The illegitimate presence of El Salvador in Iraq

The war crimes

The last images of the degrading behavior of the American soldiers towards the Iraqi prisoners have put an end to the support that Bush had: the defense of freedom and democracy against a barbarian attitude and the systematic violation of the human rights. The President of the United States and his leading lieutenants were hidden beneath the surface of the alleged moral superiority of their principles in order to guarantee their war in Iraq. Once the alibi about the weapons of mass destruction had vanished, and without any possibilities to prove that the former Iraqi dictator had a connection with the Al Qaeda, the defenders of the war against Sadam hid themselves behind the high occidental values in order to keep a good conscience and justify their “humanitarian” war.

The report of the International Red Cross
One year ago, in the middle of a violent war, the International Red Cross had denounced the horror of the “war of the liberation”. Thousands of civilians died due to the lack of scruples of the American soldiers that bombarded the communities. A representative of this international organization in Iraq, questioned the kind of weapons that were being used –apparently, there were certain contradictions regarding the international laws, which forbid the use of weapons that produce an indiscriminate number of casualties- because of the dozens of the mutilated bodies of innocent civilians.

Before the images of the tortured prisoners, it has been made public that a few months ago the Red Cross gave a report to the occupant forces in Iraq about the behavior of the soldiers. This text criticizes the indiscriminate number of arrests, the interrogation methods, and the conditions in which these arrests had taken place. Everything was part of a well-articulated structure that shows very little respect for the human rights. By the tone of the report revealed by the Wall Street Journal, it can be said that there was a systematic violation of the human rights, and a lack of respect for the Geneva Agreements.

As for the indiscriminate arrests, the report of the Red Cross indicates that between 70% and 90% of the prisoners had been arrested by mistake. In other words, the members of the coalition have no scruples when it comes to take the freedom away from the innocent Iraqi people, those who have no connection or whatsoever with the alleged saboteurs of the labors of peace. The most repugnant aspect of this whole situation is that the majority of those who are arrested are innocent people who are humiliated, insulted, and become the victims of both a physical and a psychological coercion.

As for the interrogation methods, the document of the Red Cross describes horrifying actions that lead to think that torture has been institutionalized in Iraq. The head of the prisoner is covered with a bag to disorient him and prevent him from breathing freely. At the same time, they are constantly beaten up in order to increase their anxiety waiting for the next hit, which could be on the legs, on the back, on the ribs, or on the face. The prisoners are constantly threatened with reprisals and menaces against their families, or by mentioning the possibility of sending them to Guantanamo Bay if they do not clear up the suspicions that the coalition has.

The conditions in which they are kept under arrest, according to the International Red Cross, are completely connected with the methods formerly described. The prisoners are kept naked and isolated for several days, in a dark and an empty cell that only has a latrine. The bodies of the prisoners are “displayed” naked, and they are kept in humiliating positions. Sometimes they are chained under the direct rays of the sun during the moments at which the temperatures are very high, and they make them listen to a very loud music. An official who belonged to a high rank was asked about these cases, and he responded that everything was part of a process to get valuable information in order to neutralize the resistance and reestablish the order in the country. For him, these tortures were a way to reward or punish those who had been arrested according to their degree of cooperation.

In the mean time, the report of the red cross describes a case of the consequences and the aftermath of the tortures against the Iraqi people. A medical doctor of the institution who had contact with the people that had been arrested spoke about the case of several individuals that had difficulties to speak, memory problems, lack of concentration, and incoherent verbal expressions. One of them –a victim of the American army’s methods of interrogation- did not respond anymore to verbal stimulation or pain. His heart had 120 pulsations, and he had suicidal tendencies.

There are enough reasons to say that torture has been institutionalized in the jails, and that the last pictures of these humiliations that were published by the international news media are not the actions of a small group of sadists that dishonor the great labor of the coalition in Iraq. The Americans responsible for this situation decided from the beginning to ignore all of the international conventions about the way in which they treated the war prisoners. The systematic violation of the human rights of the Iraqi people was imposed as a rule since the first day of the occupation.

Will the guilty ones be punished?
Since the pictures that showed the humiliations to which the Iraqi prisoners were subjected to were published, those who are politically responsible for these events have done everything they possibly can to announce that those who are guilty will be sanctioned. President Bush condemned, without hesitating, the attitude of his soldiers, and he stated that the shameful behavior of a small group of people should not affect the compromise that his country has with the freedom and the dignity of the people. The Congress of the United States took the case very seriously, and it intends to come out of such an embarrassing situation. In the mean time, several soldiers have been arrested and accused before the military courts because of the crimes that they committed. It seems that there are enough elements to think that the war crimes that took place in Iraq will not be left unpunished.

