Conflict

Since the Ukraine war, Estonia has stepped up training for members of the Estonian Defense League, teaching them how to become insurgents, right down to the making of improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.s, the weapons that plagued the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So the announcement last week by the director of the National Civil Police, Howard Cotto, that police have done this 459 times so far this year points to the severity of the conflict between the gangs and the state. This means El Salvador's authorities are clashing with criminal groups more often than in Mexico, which is still engulfed in a drug war, and Colombia, whose half-century-long civil war is ending.

El Salvador’s hostilities appear to be taking on a dangerous new dimension. Once predominantly a street fight between rival gangs, the conflict has shifted to a war between the gangs and the state. Soldiers and police are being linked to human rights abuses and assassinations, an echo of the civil war between leftist guerrillas and the U.S.-backed government fought a quarter-century ago.

President Juan Manuel Santos told Colombians on Friday that “everything is on the table” in efforts to revive a peace pact that voters narrowly defeated Oct. 2 and said a revised accord could be reached “in a matter of days.”