Struggling for Survival

By Richard Stengel.

Underarmed, undernourished and under fire, the contras are on the ropes. Most are languishing in makeshift bases in Honduras rather than staging raids in their native Nicaragua. After a few highly publicized victories, the contras have reached the nadir of their troubled five-year history. Indeed, one of the obstacles facing Ronald Reagan's policy of using the contras to make the Sandinistas "cry uncle" is that, even with a significant infusion of military aid, the desultory band of rebels shows little potential of posing a threat to the regime in Managua.

A year ago, some 15,000 contras operated across almost a third of Nicaragua, their campaign underwritten by U.S. aid. Today, crippled in part by Congress's < fickle approach to supplying aid, only some 4,000 remain in Nicaragua; the rest have been forced by a vigorous Sandinista counteroffensive to retreat across the border. Nicaraguan Defense Minister Humberto Ortega Saavedra has said that the contras have "totally lost the initiative." For once, the American military seems to agree with the Sandinistas. Admits General John Galvin, commander of the U.S. Southern Command: "They need training, they need advice in terms of strategy, tactics and senior leadership. Their basic military techniques are rather poor." Even a specially commissioned Administration report concludes that the contras are so weak and divided, so poorly trained and led, that money alone is not likely to revitalize them.

The principal contra army, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), consisting of about 15,000 men, is spread among four bases north of Nicaragua in Honduras. Two small rebel bases lie just inside Nicaragua to the south, close to the border, and several camps and a base are in Costa Rica. Says Enrique Bermudez, the FDN's commander in chief: "Close to 70% of our fighting force has become confined to our camps, defending them on the one hand and awaiting supplies on the other." The main contra base, in the middle of the jungle 30 miles inside Honduras, has a cluster of tents earmarked for logistics, intelligence and personnel. Life at the contra bases consists largely of waiting for meals and intermittent training sessions. From the camps in Costa Rica, the rebels have launched few attacks and seem to spend most of their time fighting the mosquitoes. At the Costa Rican camp run by Fernando Chamorro Rapacciola, the officers practice silk-glove military discipline: "If we are too hard on them, they will leave," says Chamorro with a rueful smile.

The FDN rebels themselves tend to be untrained and uneducated peasants. "The FDN," says Robert Leiken, a Latin American expert from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "has shown little interest in recruiting educated, urban cadres, who tend to have political differences with the FDN leadership." According to the Administration report, contra fighters often lack the skill to read maps, maintain technical equipment or carry out tactical maneuvers.

Many of the contras' field commanders, including Bermudez, are former members of deposed Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle's National Guard, the instrument of oppression in Nicaragua for more than four decades. For most Nicaraguans, this makes them something less than the "moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers," as Ronald Reagan has described them, and makes it harder for the FDN to inspire the populace.

Sandinista troops, on the other hand, are bolder and better equipped than ever. The combination of Soviet-built Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters with heavy artillery has overwhelmed the rebels. Cuban advisers have tightened up the Sandinistas' communications and coordination.

"The implementation (of the contra effort) has been a disaster," says one Washington official. "This whole thing was never really thought through. We figured an armed group would be enough to shake things up. We underestimated (the Sandinistas') toughness and nationalism." Money can buy time and training, U.S. military and Administration analysts say, but a major tactical and structural overhaul is required to make the contras into anything resembling an effective threat.

With reporting by David Halevy/Tegucigalpa and Harry Kelly/San Jose