However, beyond the decisions that have been made, some people have the impression that the investigations will not get to the roots of the problem. This is because those who are truly responsible for these crimes are officials (of a high rank) that belong to the Bush administration, officials that from the beginning decided to overlook the international agreements about the war. In this context, as it can be inferred from the report prepared by the Red Cross, the pictures that have been published do not only reflect the actions of a group of “lost” soldiers, but they were taken in a hostile situation where the rights established in the Geneva Convention for the prisoners of war were violated.

Those who are actually responsible for these actions could be found inside the highest political circles of Washington. President Bush, his Secretary of War, Donald Rumsfeld, and the highest military authorities of the United States are the ones that designed the new rules of the war, in a context that they see as an unprecedented situation of combat against international terrorism. Therefore, they chose to deny the necessary protection to the war prisoners (the people arrested in Afghanistan). They are sent to Guantanamo Bay with a vague and a contemptuous name: the enemy’s fighters. Because of the declarations of several people who have been able to get out alive from the prisons, no one speaks there in terms of respect about the laws of the war, and the prisoners are not treated like human beings.

The Geneva Agreements, that took effect October 21st of 1950 (the United States signed this agreement), establishes in article 12 that “the prisoners of war are in the power of the enemy, and not in the hands of the individuals or the troops that captures them. Therefore, independently from the individual responsibilities that there might be, the country that arrests those prisoners of war is responsible for the treatment that they get” In other words, and based on the international law, the United States and Great Britain, as the countries that occupied Iraq are responsible for the abuse that the Iraqi prisoners have suffered.

Article 13 of the same agreement indicates that the “war prisoners should be treated as human under all circumstances. It is forbidden –and it will be considered as a serious violation against this agreement- to commit any illicit actions, that is, the country that makes an arrest should not put the health or the life of a war prisoner in danger. Particularly, no prisoner of war should be subjected to physical mutilations (…) In the same way, the prisoners of war should be protected at all times, especially against any act of violence or intimidation, against insults, and against the public curiosity. The retaliation against the prisoners is forbidden, and (…) they have the right, under any circumstances, to be respected; their honor and their being should be respected”.

As it might seem evident, these rules have not been respected in the case of the prisoners arrested in Guantanamo or in the case of Iraq. Even if it was important to announce the measures that could be adopted to punish those who are guilty of these crimes, it would also be necessary that those who belong to the high circles of power, and who are guilty as well, respond for their acts and the sudden changes that they made to the laws of the war. The Bush administration did not respected them, and it should respond before both the Iraqi people and the United Nations for the lack of decorum of its members and the violations against the human rights that the soldiers committed.

However, as it could be supposed, the task of investigating about the responsibility of those involved will probably not go too far. This is not the first time that the countries that invade a territory ignore the laws of the war. This will not be the last time that these crimes of war remain unpunished. Just to name a few recent examples, France committed abominable crimes during the War of Independence of Algeria, just as the United States ignored the human rights of the Vietnamese people during the war that was fought during the sixties and the seventies. None of these countries has had to respond for the actions of its soldiers as the Geneva Agreement established. In the case of the Vietnam war, several people who were guilty of the crimes committed during the war against this country were awarded with medals for their courage and for their combat skills.

This kind of records can only lead people to think about impunity and about a superficial investigation of the crimes that the American soldiers committed in Iraq. To punish a few soldiers will not be enough to wash their crimes away. It would be necessary to ask the political authorities for an explanation. However, this might not be possible. It seems that the political responsibilities will not even be separated. In any case, President Bush has reaffirmed his trust in his Secretary of Defense, who, according to Bush is showing a terrific performance in the war leaded by his country.

The economic diagnosis of the country as a weapon to keep the status quo

The first quarterly report of the Salvadoran Foundation for the Economic and the Social Development (FUSADES, in Spanish) reflects a stagnated state of the economy, something understood as “a period during which the growth of the economic activities is always smaller than its tendency in the long term”. In other words, the Salvadoran economy is at the previous stage of an “economic coma”, where all of the economic sectors of the country could go into a period of recession with an increasing level of both unemployment and poverty.

