported military politicians such as General Ríos Montt. By 1985, a political parties law had been enacted, an electoral registry reformed, and a voter registration system put in place. Also in that year, Vinicio Cerezo, a Christian Democrat, was elected president.

The first civilian president in twenty years, Cerezo was expected to introduce further political reforms. He was key to the Esquipulas process because he perceived that Guatemala would benefit if a regional "domino" process could emerge once Nicaragua and El Salvador reached negotiated settlements to their wars. His enduring legacy is that despite repeated coup attempts, he was succeeded by another elected civilian president for the first time in Guatemala’s history. During his tenure in Guatemala, he became the first to implement the Esquipulas recommendation that each Central American country create a national reconciliation commission. But progress made towards a negotiated peace was negligible. Success in containing the guerrilla threat has made the armed forces reluctant to make concessions.

As of 1993, political violence declined but continued to claim selective victims. Trade unionists, student leaders, and religious workers were targeted. Sometimes they were assassinated, but more often they were warned about their conduct. After forty years of repression, such implied threats were usually more than enough to result in changed behavior. Change has also come with the creation and consolidation of human rights organizations, often in the face of concerted and even violent army opposition. Grass roots groups representing the families of the disappeared, indigenous women widowed when their husbands were killed by the army, and the internally displaced now exist together with a human rights office of the Guatemala City Archdiocese.

The depth of the change is difficult to fathom. In the early and mid-1980s, the army controlled access to affected communities and monitored aid distribution. As it gradually withdrew from these activities with the establishment of successive civilian governments, the army accepted an expanded but limited civil society role. When civil organizations encroached into areas considered their own by the armed forces, the reaction was swift and threatening.

The murder in September 1990 of researcher Mirna Mack and the reappearance in April 1993 of public death lists warning those who had organized the refugee repatriation highlighted the army’s view that human needs and humanitarian action remain a national security issue. The May 1993 political crisis was initiated by President Serrano. With initial support from the military, he dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court and arrested the human rights ombudsman. These events, and the uncertainty following Serrano’s removal, demonstrated afresh the fragility of the process of democratization and the precariousness of hard-won humanitarian space.

This review of the wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala provides the context within which humanitarian action took place. The region’s history–and other analysts may interpret the dynamics somewhat differently–sets the scene by identifying the nature and the extent of the suffering to be addressed and the forces and political military, social, and economic institutions with which humanitarian actors would necessarily engage.

The review dramatizes the highly particularistic context for humanitarian action. While the international institutions involved are those engaged in meeting urgent human needs throughout the world, the regional, national, and local terrain is distinctive. Despite regional idiosyncrasies, the Central American experience may contribute much to the international community’s understanding of humanitarian action during and after times of conflict.

HUMANITARIAN ACCESS

Although the particulars varied from country to country, the task of securing and maintaining access to civilians, especially in conflict areas, represented a continuing challenge for humanitarian interests in Central America between 1981 and 1993. The degrees of success with which institutions maintained the space for their assistance and protection activities were also variable. The concept of "humanitarian space" is a dynamic term. Far from being like a walled room of fixed dimensions, humanitarian space, the region’s experience suggests, expands or contracts depending on circumstances. It may be circumscribed–or expanded–by the actions of political and military authorities; it also may be enlarged–or contracted–by humanitarian actors themselves. In short, humanitarian space is neither durable nor transferable but elastic. Consequently, rather than simply filling existing space, external organizations and personnel may through their own presence enlarge and extend it. Yet following their departure from a conflict scene, the space that they enjoyed is not automatically available to other humanitarians remaining behind.

In highly politicized circumstances like those in Central America, involvement with a civilian population –whether displaced from, or remaining within, territory controlled by a civil war adversary–is by definition suspect. As one practitioner said, "When you begin to react as if everything were political, soon nothing is left for humanitarianism." Indeed, there may be circumstances in which humanitarian space is so circumscribed that assistance and protection activities lose all integrity.

The Central American experience suggests that such internal dynamics were reinforced internationally. Pressure from European governments, NGOs, and the media played a major role in preserving and enlarging humanitarian space. In contrast, the US government’s approach to human needs within the broader framework provided the East-West conflict constricted and further politicized space available for humanitarian action. This chapter identifies five sets of constraints on humanitarian access that recurred from country to country.

The wars in Central America were fought in some of the most remote parts of the isthmus, inhabited by peasant populations and ethnic minorities. Poor transport and communications intensified the isolation.

Much of Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast and the northern parts of Guatemala, for example, were virtually inaccessible by land during the rainy season. Without all-weather roads, air and river transport predominated, although even these systems were interrupted during the heaviest rains. In the winter, these regions often remained cut off for weeks. Because of the rugged terrain and the flow of the region’s rivers, national borders emerged as altogether arbitrary lines of demarcation. Cooperatives along the Guatemalan border with Mexico established greater links with Mexican settlements than with Guatemalan towns.

History also played its part in shaping humanitarian access. The Atlantic coast’s enclave export economy, dominated by US companies extracting lumber, precious metals, and bananas, meant that better transport links were established with places in the United States and the Caribbean than with Managua. National communication systems to peripheral areas were underdeveloped. Invariably telephones and telegraph systems did not exist; those which were established soon fell into disrepair. The telephone line installed in 1980 that linked the Atlantic coast with Managua was destroyed by the contras a year later. Inter-regional communications were almost non-existent.

War disrupted prevailing transport systems. Citing national security reasons, the region’s armed forces severed cross-border arteries. Cut off from traditional markets in neighboring countries but distrusted in their own national capitals, populations in frontier regions had few options for reorganizing communications networks and economic activity. The ensuing economic collapse further exacerbated the isolation of remote populations.

Agencies contemplating relief programs faced critical decisions. War-affected populations could not be reached via cross-border operations; yet many were also cut off from the capital city, where most efforts to organize humanitarian assistance were based. Centralized relief programs had to be prepared to mount complex transport efforts to sustain access, while decentralized alternatives depended on resolving the logistic and human resource problems associated with operations in isolated regions. Maintaining access in remote areas were expensive in peacetime and became even more so during war–an aspect of humanitarian action that is common in all conflicts.

The extent of prior involvement with Central America’s war-affected populations also facilitated or limited the access available to humanitarian actors. Knowledge of communities, their needs, and how they were organized was combined with a degree of mutual confidence. Previous contacts, many established as a result of earlier development-related activities, varied from agency to agency and country to country.

Prior experience of the region’s own governments in war-affected regions did not prepare them adequately for the humanitarian tasks required by conflict. Their development policies in the 1970s had been designed to thwart effective popular participation. Line ministries and specialized agencies imposed development from the top down rather than seeking to empower beneficiary groups . Thus, government agencies and donors who worked with them seldom enjoyed the confidence that church-related groups were able to develop with the poorest sectors of Central American societies.

