Nicaragua's Elusive War

By George Russell

A guerrilla struggle raises charges of covert U.S. involvement

Reports from the various battlefronts were murky, confused and conflicting. Casualty figures and claims of triumph were trumpeted confidently, but without verification, by both sides. Only one fact was certain in Nicaragua last week: a new level of clandestine guerrilla warfare was under way in the tiny Central American republic. Ironically, the Marxist-led Sandinista government that overthrew Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 now seemed to face an insurrection very similar to the one that brought the Sandinistas to power. At a hastily arranged press conference in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega Saavedra declared last week: "We consider the situation to be critical."

Nicaragua tried to make the most of its alleged injuries at an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council. The country's Deputy Foreign Minister, Victor Hugo Tinoco, charged that the new warfare was inspired and armed by the Reagan Administration, which is determined "to destroy the Nicaraguan revolution." That challenge earned a sharp rebuke from U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who called Sandinista fears of a U.S. invasion a "myth." Kirkpatrick did not address the main Sandinista contention: that the guerrilla warfare now plaguing Nicaragua is part of a covert operation directed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

The latest charges have further increased the rhetorical temperature in Central America. Defense Minister Ortega warned darkly last week of "the possibility of war" with neighboring Honduras, which he accused of aiding the rebels. Nicaragua also charged that Honduran troops had briefly entered Nicaraguan territory, an accusation that the Hondurans labeled "totally false." Said a State Department official: "The Nicaraguans create a devil outside to increase internal solidarity."

Nicaragua's concern was mirrored in some corridors on Capitol Hill. Congressman Michael D. Barnes of Maryland last week decried a "1980s version of the Bay of Pigs." Said he: "It appears that the U.S. is engaged in supporting a war in Latin America without discussing that involvement with the American people." Said another congressional source with privileged access to U.S. intelligence information: "We're concerned about the danger of a wider conflagration." At the same time, many members of Congress continue to support the Administration's efforts to curb Soviet influence in the hemisphere, even if it means engaging in covert activity.

Despite the ample declarations of concern, the war in Nicaragua remains for the most part invisible. Newsmen who descended upon the country last week could find little evidence of fighting. The major sign of military activity in Managua was the predawn jogging of groups of Nicaraguan army soldiers near the city's Intercontinental Hotel. In the town of San Fernando, nearly 159 miles from the capital, the only sign of combat was a cornfield still ablaze as a result of fighting the day before. Said a U.S. diplomat in Washington: "They have clearly got a fighting situation on their hands. But they are hyping it beyond proportion."

Whatever the level of the fighting in the Nicaraguan countryside, there could be little doubt that the Reagan Administration was in some way involved. One of the worst-kept secrets in Central America is that the U.S. has been helping to arm and aid some of the Sandinistas' most active opponents. But that fact alone could not explain what was happening in Nicaragua. Distaste for the increasingly repressive Nicaraguan regime has been growing. Many of the government's thoroughly disaffected opponents would probably be taking up arms even without U.S. assistance or encouragement. State Department Spokesman John Hughes said last week that rejection of the Sandinistas is "diverse, nationalistic and independent."

Some of that opposition may also be exaggerated. The latest Nicaraguan claims of covert U.S. aid to the insurgents came as the rebels made a series of melodramatic radio broadcasts in which the so-called Nicaraguan Democratic Forces (F.D.N.), an alliance of anti-Sandinista guerrillas that includes many members of the late Dictator Somoza's hated National Guard, said that "the hour of the struggle has arrived." For more than a year, these counterrevolutionaries (known as contras) had staged hit-and-run attacks on the Sandinista regime from sanctuaries across the Honduran border. Their targets were principally in the adjacent Nicaraguan departments of Jinotega and Nueva Segovia. Those assaults have often been matched by fighting in the Nicaraguan department of Zelaya, on the country's Atlantic coast, where the Sandinistas have alienated many of the resident Miskito Indians with a heavyhanded and often brutal attempt at "revolutionary" cultural integration.