There are a couple of questions that emerge when the present state of the economy is analyzed through the 2004 quarterly report prepared by FUSADES: are they telling the whole truth about the situation? Who is getting the benefits of the present economic moment? In the diplomatic language of the report, the word “recession” has not been pronounced yet; however, it has been mentioned that “the economy is at the low level of the economic cycle”. A new number of doubts emerge in this case: who has the responsibility to protect the interests of the Salvadoran population in case of the menace of an economic depression? The businessmen? The analysis made by FUSADES gives the reader no reason to celebrate about the state of the economy. The report avoids to present an integral vision of the economy, not only from the perspective of the businessmen, but from the perspective of those less fortunate. The presentation of the report does not mention the lack of purchasing power of the population or the unemployment level, while the people, now more than ever, suffer the consequences of the Neoliberal economic model.

The growth dynamics and the economic conjunction
FUSADES sums up the economic situation of the country in just one phrase: in the last 50 years, the historic growth rate has been at an annual level of 3.3%, while the productivity rate has been equivalent to 0.0%.

The GNP of El Salvador, which is the total market value of all the goods and services produced in the end by the production factors located inside the country’s borders, is inexorably falling since 1996; however, the vicious circle of the deficient growth level has not been broken in almost 50 years. FUSADES measured the potential rate of the country’s productivity level, and it turned out that, excluding the factors that go beyond the economy, such as the armed conflict of the eighties, the country’s potential growth rate was 4.5%, and the productivity rate was 0.8%. This means that if we were to use the productive factors at its mot dynamic level, it would be more realistic to aspire to reach a growth rate and a productivity level of that magnitude.

It is no consolation prize to know that according to the report, the economy keeps a gap under the level of potential growth between 1.3% and 2.5%. How can we grow more? What are the factors that the country can rely on to grow more?

As for the external factors, the report explains that the economic activity of most of the economic regions at a global scale will considerably increase, according to the information provided by The International Monetary Fund (FMI, in Spanish) and the Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL) until April of 2004. In this context, an improvement is expected in the United States (from 2.2% in 2002 to 4.6% in 2004), in China (from 8.0% to 8.5% in the same period), and in general inside the global market the Euro is the less dynamic area (although it maintains a positive level of growth). In other words, the expectations connected with the variations in the percentages of the global economic activity are positive and show a “good health”. In fact, the production and the world’s commerce have gone from a growth of 3% (2002) to a perspective of 5.7% for 2004.

When focused on the region, the dynamism projected by the aforementioned organisms is at a lower level, compared with the emerging economies of China and the United States. However, there is a positive tendency: the possibilities indicate that Costa Rica might go from a rate of 2.9% (2002) to 4.3% by 2004; for the same period, Guatemala would go from 2.2% to 2.6%; Honduras, from 2.7% to 3.5%, while El Salvador is the only country that, according to the predictions of the CEPAL, will be stagnated between a rate of 2.1% and 2.2%.


This information means that, in short, despite the fact that since 2002 both the global and the regional economies have grown, and therefore, they have manage to keep the dynamic level of its productive activities, El Salvador seems to be at a completely opposite direction, that is, El Salvador is not following the global course. During the last couple of years, the country has been kept under the plane of the Central American level and under the world’s level, and even in the positive projections made by the FMI, the country can only aspire to reach a growth level of 3% for 2004, that is, the country will remain in the same situation that has been for already 50 years, and under the level of potential growth that the economy has.

When the structure of the GNP is analyzed, the situation becomes clearer in order to discuss the present state of the economy. The evolution of the growth of the GNP by sectors is clear: the agricultural and the cattle-raising sectors keep creating a considerable percentage of the income of the economy, since it represents 11.6% of the GNP; however, these are some of the sectors that have kept a negative growth rate. The quarterly evolution of the economic sectors, according to FUSADES, has kept its cycle of fragile growth from a global perspective as well as from the perspective of the industry, construction, services, and commerce. The curious aspect of all this is that in spite of this objective climate of the economy, the subjective perception, according to the last opinion poll conducted by FUSADES, is connected with a considerable amount of optimism about the short and the medium term performance of the economy.

The factor of the sudden general optimism of the businessmen about the possibilities to have an improvement in the economy, according to the aforementioned opinion poll, has taken a surprising turn from January to April of 2004. We have gone from the electoral uncertainty, to the certainties of a stable political climate. That is how 62% of those interviewed foresees a formidable situation for the economy, according to the expectations that they had on April, compared with a 24% that thought the same thing on January. The people that supported the vision about an economic recuperation for the country, based their opinions on the following reasons: the result of the elections, 46%; political stability,18%; an increase on the investments, 16%; commercial openness and the free trade agreements, 14%; and the economic stability, 11%. Instead, for the businessmen who do not think that the future economic context is favorable, the reasons behind their pessimism are the following: the lack of support to the business companies, 26%; the economic stagnation, 17%; the interest rates, 12%; the delinquency levels, 11%; and the low purchasing power, 9%.