Most UN agencies, emergency- and development-oriented alike, had limited, if any, previous knowledge of war-affected populations. UNHCR was not present in Central America before the crises erupted. UNDP’s mandate did not encourage it to accumulate the institutional expertise needed for emergency situations. Only UNICEF had programs that took the agency into the poorest and remotest regions. In general, the ability of the UN system to act within conflict areas and the effectiveness of its interventions depended greatly on the quality and experience of local counterparts.

Intermediate NGOs largely lacked expertise regarding the region’ s war-affected areas. Weak institutional capacity prevented them from overcoming logistic problems inherent in working in isolated regions. External NGOs often gave priority to activities with agricultural laborers, informal education, and welfare-type projects with the urban poor rather than programs targeting individualistic peasant farmers. This was the case in Nicaragua after the 1972 Managua earthquake, when NGO programs focused on groups that supported earthquake victims. Project work with peasants who lived in dispersed settlements and who had the reputation of being notoriously difficult to organize into user groups was de-emphasized.

Church-based organizations were the institutions best equipped from prior association to deal with the rural populations affected by conflicts. The range and depth of experience accumulated by Catholic and Protestant churches greatly depended on their ability to maintain long-term development and pastoral commitments. The importance of already existing trust was especially evident in the relationship between the Archdiocese of San Salvador and El Salvador’s peasant population. Based on this trust, the Archdiocese’s Social Secretariat was able to organize initial assistance for displaced persons unwilling to seek aid from Salvadoran government agencies. At the same time, the conflict in civil society sharpened a struggle within the ranks of the Church that played itself out among the various church-related social service organizations. Difficult to establish in ordinary times, proven relationships were particularly necessary during war. During periods in which nations are at war with themselves, dissident population groups and those who would assist them are particularly suspect.

The trust factor also took on particular significance with ethnic minorities. Distrustful of state authority and distinct from the rest of the rational population by virtue of their cultural traditions and language, ethnic groups remained wary of outsiders. In Nicaragua and Guatemala they suffered the consequences of war disproportionately, therefore their suspicion of strangers increased.

Organizations with established relationships were in the best position to act as interlocutors between war-affected ethnic groups and humanitarian agencies. Catholic and Protestant church agencies, for example, demonstrated the capability to seek out and establish relationships with ethnic displaced people who, for fear of reprisal, hid in the poor neighborhoods of Guatemala City and the rural slums of the coffee, sugar cane, and cotton plantations.

In the case of the Communities of People in Resistance (CPRs) in Guatemala, however, all attempts to establish humanitarian programs failed. Comprising 30,000 to 50,000 indigenous people living in two mountainous areas accessible only by helicopter or a day-long hike, the CPRs were perceived by the armed forces to be a social base for the insurgents rather than a civilian population. The CPRs insisted, however, that their refusal to leave their lands did not mean they were guerrilla sympathizers.

The army had relaxed its cordon around the two CPR regions by 1993, but the CPRs themselves have not allowed access to outside parties. Despite negotiating a health assistance initiative with CPR representatives, the ICRC has been frustrated repeatedly in its attempt to implement the program. The problem was note lack of technical or financial resources. Instead, the obstacles were the lack of trust and the deep suspicion of outsiders after a decade of army harassment and persecution.

During the 1980s, Central American governments remained conscious of the need to maintain financial and political support received from international backers. While El Salvador’s war effort greatly depended on US government underwriting the Nicaraguan government was heavily indebted to Western Europe. Guatemala was never as dependent on outside support as were Nicaragua and El Salvador, and the interplay between international politics and space for humanitarian action was much less promising. In the case of Nicaragua, the Reagan administration’s interpretation of the Sandinista revolution as communist-inspired and expansionist led to a concerted attempt at its overthrow. This objective affected the number of displaced persons and refugees created by the contra war and led to a series of actions designed to close the space for independent humanitarian action.

The US NGOs were among the first casualties of Washington’s pressure to isolate Nicaragua. As a major recipient of USAID funds around the world, CARE-US considered it prudent to shift its Nicaragua operations to CARE-Canada, thus maintaining presence while deflecting political pressure. Catholic Relief Services, which experienced tension in its relations both with the US government and with the local Catholic Church, closed its Nicaragua office in 1982. CRS activities there continued, but it never gained the prominence of its work with Salvadoran and Guatemalan displaced persons and refugees. US NGOs that neither sought nor received USAID funds also faced constraints in their humanitarian activities. Under the trade embargo enacted in 1985, shipments of tools by Oxfam-America and Operation California to displaced peasant farmers were delayed until US authorities were satisfied that they would not aid an enemy regime.

Though East-bloc members of COMECON provided material support and the Nordic and Dutch governments maintained bilateral aid programs with Nicaragua, NGOs from Western Europe and Canada accounted for about 75 percent of all humanitarian aid received. They filled the gap created by the relative absence of US government and US NGO involvement, providing the Nicaraguan government an incentive to maximize support from Western Europe by maintaining access to war-affected populations. With Washington decrying the Managua regime as a Soviet front, NGO activities helped maintain an image of the Sandinista revolution as pluralist and popular. NGOs became a useful political ally in countering Washington’s characterization of the country.

The close cooperation between NGOs and the Nicaraguan authorities that ensued was in some respects a double-edged sword. While NGOs faced little of the harassment and persecution that characterized government-NGO relations in El Salvador, the collaboration undermined the independence of humanitarian organizations and provoked contra hostility. Food convoys were attacked and destroyed; aid workers from grass roots groups, government ministries, and foreign volunteers were ambushed, kidnapped, and killed. Between 1983 and 1989, seven foreign volunteers were murdered by contrast

In El Salvador, the opening and closing of humanitarian space also reflected the dynamic biplay between the Reagan administration and the US Congress. Although Salvadoran governments had a staunch ally in the former, aid to El Salvador depended on the approval of the latter. At various points, widespread outrage over thousands of death squad killings and other human rights abuses threatened to derail US assistance. Concerned that public opinion and the Congress would block further military and economic assistance, the administration was obliged to gloss over Salvadoran government policies.

The parliamentary and then presidential elections held by 1984 in response to US prodding produced a civilian government to replace the military regime. However, greater humanitarian space was not an automatic result For example, displaced people congregating to receive ICRC assistance were bombed and strafed by the Salvadoran air force. Yet the shift enabled the issue of space for humanitarian assistance to be debated and negotiated politically. Previously, such matters had been treated as purely military and beyond public discussion.

Moreover, the elected civilian regime was more susceptible to international public opinion and more open to its insistence on accountability for humanitarian policies. The emergence of electoral politics also increased concern for domestic issues, including the plight of the displaced. These positive developments brought no more than marginal change while the war continued unabated. However, the opening proved a powerful stimulus to local grass roots groups, NGOs, and church-related organizations that seized the opportunity to expand humanitarian activities.