A third guerrilla faction includes Eden Pastora Gomez, a Sandinista hero who became disillusioned with growing Soviet and Cuban influence over the revolution and defected from the Nicaraguan government in 1981. The group that includes Pastora has been biding its time in the democratic oasis of Costa Rica and has refused, in public at least, to deal with any of the other dissident groups that include former National Guard members, notably the F.D.N. Several weeks ago, Pastora slipped secretly into Nicaragua, and late last week he suddenly re-emerged in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

More than a year ago the F.D.N. guerrilla faction began to take an active military posture. Its well-armed forces moved directly into the provinces of Jinotega and Nueva Segovia. According to the Sandinistas, those forces represent ten groups of 250 men each. But anti-Sandinistas who have close ties to the F.D.N. claim to have 16 battalions of 750 men each within Nicaragua. U.S. intelligence sources, while not disputing the fact that the rebels are active, consider their numbers to be grossly inflated. In the U.S. view, F.D.N. strength is probably closer to 2,000 men.

Whatever their strength, the contras claim to have achieved a number of major, but unproved, triumphs over the past weeks, including the brief capture of some largely deserted northern and central Nicaraguan towns. They also say that they "control" (meaning, actually, that they enjoy freedom of movement in) an area covering the northern quarter of the country. The contras' campaign began to attract international attention when their clandestine radio station reported heavy fighting near the provincial center of Matagalpa, only 70 miles north of Managua.

Except for its responses to the indignant Sandinistas, Washington maintained a studied silence as news of the fighting in Nicaragua emerged. The official U.S. view of Nicaragua, State Department Spokesman Hughes said last week, is that "we do not support any return to Somocista government."

In fact, TIME has learned from F.D.N. sources that the Reagan Administration has been and is deeply involved with the attacking contras. According to those sources, the U.S. control is indirect. At the top, they say, the Nicaraguan Democratic Front has a "political coordinating committee" made up largely of conservative and moderate Nicaraguans who fled their country during the last three years of Sandinista rule. Also included is Colonel Enrique Bermudez Varela, a former member of the Somoza National Guard who was his country's military attache in Washington until the Sandinistas took over.

Behind the coordinating committee are said to be three military general staffs who run the current guerrilla campaign. The first, which is composed of former National Guard officers, has been purged of its most brutal elements from the days of the Somoza regime--at the urging of the CIA. The second staff group is made up of members of the Honduran military, plus Colonel Bermudez and a military representative from Argentina, a country that has also been heavily involved in training and equipping the contras. According to the F.D.N., a key member of the second staff is a man known as Carlos, who is the CIA station chief in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

The third general staff is, by the F.D.N. accounts, an all-American body. It is composed of CIA experts and representatives of the U.S. Army's Southern Command, based in Panama. This third staff is allegedly the brains of the insurgency. Its job is to pass orders to the second staff, which in turn relays them to the contra commanders. The coordinator of the separate command group activities is said by the F.D.N. sources to be John Negroponte, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras. Says a Western diplomat: "His job is to keep the Hondurans in the game. He keeps them enthusiastic."

At least one purpose of the Byzantine contra command structure is to allow U.S. military and intelligence personnel to conform with a rider attached to the 1983 Defense Department appropriations bill, passed unanimously by the House of Representatives last December. It forbids the Administration to use funds for "military equipment, military training or advice, or other support for military activities, to any group or individual, not part of a country's armed forces, for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua or provoking a military exchange between Nicaragua and Honduras."

CIA and Pentagon advisers in the contra insurgency are still respecting the letter of that law, but barely. Some members of congressional oversight committees have begun to think uneasily that the spirit of the law has been contravened. Those concerns undoubtedly will grow if the guerrilla war in Nicaragua intensifies, as the rebels intend it to. --By George Russell. Reported by Bernard Diederich/Managua and James Willwerth/ Tegucigalpa

With reporting by Bernard Diederich/Managua, James Willwerth/Tegucigalpa This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.