FUSADES: blame it on the remittances
According to FUSADES, the fragility of the GNP finds year after year its own explanation on the consumption dynamics, the investment, and the country’s exportations. For FUSADES, exportation is the key aspect that has an influence on both investments and consumption, and therefore, on the growth of the GNP. This means that if the growth of the exportation level were positive, so would the economic growth. However, what has happened in the country is a recession in the quarterly amount of exportations since the last seven years. This forced landing on a ground of poor exportation levels is connected with the quarterly systematic reduction of the maquila exportations and not the traditional ones. If on the one hand, the reduction of the exportation level continues to consolidate itself as a strong tendency, on the other hand, with the importation level it is a completely different story. The importation level has increased, and the automatic result is that now the commercial deficit is even higher.

As the analysis gets more complex, the composition of the exportations during the first quarter of 2003-2004 shows that the maquila industry is still considered as one of the most important parts of the exportation market. For instance, between January and March of 2004, according to the Central Bank of Reserve (BCR, in Spanish), $442 million came in from the production at the maquilas, that is, $51 million more than the total of all of the traditional exportations combined ($60 million), coffee ($39 million), and the non-traditional exportations ($292 million), which add up to $391 million. The same tendency repeats itself in the first quarter of 2003. An analysis of the same period (from January through March between 2003-2004) the importation level also increased. Most of it was destined to the purchase of goods (it increased form $376 to $406 million) and to the purchase of intermediate goods (it went from $472 to $492 million), and in a smaller proportion, another part was destined to the capital and the maquila.

In the same way, the amount of family remittances continued to grow between January and March of 2004. The amount added up to $560 million, that is, $94.8 million more than in the same period for 2003. It was, in addition, a higher amount reached during the first trimester of each year beginning in 1996.

The answer of FUSADES about this economic behavior (which becomes evident through the systematic reduction of the GNP, accompanied by the increase on the importations, the reduction of the amount of exportations and the increasing number of remittances) is simple. The pressure of the increasing number of remittances in a small and an open economy such as the one that El Salvador has, creates a flow of cash that immediately increases the inflation level as well, and, therefore, currency tends to become and “expensive” item. In a dollarized economy, all of this goes against the exporters, since it takes away from them the necessary level of competitiveness in terms of a higher level of prices when compared with the situation of other countries and the sales of their products tends to decrease. However, the automatic mechanism that the economy has in order not to surrender to the pressure created by inflation, is the growth of the deficit of the commercial balance. That is why FUSADES states that “the growth of the commercial deficit can be substantially explained by the remittances”.

What FUSADES does not explain is that there are many other factors, besides the remittances, that actually create the problem. For FUSADES, the problem is not located inside the economic model encouraged by the State. They think that the trigger of this deplorable economic situation is located inside the growing flow of remittances, that its economic effect is inside the commercial balance, and that, therefore, the flaws are of an external nature. This position is, in the present context, “politically acceptable” in order not to criticize the State or the status quo of the hegemonic block of the business companies.

What seems to be ironic about the case is that that, according to this logic, “the lifesavers” of the economy (that is, the remittances) are also to “blame” for the recession of the economy. The remittances are, therefore, a knife that cuts both ways. However, what also seems to be interesting is that they are used by the government as both an economic and a political wildcard. After all, according to FUSADES, the State has nothing to do with this growing flow of remittances, has it ?

The truth is that the little dynamic system of exportations does not only have to do with the lack of competitiveness because of the prices or because of the currency value. The government has a considerable share of responsibility for the systematic abandonment of the productive sectors, such as the cattle-raising, the agricultural, and the manufacturing sectors. The same figures presented by FUSADES or the ones presented by the BCR show this aspect of the problem. The levels of innovation and technology, and the initiatives of the businessmen not only depend on them, but particularly on the sectional policies that promote a productive conversion. It would be enough to see the evolution of the Index of the Industrial Production Volume (IVOPI, in Spanish) to see the precarious situation of the industry and the Index of the Economic Activity Volume (IVAE, in Spanish) of the agricultural and the cattle-raising sectors.