Because the opposition was never strong enough to threaten the state, successive Guatemalan governments were less dependent on outside support than their Nicaraguan and Salvadoran counterparts. They were more immune from the conditionality attached to financial aid, which elsewhere helped to shape debates on humanitarian access and assistance. International leverage over Guatemala’s internal political processes was more limited and the process of creating space was much slower and more halting.

Even when civilians returned to power in 1985, their position was tenuous. The Guatemalan military establishment was less willing than the Salvadoran armed forces to relinquish power. With coup attempts a continual threat, greater attention was placed on ensuring regime survival. Thus space for humanitarian debate and operational activity did not open up as in El Salvador. A clear deterrent to political debate was the armed forces’ view of the internally displaced persons as a subversive threat rather than a humanitarian challenge. The military proceeded with plans to resettle the displaced people in model villages and development poles and resisted transferring the matter to a civilian agency.

Humanitarian access was circumscribed throughout the region by the dynamic interplay between the counterinsurgency strategies followed by each country’s armed forces and the responses of armed opposition movements. Earlier strategies already have been examined, and their consequences for humanitarian access are examined here.

In all three countries counterinsurgency efforts sought to break the relationship between civilian populations and insurgent forces. The strategy was to drain the sea in order to catch the fish. Although there were distinctions between the means used in each country, the ultimate objective nevertheless remained constant, as an examination of events in Nicaragua and El Salvador indicates.

In Nicaragua, removing the dispersed peasant population from the agricultural frontier in the central highlands and along the San Juan River, in addition to their concentration in settlements, was presented by the government as valid in both military and humanitarian terms. Vulnerable peasant communities were taken out of the line of fire and relocated in settlements more suitable to the provision of education, health care, drinking water, electricity, and other basic necessities. Evacuations driven by military logic were also seen to have humanitarian benefits: the relocated populations allowed for more cost-effective service delivery.

The large-scale return of displaced people to their communities of origin during the course of the war occurred only on the Atlantic coast. The relocated Miskitos returned in 1985 to the Coco River from Tasba Pri as a consequence of the political process unleashed by the initial discussions on Atlantic coast autonomy. Access by humanitarian agencies became more difficult in the short term, in part because fighting continued and also because the returnees dispersed to dozens of isolated communities. As their autonomy grew and fighting lessened, humanitarian agencies gained freer movement into the repopulated communities.

Initial counterinsurgency strategy as in El Salvador also led to a concentration of war-affected populations. Uprooted peasant populations flocked into the small district towns, regional centers, and San Salvador. Large numbers also remained in the nearby countryside. Yet because many of the displaced gathered in accessible urban centers, relief operations were more cost-effective, but by no means easy to mount.

The shift in counterinsurgency strategy in the mid-1980s away from large search-and-destroy operations to the more political strategy of low-intensity conflict eased the need to keep displaced populations concentrated. As the process of return to communities of origin accelerated, the obstacles encountered in the delivery of humanitarian assistance became more numerous. The return to areas under FMLN control created the need to negotiate the crossing of the critical divide between government- and guerrilla-controlled territory, creating a major flashpoint between humanitarian actors and the armed forces.

During the Salvadoran civil war, conflict and related insecurity played a role in restricting the activities of humanitarians. Heavy fighting often made it too dangerous for aid workers to reach displaced communities. The armed forces also claimed that fighting or prevailing insecurity was far too volatile for humanitarian activities. More seriously, humanitarian work carried out with populations whose loyalty to the government was questioned became a legitimate war target.

The Salvadoran air force attacks against ICRC activities mentioned earlier were not an isolated incident. During the FMLN offensive on San Salvador in November 1989, the armed forces launched a systematic attack against humanitarian work and workers. The offices of more than a dozen groups were attacked, ransacked, and destroyed in an attempt to disrupt their work monitoring abuses against the civilian population. Expatriate workers were expelled or left voluntarily. In a dramatic demonstration of the rapid contraction of humanitarian space under military duress, only one in five expatriate humanitarian personnel present in San Salvador before the offensive were present at year’s end.

Human rights organizations were also subjected to constant surveillance, persistent harassment, and periodic repression. Because data-collection visits to rural areas were difficult for security reasons, human rights workers were often confined to the relative safety of the capital cities. The information that filtered out of the more remote regions therefore largely arrived through back channels provided by relief organizations and religious groups that insisted on anonymity for fear of deportations or even more serious reprisals.

Human rights reporting was viewed as a national security threat. Consequently, dozens of human rights workers were abducted and murdered by security forces and the death squads operating in Central America during the 1980s. The tactic of silencing human rights work was employed especially in Guatemala, where work was clandestine until the end of the 1980s because the first attempt to create a human rights commission had failed. Though open human rights organizations now exist in Guatemala, they are not tolerated by the authorities. Human rights work continues to be fraught with danger as activists working in the most conflict-affected areas are killed, abducted, or threatened.

Humanitarian institutions are normally based in capital cities, where they negotiate the terms of their presence within a given country and the definitions of their activities. In putting agreements reached with national authorities into practice at the local level, they often face difficulties, even in peacetime and when governments and officials ostensibly are committed to facilitating humanitarian work.

Experience in the region shows that difficulties are compounded when war is raging. Wars raise the nervousness of civilian authorities about threats to their ability to control volatile situations. Military regimes, and military institutions within civilian-led governments, assert their authority over civilians, policies, and procedures to control access and activities. Administrative procedures are yet another device for constraining humanitarian space.

Administrative controls were applied in various ways. Particularly vulnerable were expatriate humanitarian workers reliant on yearly work permits. They were constrained by the knowledge that an unfavorable report might result in their deportation or visa non-renewal. Similarly, external NGOs and intergovernmental agencies, allowed by individual written protocols to import project-related necessities and personal effects, found their activities often restricted by the need not to jeopardize these agreements. Currency exchange and banking procedures gave the authorities additional ways to leash expatriates.

On-the-ground activities were also confined by the military’s attitudes towards humanitarian assistance. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista Army often insisted on providing military escorts for humanitarian workers, realizing that some workers had philosophical or practical reservations against the escorts. Entry to the Atlantic coast presented several different obstacles. Arranging permission to go from Managua to the region was only the first step but not an easy one. In addition, the army often restricted movement from the district capitals of Puerto Cabezas and Bluefields into the hinterlands.

In El Salvador, with the return of displaced people and repatriated refugees to their communities of origin, beginning in 1985, the task facing relief agencies also became more complex. The dispersion of previously concentrated populations created additional problems of humanitarian space and logistics.

