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DEL.ICIO.USSalvadoran troops know the drill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Keith Hadley/AJC
A Salvadoran officer salutes his country's honor guard during a ceremony in Kut, Iraq.
AUDIO
• Salvadoran troops shout “Cuscatlan!” the region for which their battalion is named
• The Salvadorans sing their National Anthem
Camp Delta, Iraq — They were young lieutenants in El Salvador’s bloody, 12-year civil war. Now colonels and generals, the battle-hardened soldiers are drawing on those experiences here in southern Iraq.
“Our internal conflict helped us. That gave us the experience to come to this country and make the public realize the Army is on their side,” said Lt. Col. Carlos Alvaro Rivera Mora, 44, who served in El Salvador’s military for the last 10 years of the war there.
“Although the causes have been different for the conflicts,” he continued, “the results have been the same, such as poverty. We have been dealing with the results of the conflicts the same way.”
El Salvador, like Iraq, has struggled with a violent insurgency. From 1980-1992, an estimated 75,000 people died as a result of the war in the Central American nation. In what is considered one of the last episodes of the Cold War, U.S. military advisers trained government forces in El Salvador, while the guerrillas received help from Cuba and the Soviet Union. The war ended in 1992 when the government and leftist rebels signed a treaty.
Mora is a member of El Salvador’s 5th Contingent, a group of about 380 infantry soldiers, special forces and engineers. The regular Army unit is wrapping up a six-month tour in southern Iraq’s Babil and Wasit provinces.
The Salvadorans said they completed 31 public infrastructure projects worth more than $4 million during their stay. They also rebuilt roads and bridges, built water treatment plants and restored electricity for more than a million people.
They did these projects, Mora said, under the umbrella of the Iraqi government so local residents would perceive their elected leaders have the power to help them.
Much of the work was done in the Hillah area, a densely populated region where textiles and date processing are the biggest industries. Hillah Mayor Imad Lafta Al-Bayty said his city’s unemployment rate hovers at 75 percent.
For some of their projects, the Salvadorans teamed up with the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, a Georgia National Guard unit also stationed in southern Iraq.
“It is a great honor to work side by side with the coalition forces,” said Col. Ruben O. Rubio, 46, commander of the 5th Contingent, who was among those officers who fought in his country’s civil war. “For us, it was a great opportunity to make friends. That is the most important thing here — to make friends.”
Rubio befriended Lt. Col. John King, commander of the 108th. King had a big advantage: He was born in Mexico City and speaks fluent Spanish.
“Nobody sells Democracy better than the Salvadoran soldiers,” said King, 42, Doraville’s police chief.
The Salvadorans helped secure polling places in the Babil Province so voters could cast ballots in the historic October and December elections.
“There were many changes in order to have democracy and freedom and sustained development [in El Salvador]. That experience helped us here,” said Gen. Eduardo Mendoza, 47, another veteran of El Salvador’s civil war. He is now deputy commander of coalition forces in parts of central and southern Iraq.
Rubio’s unit focused primarily on civil affairs work in Iraq, but King said the Salvadorans are known in Iraq for being fierce fighters. Iraqis, King said, jokingly warn him never to make the Salvadorans angry.
Since the invasion in 2003, two Salvadoran privates have been killed in Iraq. One died in a vehicle accident and the other was killed by hostile fire. Mora’s unit has not had any fatalities, but one of his soldiers was shot and seriously wounded during an ambush in September.
Last week, the 5th Contingent held a small ceremony at this base in Kut, near the Iranian border. The Salvadorans were marking the end of their deployment and the beginning of the 6th Contingent’s tour here. The troops stood in formation in a gravel parking lot under a sunless sky.
Each time their leaders called them to attention, the troops shouted “Cuscatlan!” a region of El Salvador for which their battalion is named.
To symbolize the exchange of authority, Rubio handed his unit’s gold flag to Maj. Gen. Edward Gruszka, the Polish commander of coalition forces in central and southern Iraq.
Gruszka kissed the flag and then presented it to Rubio’s replacement, Col. Julio Armando Garcia Oliva. Rubio’s men are now headed home.
Comments
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By chris
February 22, 2006 09:26 AM | Link to this
THERE WE GO EL SALVADOR MY COUNTRY! IT NICE WHEN COUNTRIES WORK TOGETHER.