The response of the armed forces to the return process also generated obstacles. The immediate survival of returnees depended on food supplies; longer term self-sufficiency required construction, agricultural and medical supplies, and health training. Aid delivery was impaired by petty controls and arbitrary restrictions by the armed forces. Though predating repopulation, these procedures intensified as the rate of return increased. In time, they came to affect all agencies, including the UNHCR and ICRC, as well as repatriated and repopulated communities.

Two devices particularly frustrated the work of humanitarian agencies. First, the armed forces introduced a system of safe conduct passes to decrease access to the conflict zones. The arbitrariness of issuing passes made them difficult to interpret and counteract. Passes were denied when the High Command deemed that fighting made access too difficult. Yet the denials often bore little relation to the actual security situation in communities where access was sought. More subtle measures were employed to make the military appear cooperative while actually frustrating humanitarian work at minimum public relations cost.

Safe conduct passes often were issued on the day of a visit, good f or that day only and without permission to spend the night in the area in question. The impossibility of getting to and from most repopulated communities in a single day rendered the passes useless. Having granted permission, the High Command could shift the blame to others for not having taken advantage of the authorization.

Passes issued by the High Command were not always accepted by local military commanders, who often devised their own sets of conditions. With the High Command unwilling to countermand or reprimand local commanders, the success or failure of a humanitarian expedition depended greatly on the whim of one individual. Regular rotation of local commanders meant that humanitarian agencies had little opportunity to cultivate working relationships with the military.

The second device was the imposition of restrictions on what could be taken into repopulated communities that changed from one moment to the next without warning, explanation, or justification. In early 1988, for example, the Salvadoran army placed a roadblock on the road to Santa Marta, prohibiting the entry of all food, housing materials, and visitors. No reasons were given and no security developments seemed to justify the restrictions. For the first six months of 1988, the army did not permit food to enter repatriated refugee settlements. The ban was broken only with the return of refugees in August, when fresh supplies were allowed into some (but not all) repatriated communities.

The armed forces were well aware of the damage. It was relayed through the diplomatic community, the Catholic Church, in newspaper advertisements, and through direct action by people affected. In one community repeatedly denied permission to receive food, the presence of international media changed the attitude of the armed forces. Photographers recorded the hunger strike of community residents who reasoned that if they were to die of hunger, it was better to die making a point. Food was eventually delivered only because the military wished to avoid an embarrassing international incident.

Constraints on access demanded the highest levels of professionalism. Yet even the most seasoned humanitarian organizations and officials were often unable to succeed in the face of events frequently beyond their abilities to control. More often than not, the ability to get things done depended as much on interpersonal skills as on technical competence. Surmounting the obstacles to access required nuanced judgments that placed diplomatic skills at a premium. Labyrinthine civilian bureaucracies and military hierarchies, more resistant in a climate of suspicion and danger, demanded extraordinary levels of patience, resolve, ingenuity, and firmness. In their absence, humanitarian resources would not be translated into effective operational programs.

In retrospect, humanitarians concede that as they became preoccupied with time-consuming day-to-day program management, they found less time to plan and reflect. Even those who made a disciplined effort to distance themselves enough to chart a longer term course and to search for less politicized alternatives were often unsuccessful in steering an effective course.

The challenges of negotiating, maintaining, and enlarging humanitarian access in Central America are similar to those in other civil wars around the world. The remoteness of civilians at risk recalls the difficulties in reaching those within Afghanistan–and the relative ease of helping those who had fled to the Pakistan border. The strategic view of civilians in insurgent-controlled territory and suspicion of institutions seeking to assist them hobbled similar efforts in the Sudan. Access granted by authorities in national capitals, and denied at the local level, recalls obstacles faced in eastern Bosnia.

HUMANITARIAN ACTION

As in other major crises, a multiplicity of institutional actors emerged to perform various humanitarian tasks. How was the resulting humanitarian action organized? What actors did what tasks? How well did their efforts fit together? How well were the multiple needs of civilian populations served? These questions are the subject of this section.

In reviewing the division of labor that evolved among humanitarian organizations, the concept of comparative advantage provides a useful analytical tool. This concerns the ability of certain institutional actors to undertake specific tasks more efficiently and effectively than others. Bearing on comparative advantage are such factors as institutional mandates, organizational structure and culture, historical experience, resource base, and staff skills.

A review of the activities carried out by the different categories of internal and external actors already described in this volume facilitates discussion of their performance in the polarized political context of Central America in the 1980s. We begin with the political authorities in the region and then turn to NGOs, the UN system, donor governments, and grass roots organizations, as well as concluding observations.

Prior to the 1980s, government presence in the major conflict areas was limited. Some rural populations received minimal education and health services. However, many–particularly in the most remote parts of Guatemalan highlands, the mountains of northern El Salvador, and the Nicaraguan agricultural frontier–had no access to state entitlements. The quality of such government services was invariably poor and priority was given to the urban privileged.

Limited political and financial commitments to poor peasant populations meant weak initial responses to humanitarian emergencies. As elsewhere around the world, governments during a civil conflict’s early stages tended to neglect the urgent needs of civilians, sparing themselves from acknowledging a serious threat to the state and the existence of army counterinsurgency operations. Proceeding as if no emergency existed is particularly tempting in the absence of external pressure to organize relief.

As in many civil conflicts, the region’s governments were for the most part poorly situated for humanitarian tasks. Interest in the delivery of humanitarian assistance was limited by the inability of authorities to reach those in need and by suspicions of their disloyalty to the state. When a regime did possess physical access and willingness to mount a serious response, the recipients were often suspicious of the aid and of the officials accompanying it.

The Salvadoran case is illustrative. The Ministries of Health and Social Assistance initially worked together with the Community Development Directorate (DIDECO) in a generally ineffective relief program for civilians in the conflict zones. In the absence of a linkage between US military assistance and an adequate government response to humanitarian needs, it was not until late 1981, a full year after civilian dislocations began, that a commission for the internally displaced was created. The first needs assessment was not carried out until early 1982, by which time internally displaced persons were estimated at 200,000. In 1982, a National Commission for the Displaced (CONADES) took a more aggressive approach, promoting many activities situated within the government’s counterinsurgency strategy and well-supported by USAID.

The Nicaraguan government’s response was more comprehensive, immediate, and better planned. One factor was the political need to maintain international public sympathy, and with it financial support from Western Europe. Another was the rapid expansion of the Nicaraguan state into the countryside with strengthened health, education, and credit programs. But the government already had in place the foundation for an effective response to war-affected populations and could build on existing commitments to the rural poor.

Activities were assured high-level coordination through a Presidential Committee made up of the Ministries of Health, Finance, and External Cooperation together with the Social Welfare Ministry (INSSBI) and the state grain marketing agency (ENABAS). Problems existed initially, especially with customs clearance at Corinto, but prompt formation of an effective interagency committee conveyed a serious approach to humanitarian obligations. The fact that a large portion of the rural displaced population was evacuated by the armed forces as a military precaution both encouraged and facilitated a vigorous response.

The weaker the government infrastructure, the greater the potential for other actors. In El Salvador, Nicaragua and, to a lesser extent, Guatemala, where vibrant private sectors predated the conflicts, nongovernmental organizations were well situated to play active roles.

NGO responses varied over time from country to country. In El Salvador, church-related development organizations were the first to act. As primarily rural-focused organizations with links into the communities most affected by conflict, they combined political and physical access with a moral basis for involvement, expressed in the term acompañamiento. Such groups responded immediately, reshaping development activities to emergency needs with the full support of external NGO partners. With the conversion of churches into refuges and the absorption of displaced people by cooperatives, Salvadoran NGOs rapidly developed capacities for responding to the emergency.

Over the longer term, many donors preferred church-related groups, despite improvements in government programs. External support for their activities conveyed a political as well as a humanitarian message. The large funding channeled through the Moravian Church on Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast, the ecumenical organization DIACONIA in El Salvador, and more recently through the Guatemala Catholic Church expressed donor reluctance to be associated with government policies and provided a counterweight to governments and armed forces.

The scale of such alternative funding questions the stereotype of NGOs as "bit players" in a larger drama. In El Salvador, DIACONIA alone received about $6 million annually beginning in 1981, peaking at nearly $10 million in 1986 after the San Salvador earthquake and again after the FMLN’s 1989 offensive. The total of about $65 million approached the $75 million spent by USAID through the Salvadoran government’s displaced persons program from 1982 to 1992.

Few major external NGOs chose to set up programs within the countries in conflict, but some became operational among refugees in camp settings. The exceptions were European agencies such as Médecins sans frontières (MSF) and Médecins du Monde with programs in Guatemala and El Salvador, and US groups such as the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Creative Associates (CREA) that implemented the displaced persons program funded by USAID in El Salvador.

In light of the capacity of local NGOs to implement programs, most large European agencies felt little need to become operational themselves. Agencies such as the Lutheran World Federation and Oxfam-UK felt that in running their own programs, external NGOs occupied space better filled by local NGOs. Their policy was to support local NGOs with funds and training so that they might become more significant actors. External NGOs and solidarity organizations used their involvement in the region as a vehicle to explain the crisis in the region to their respective publics. Thus, as resources flowed into Nicaragua, information flowed out. First-hand experience of the impact of the contra war on primary health care and education allowed external NGOs to keep home constituencies Wormed. In the UK, mainline NGOs coordinated Nicaragua campaign activities, hosted visitors, and funded television documentaries on the humanitarian impact of the war. Oxfam-UK’s Nicaragua, the Threat of a Good Example became a best seller.

National NGO presence was more limited in El Salvador and Guatemala. As the early stages of the conflicts reduced available humanitarian space, the burden was shouldered by religious and church-based organizations. The San Salvador Archdiocese, with accumulated human rights reporting experience, took the lead, encouraging displaced people sheltered in church properties in San Salvador to share experiences with visiting delegations. With expatriate travel into the countryside virtually impossible, this service allowed foreign visitors to hear direct testimony from war-affected people.

External NGOs were slower to develop the capacity to generate and distribute information on humanitarian issues. Since fewer external NGOs had offices in El Salvador, greater emphasis was placed on building up local capacity. The situation changed abruptly with the closing of humanitarian space during the 1989 offensive, when the security forces deliberately targeted humanitarian actors, expatriates included. In response, a loose coalition of external NGOs produced daily bulletins for European, Canadian, and US church agencies. This generated visits from many delegations, including the British Council of Churches, the United Kingdom Parliamentary Human Rights Committee, and the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA). When the pressure to produce regular reports became burdensome, external NGOs financed a humanitarian information project with two full-time, in-country workers and a staff person coordinating European-level advocacy.

The 1989 offensive made NGOs more aware of the power of information and the importance of lobbying. The purchase of fax machines as a humanitarian necessity, hotly debated within the donor community, helped ensure up-to-date information on human rights violations against local civilians and humanitarian workers. The Salvadoran situation epitomized a process evolving during the 1980s in which European solidarity groups, human rights organizations, and development NGOs pined forces to mount lobbying campaigns on the humanitarian consequences of the Central American conflicts.

In addition to spurring an independent and increased European involvement, these efforts produced additional humanitarian resources for NGOs from bilateral aid budgets and the European Commission. They were also rewarded by direct EC political involvement in Central America with the creation of the San Jose initiative, despite initial US opposition, to support the Esquipulas peace process. Such advocacy efforts presented the root problems in Central America as poverty and inequality rather than communist adventurism.

During the decade the ICRC played an essential though low-key role in distributing assistance, providing protection, negotiating the release of prisoners, evacuating wounded guerrilla fighters, and protecting NGOs. In El Salvador between 1985 and 1986, ICRC officials held more than 400 meetings with the Salvadoran armed forces and the FMLN military command, roughly divided in half between each side. While abuses continued, ICRC officials believe their efforts played a role in "humanizing" the conflict, ameliorating the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians.

In Guatemala, however, because of restrictions on its activities, the ICRC played none of its customary roles. Even in its negotiations with the CPRs, the ICRC has been unable to undertake emergency health and nutrition activities. The ICRC emerged as an actor that throughout the region worked more conscientiously than did others to avoid the politicization of its work, an emphasis that has characterized its approach to other conflicts as well.

The region also turned to UN organizations for help. The response was uneven: less positive where internally displaced persons were concerned; more positive in dealing with refugees in neighboring countries and when they returned. The needs of the internally displaced persons proved difficult for the UN to meet in systematic fashion. Specialized agencies such as UNICEF and the World Food Programme assisted in their respective areas of competence, but their programs bore the marks of pressure from donor governments on the outside and of political tensions within the countries themselves. UNHCR, whose global mandate was limited to persons who had crossed national borders, was never deputized into service among the internally displaced by the Secretary-General. UNHCR also played a highly controversial role in relocating Salvadoran refugees further into the Honduran interior, which was viewed as undermining its humanitarian good faith.

After the large scale repatriations to Nicaragua in 1986, El Salvador in 1987, and Guatemala in 1993, UN agencies played a more significant role. The single most critical difference was UNHCR, which placed significant resources at governments’ disposal. When Miskito refugees began returning to Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast, UNHCR responded to a government impoverished by four years of war that needed financial, administrative, and technical support. For camp-based refugees wishing to return before an agreement between Honduras and Nicaragua opened a direct route across the Coco River, UNHCR organized a more circuitous and costly passage, facilitating a prompt return and contributing to the momentum for normalization.

UNHCR also responded flexibly and creatively to needs once people had returned to their countries of origin. In Nicaragua, it devised Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) to help reintegrate repatriated refugees. QIPs also sought to provide a basis for long term self-sufficiency in communities recovering from the impact of war. In El Salvador, UNHCR took on the documentation of repatriated refugees, displaced persons, ex-FMLN fighters, and other Salvadorans, who for one reason or another lacked personal documents. Its inclusive approach bridged the normal invidious distinctions between refugees and internally displaced persons.

While both the inadequate and overlapping mandates of individual UN bodies impeded an integrated response, UN organizations were motivated to rethink their terms of reference as a result of the process begun by the International Conference on Refugees in Central America (CIREFCA). With UNHCR in the lead, UNDP and WFP were brought into greater contact with the NGO community. The ensuing pressure to involve beneficiaries in project design, implementation, and monitoring posed a dilemma for intergovernmental agencies. Though preferring NGOs as implementing partners, UN agencies had to continue to work with government authorities. Together, UNHCR and UNDP played a mediating role between NGOs and government. Rather than being guided exclusively by government views and those of legitimate NGOs, they forged new relationships, preparing the ground for governments themselves to engage with a wider range of private groups.

An example is El Salvador. At first, the CIREFCA process acted as a forum to bring different humanitarians together to discuss a common agenda. NGOs working in conflict zones with war-affected communities were pressed to form a common NGO position. The consortium that emerged, Concertación, remains an effective advocate for civilians in need. CIREFCA also helped legitimize UNHCR itself, an institution viewed by some NGOs as positioned too closely to governments in the region. UNDP, an institution with relatively little experience in dealing with NGOs in conflict, was able to facilitate greater NGO presence in the reconstruction process than governments would have accepted if left to their own devices.

Another set of actors available to the region’s governments were the aid agencies of donor governments. While USAID was preeminent, much-needed support was also provided by other bilaterals, notably those from Sweden, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, and by the EC. Two of the many contributions of donor governments as a group stand out.

First, all the bilateral agencies operated within well-defined policy frameworks that emphasized work with NGOs. They usually worked through those NGOs in the donor countries with links to local counterparts. Indirect relationships of this sort with a governmental donor agency gave legitimacy to groups whose activities were undermined by national government policies or, on occasion, direc~y threatened by security forces.

Second, the more innovative bilaterals undertook initiatives that fostered new relationships with an impact on consensus-building. The EC created regional programs that brought together governmental and private agencies of the participating countries. Thus at a time when Salvadoran NGO cooperative federations were struggling to make a contribution to national development, an EC-organized cooperative support program required government agencies to collaborate with the cooperative federations as a condition for funding. The Italian government’s PRODERE program provided substantial resources to the CIREFCA process. Its regional project in Chalatenango has served as the forum for different types of agencies to discuss reconstruction priorities.

Grass roots organizations, or community-based membership groups, also evolved into major humanitarian actors. Data from the region calls into question the common assumption that war-affected populations are passive recipients of humanitarian assistance. In the midst of conflict, networks of grass roots groups emerged in each country to represent displaced populations and repatriated refugees. While some grass roots groups predated the conflicts, others emerged in response to donor interest in avoiding the creation of dependency among beneficiary populations. Catholic Relief Services, for example, expected recipient communities in its Salvadoran food aid program to organize into committees for a range of development activities.

The proliferation of grass roots organizations, however, was not primarily donor-led. Many communities did not require outside prodding. A strong sense of community identity already existed, deriving from development work carried on during the 1970s through parish structures, community-based organizations, cooperatives, and peasant groups. As organizations built on prior experience, grass roots groups were better able to represent the interests of beneficiary groups than could intermediate NGOs or government relief agencies.

Grass roots groups in El Salvador, for instance, fulfilled two main roles. While they acted as channels for the distribution of assistance to displaced and repatriated communities, they also created political space for the advocacy of long-term solutions. In working to assure the immediate survival of war-affected communities, they performed creditably under difficult conditions. Beyond distributing aid, they contributed their knowledge of local conditions to shaping broader humanitarian responses.

Moreover, grass roots groups constructed durable solutions to the problems of the internally displaced. Between 1986 and 1988, they initiated a series of repopulations that resettled nearly 30,000 Salvadorans into the conflict zones. They also assisted in the first two refugee repatriations in 1987 and 1988. Well-planned repopulations that included agricultural production, shelter provision, and drinking wafer projects demonstrated viable alternatives to urban poverty. Support for literacy and popular education, human rights training, and legal efforts to obtain identification papers were also important in projecting repopulations as sustainable communities. The civilian victims of the war in El Salvador proved to be protagonists able to organize their own survival strategies while voicing demands for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

An analysis of the division of labor suggests that the contribution of external actors and resources may have been overvalued. The tendency to measure humanitarian activities in financial terms places greatest emphasis on the role of external actors. It is invariably external NGOs, UN organizations, and bilateral donors that mobilize the most visible and quantifiable resources. Other key contributions generated locally tend to be down-played or overlooked.

The generosity of local populations strengthened the survival strategies of internally displaced persons throughout the region. When displaced persons and refugees resumed, they required aid from resident populations. The refugees resuming to Morazán from Colomoncagua in Honduras in late 1989 at the height of the November offensive received help from PADECOMSM, the local community organization that provided assistance with land clearing, transport, and basic foodstuffs. Only later, with normalization of communication with San Salvador, were external NGOs and UNHCR able to respond.

If humanitarian action depends on the seasoned judgment and experience of paid staff, it also relies on the widespread participation of voluntary labor. Yet volunteer efforts, usually provided by women, are seldom quantified. Without mobilization of community-level human resources, externally-funded activities have limited impact. The contribution of women volunteers who cooked for the refugees in Coban en route to Polígono 14 during the January 1993 Guatemalan refugee repatriation is but a single small example of the organizing and supporting roles of women among beneficiary populations.

At the risk of oversimplifying complex relationships, there are two systems for structuring collaboration in the humanitarian sphere during the 1980s. The first was a unified system, characterized by strong collaboration between public sector agencies and NGOs. The second was a dual delivery system compromised of separate NGO and government humanitarian channels, with intergovernmental organizations often mediating between the two. The former system was found in Nicaragua; the latter in EI Salvador and, to a lesser extent, in Guatemala. Each had strengths and weaknesses; each evolved over time.

With 35 percent of Nicaragua’s population affected by the war and with the economy itself floundering, the Sandinista government chose an integrated approach. Outside funding became a priority, with political circumstances limiting the choices of resources available. US government funds were neither forthcoming nor sought. With USAID pressure on major US PVOs to abandon work in Nicaragua and smaller agencies having to cope with the US trade embargo, funds from European donors filled the void.

The INSSBI, the government’s main relief agency, maintained contact with over 150 NGOs, ranging from Catholic agencies to trade union-based organizations, and pioneered the sister city movement that cultivated links between approximately 200 cities and Nicaragua. Coordination was relatively easy, at least early on: external NGOs were in broad agreement with the regime’s policies in health, education, and agrarian reform. War-affected populations were well organized at the community level into groups that articulated the demands of peasants displaced by the war and ensured their participation. The result was a basic consonance among the priorities of local actors, government, and external NGOs–other than in zones controlled by the contras or on the Atlantic coast.

Within the national framework for assistance provided by the government, program coordination also occurred at regional and local levels. Emergency Committees set national, regional, and local priorities. The National Emergency Committee included NGO members such as the Augusto César Sandino Foundation (FACS), the Human Promotion Institute (INPRHU), the Center for Rural Education and Agricultural Promotion (CEPA), and the Evangelical Committee for Development Assistance (CEPAD). Regional Emergency Committees, comprised of INSSBI and the Ministries of Education, Health, Construction and Housing, and supplemented with NGO and church participation, coordinated government and NGO humanitarian activities.

Such close collaboration spawned new approaches. FACS responded to the emergency in the strategic northern districts with integrated rural development projects. The "Sanding Vive" project, designed by FACS to lay the basis for longer term development by providing basic infrastructure, tools, and training to agricultural cooperatives, was supported by four consortia formed by Belgian, Nordic, Italian, and French NGOs. Frequent armed attacks early on forced the units to become self-defense cooperatives, and more recently the absence of credit has restricted production.

The situation in Nicaragua stimulated external NGOs to proceed in ways that would benefit future work in other parts of Central America. Seeing the need for a common policy, various Oxfams–Belgium, Canada, United Kingdom, Quebec, and Australia–held regular planning and liaison meetings. The wider community of external NGOs began to meet informally in 1983. First discussed were information exchange and joint action to defend humanitarian space from attack by the contrast. Over time, the focus shifted to administrative problems in relationships with government and to more substantive issues related to policymaking and program priorities.

The close coordination demanded by the government required changes in agency practices. NGOs soon realized that the war was the main factor behind government priorities and that resource allocations reflected as much war-related concerns as humanitarian or development needs. Government and NGO relationships later became less harmonious. Tension between emergency and long-term priorities underlay conflicts between Managua and NGOs. With regard to housing for affected populations, for example, NGOs favored the use of local resources and labor for making roof tiles because of their development impact while the government, driven by the need to provide emergency responses, preferred zinc sheeting imported from Costa Rica. Similar differences emerged with respect to education and health.

Growing tensions within the unitary system resulted in two unwelcome consequences. First, NGOs lost a certain independence of action. Collaborating with the government at various levels, they became in effect instruments of government policy, as did popular organizations that existed to articulate beneficiary views. Second, rather than contributing to longer term solutions, humanitarian aid helped create a dependent population. The government’s top-down approach led people to expect food, clothing, and shelter.

The politicized wartime situation produced major consequences for the organization of humanitarian assistance. As the fighting escalated, NGOs increasingly became reluctant to engage in relief work with Nicaraguan refugees in Honduras and Costa Rica. NGOs committed to working inside Nicaragua with government counterparts felt unable to risk good working relationships by establishing assistance programs for Miskito and lading refugees. Indeed, because of their perceived association with the anti-Sandinista cause, some organizations refrained from undertaking relief work with Nicaraguan refugees.

As the military situation deteriorated during the 1980s, the political willingness to engage in frank discussion of government policies also diminished. In hindsight, it is dear that the politicized situation hindered analysis of the extent of popular support for the contra cause. NGOs failed to realize the extent to which humanitarian assistance was part of the government’s counterinsurgency strategy. Government economic policies distorted a self-sufficient peasant economy. Humanitarian policies converted people accustomed to production into welfare recipients.

The origins of external NGO work in Nicaragua was a contributing factor to politicization. Some agencies had initiated programs in response to the 1972 earthquake and had simply stayed on; others were making a statement of political support for the government’s development model and an embattled people. In either case, their ability to appreciate the humanitarian situation was quickly overwhelmed by the complexities of the unfolding war, toward which they played a generally passive role. Even the more established external NGOs and local NGOs lost much of their capacity to intercede with government officials and protect their independence to act when they loosened their project criteria to cope with the demands of war.

With the Sandinista electoral loss in 1990, the organization of humanitarian relief changed considerably. The NGO role was reduced, and that of UN agencies increased. The new government viewed NGOs suspiciously. The departure of some external NGOs immediately after the election confirmed the new government’s thinking about the political persuasion of the NGO community. Whereas it was unlikely that the UNO government would have been able to maintain close working relationships with many of the NGOs, the exodus served to discourage it from trying to work with those that remained.

The change in government also ushered in a new stage in humanitarian work. An end to conflict established conditions for the return of the remaining refugees, many to isolated regions where the new government had limited capacity to implement projects. This was particularly the case in the northern Atlantic coast (RAAN) and Rio San Juan regions. With NGOs marginalized or weak there, the burden of project management fell to the UNHCR and CIAV/OEA.

Exemplifying the extent and speed of the shift, the responsibility for repairing and reconstructing bridges destroyed by flooding in the RAAN in 1991 moved from the government to the international donor community. The Sisin bridge on the road from Puerto Cabezas to the Coco River repatriated communities was eventually repaired through the joint efforts of UNHCR, CIAV/OEA and the EC. Without access to the region, those organizations would have remained unable to carry out their activities.

The change in regimes also encouraged program innovations by UNHCR, which devised the QIPs noted earlier. Designed to assist repatriated refugees resuming to communities of origin often devastated by war, QIPs were targeted on zones where government project capacity was minimal. Their impact was generally favorable, permitting intergovernmental organizations to assume greater responsibility for humanitarian work. However, the shift in the division of labor created a major gap. With UNHCR before CIREFCA working only with repatriated refugees and the CIAV/OEA mandate covering only the needs of ex-contra fighters and their families, major sectors of the rural population were left largely unattended.

In contrast to the unitary approach during the Nicaraguan emergency, dual delivery systems developed in El Salvador and Guatemala. Here there was virtually no cooperation between government and NGOs due to political factors and, to a lesser extent, administrative considerations. Humanitarian assistance was pressed into the service of draconian government counterinsurgency strategies.

Unlike the war in Nicaragua that was perceived by some humanitarians to be imposed by Washington, the conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala were characterized as civil wars in which the armed forces targeted civilians they viewed as guerrilla supporters. The effects on the churches and NGO sector were profound. As one of the most significant external humanitarian actors during much of the Nicaraguan conflict, NGOs found little common ground for cooperating with governments that waged war against their own populations.

The United States, an interested party to the conflicts, was unable to play a role in bridging the gap between government and the NGO sector. For instance, massive US assistance to the Salvadoran armed forces contributed to polarization by supporting a military solution to the war. The persistent problem faced by NGOs was that collaboration with the United States, either directly through receipt of funds or indirectly through association with the official commission for the displaced, which was itself supported by US funds, tended to be interpreted as support for Washington’s policies. USAID recruitment of private US relief groups as operational partners widened the gap between NGOs.

The Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments were slow at creating structures to address humanitarian problems. In El Salvador’s case, over a year passed between the war’s beginning and the creation of a specialized agency to deal with internally displaced persons. The process was slower still in Guatemala, where the army treated the internally-displaced population purely as a military problem. It was only with the resumption of the civilian government in 1985, and under pressure from the Mexican government, that the Guatemalan refugee commission (CEAR) was created. Only more recently did CEAR expand its mandate to cover the needs of internally displaced persons. Ironically, a plethora of agencies now dots the humanitarian landscape in Guatemala.

Both government and international donors provided funds to FONAPAZ (an autonomous welfare agency active in conflict zones), FORELAP (concentrating on land verification and land purchase), and FODES (a compensation fund for those displaced from lands resettled by repatriated refugees). Decision-making procedures are convoluted and slow. Project decisions invariably take nine months or longer. The delays in obtaining the necessary government approvals are one reason why even NGOs disposed to work with government often do not.

Violence against civil society left the armed forces and the Roman Catholic Church as the two major actors able to organize projects. But at the beginning of the civil wars, the Guatemalan church was significantly less prepared than its Salvadoran counterpart to serve as a center for humanitarian activities. The church’s human rights work had begun in the late 1970s in El Salvador, when the creation of the Social Secretariat of the San Salvador Archdiocese provided a social agency with country-wide capacity. Moreover, church officials in San Salvador were willing to act. Responding to the growing violence in the countryside, they converted church property into refuges for internally displaced persons.

In contrast, the more conservative Guatemalan church had no such human rights experience or Social Secretariat equivalent. Each diocese was left to organize its own emergency activities. With the church itself under attack in districts such as El Quiche, Baja and Alta Verapaz, providing direct and open assistance was impossible because recipients would have become suspects, endangering their lives. Aid was therefore organized clandestinely or took advantage of official patronage. In Baja Verapaz, where massacres in Rabinal left more than 1500 widows and 5000 orphans, the civilian governor was persuaded to adopt the church program as his own. Though adding no resources, his interest provided an important civilian imprimatur. The ability of the church to involve itself in such activities underpinned the development of alternative systems of humanitarian delivery.

Among the beneficiaries of the church’s capacity to take up humanitarian work were other nongovernmental actors. NGOs were in a better position to respond to the needs in El Salvador than in those Guatemala. They were afforded broad protection by the Catholic Church, while the ecumenical collaboration epitomized by DIACONIA helped establish and preserve the space available for humanitarian action. The Guatemalan church was not able to provide this structure during the early 1980s, when repression was crudest. As the Rabinal example indicates, the church itself was vulnerable and needed protection. Moreover, Salvadoran NGOs were far stronger than their Guatemalan counterparts, who were affected most by the toll of long-term repression. They were able to cooperate in a way that eluded their Guatemalan counterparts, which despite considerable effort between 1981 and 1982 were unable to create a DIACONIA-like agency.

As a community, Salvadoran NGOs were more willing to test limits. The collaboration created to support the Tenancingo repopulation project, for example, demonstrated their capacity to support civilian populations and to shift the terms of debate. Repopulated in January 1986, Tenancingo was the scene of a project drawn up by the Salvadoran Low-Cost Housing Foundation (FUNDASAL) with support from the Archdiocese of San Salvador. The project sought to create a new relationship between the civilian population and the two parties to the armed conflict through agents with the Salvadoran armed forces and the FMLN that neither would base troops permanently in the town nor undertake civic action activities.

FUNDASAL mobilized funds from a range of sources, including the governments of the EC, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and a diverse group of external NGOs reflecting Protestant, Catholic, and non confessional constituencies in Europe and the United States. The resulting high profile effort minimized abuses end established Tenancingo as a test case for the seriousness of each belligerent about humanitarian priorities. A localized effort with national implications, the project gave new legitimacy in national discourse to the needs of the internally displaced and accelerated the process of return

While the high investments in the model Salvadoran project limited its replicability, certain lessons were incorporated by external actors in Guatemala in 1987, when the first group of displaced people came down from their mountain hideaways. The Diocese of the Verapaces drew up an integrated basic needs project with funding from a broad group of European NGOs. The collaborative experience in Verapaces had a more limited impact with the lessons confined largely to the diocese. However, it influenced the planning of the response to refugee return from Hondurasin 1989 and contributed to the creation of OTARDE, an autonomous unit of the Diocesan Department of Social Pastoral Work charged with addressing the needs of repatriated refugees.

Mandate and operational demands led UNHCR to establish working relations with both elements within the dual system of humanitarian action in El Salvador. On the one hand, UNHCR as an intergovernmental agency required good relations with the government to negotiate refugee return and support their reinsertion. On the other hand, repatriated refugees were returning to conflict zones, where UNHCR had to work around the limitations of official delivery systems and seek to assure adequate protection. Relations with the NGO community therefore encompassed not only the delivery of basic necessities– food, shelter, and health care–but also the exchange of information about human rights violations against repatriated refugees and those displaced by the armed forces.

Tensions inevitably existed. Criticized initially by each side because it maintained relations with the other, UNHCR was nevertheless able to establish space to operate effectively. Relations with NGOs improved after November 1989, when UNHCR showed its concern for local humanitarian agencies pinned down by the military’s response to the guerrilla offensive. UNHCR government relations improved as a result of the positive UN role in the peace negotiations.

As noted earlier, CIREFCA played a critical role in legitimizing UN roles and in providing a forum for interagency discussions. Though the practical impact of CIREFCA was less than many had expected, the fact that competing actors were able to discuss and harmonize policy and program priorities was a step forward. CIREFCA also clarified for NGOs and governments the various capacities of different organizations of the UN system. NGO collaboration with UNHCR in response to immediate humanitarian problems did not prove transferable to the UNDP, which eventually assumed leadership of CIREFCA.

Since 1991, the UN itself has assumed a more wide-ranging role in El Salvador through ONUSAL, whose tasks include monitoring human rights and verifying the disengagement and downsizing of the opposing forces. ONUSAL has also opened up the reconstruction process by making municipal development activities more inclusive and by arbitrating the return of the mayors to certain municipalities in the ax-conflict zones.

However, coordination between ONUSAL and UN agencies, and among the UN agencies themselves, has not been smooth. In deciding on an approach to the problem of land transfers, the UN Secretary-General ignored the advice of UNDP and FAO about the numbers of persons who qualified and the time and expense needed to carry out the transfers. As a result, an issue critical to the success of ONUSAL was deferred until after ONUSAL ends, shifting the burden of raising resources to individual UN organizations. This approach also eases pressure on the Salvadoran government to fun