Switch to Low-Level Combat : Contras Alter Strategy in Wake of U.S. Aid Cutoff

ON THE HONDURAS-NICARAGUA BORDER —  The young man from the northern mountains of Nicaragua stood at attention, holding an old shotgun at his side.

A tin can on his hip substituted for a canteen. His flimsy boots were held together with ribbon, while a fragment of shoelace secured the front of his khaki trousers.

During three weeks of military training, he had been taught how to shoot, how to crawl under barbed wire and how to scale walls.

Fortified with this meager training and a bitter will, the neophyte guerrilla said he was ready to kill Sandinistas. “I hate communism,” said Martin Castillo in simple explanation.

“And just what is communism?” a visitor asked.

“Communism is what they have in Nicaragua,” he answered.

Castillo, 19, is a new member of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the principal rebel organization making war on the Nicaraguan government. Dubbed contras-- short for counterrevolutionaries--by the leftist Sandinista government, the rebels have started calling themselves that, too.

In more than three years of combat, the group, also known as the FDN for its initials in Spanish, has grown into a diverse band of fighters harboring a wide range of grudges against the Sandinistas. Their battle is presently waged over a broad strip of northern Nicaragua and, less intensely, in an area toward the center of the country.

Until last spring, the struggle was building to a war of pitched battles, army versus army, but it now consists mainly of ambush and sabotage. The flame was reduced after Congress withdrew U.S. funding from the rebels last June, after spending more than $80 million on the officially covert war.

At a headquarters camp set among rugged and lush Central American mountains, contra leaders anxiously await word of whether their crusade will again win support of the U.S. government.

Despite hardheaded vows that the fight will continue even without U.S. aid, leaders fear an eventual winding down of the revolt--a slow-motion equivalent to the Bay of Pigs--should Congress reject funds for their cause. Last October, Congress again refused to provide any money but set aside $14 million to be available in March if both the Senate and the House vote to release the funds.

“More U.S. aid is vital,” said Enrique Bermudez, chief military commander of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force. “Without it, we will be putting our fighters, our supporters and political opposition in Nicaragua all in danger.”

The uses to which past aid has been put were on view at the headquarters camp. Reporters were allowed to visit the camp recently on the condition that they not reveal the location or name of the base.

Huts in the Hills

Wooden huts dotted the hills in well-organized clusters--a commando unit here, logistics there, even a small bamboo-and-barbed-wire jail house. A field hospital was equipped with life-saving machinery and was manned by experienced doctors. Radios housed in a beige-colored van sent coded messages deep into Nicaragua.

Veteran guerrillas donned lightweight, U.S.-supplied camouflage uniforms and floppy field hats.

But creeping shortages were also evident. Top officials complained that combat activity has been cut in half to conserve bullets. Commanders haggled with supply officers over deliveries of new boots. A new recruit marched in bare feet. Others wore tattered cowboy boots, sneakers and old shoes with gaping holes.

“This does not make a good advertisement for the U.S. as an ally,” said Mike Lima, one of the regional commanders of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force. “The North Americans are indecisive.”

How Far They’ve Come

A large map in a shed that is the rebels’ war room reveals just how far the contras have come in three years and the distance they have to travel before toppling the Sandinistas.

Blue rectangles pinpoint the location of rebel troops. They are clustered mainly in the northern mountains of Nicaragua, near the towns of Esteli, San Rafael del Norte and Pantasma and in the wilds of eastern Matagalpa province. The Nicaraguan Democratic Force has organized nine regional commands ranging in size from 1,000 to 4,000 men; Bermudez estimates that he has 14,000 troops under arms, but it is not clear how many of these rebels actually operate in Nicaragua.

The guerrillas’ southernmost penetration is in Boaco province, about 60 miles east of Managua. But the location is manned by a single unit of unspecified strength.

Red Marks for Sandinistas

Facing the blue rectangles are a much larger number of red rectangles--denoting the Sandinistas.

It is an indication of the success of the rebels that they have forced the Sandinistas to divert many troops to regions threatened by the insurgency. Military conscription by the government to meet the challenge has proved unpopular in Nicaragua and has and driven recruits to the contras.

The regular Sandinista army numbers 50,000 men and is supplemented by 50,000 reservists.

The Sandinistas are far better armed than the contras and in recent months have received large shipments of arms, including combat helicopters, from the Soviet Union. The contras, meanwhile, have been forced to scrimp on expenditures of everything from bullets to beans while the U.S. decides whether or not to renew aid to them.

Contra Leaders Optimistic

The apparent ability of the rebels to survive impoverishment leads to a certain optimism on the part of rebel leaders. “Although the lack of resources has hurt us, it has also forced us to better adopt guerrilla tactics,” Bermudez declared. “Now everyone is an expert in irregular war.”

In Nicaragua, the effects of the change in tactics are evident:

Ambushes are frequent, and the Sandinistas have restricted travel on the country’s network of roads. The Sandinistas have laid mines at the base of bridges to discourage contras from blowing up the spans. Dynamite blasts set by the rebels twist silos off their foundations, and coffee, an important export crop, goes unharvested.

The Sandinistas’ military draft has created labor shortages as well as political problems for the government. At least 25% of the government budget goes to defense.

This is not a war that seems likely to be concluded quickly. Lacking U.S. aid, the best the contras can do is drag out the low-level combat.

“We are in a prolonged conflict,” Bermudez said.

Bermudez, the force’s reclusive leader for three years, formerly served in the National Guard of deposed dictator Anastasio Somoza, a service for which he has no apologies.

“I have nothing to be ashamed of. I served in an institution that was constitutional in its time,” he said.

Bermudez, 52, missed the action--and repression--that acompanied Somoza’s 1979 fall from power. At the time, he was stationed at the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington as military attache.

“I watched the war on television,” he quipped.

Bermudez emphasized that the Nicaraguan Democratic Force is not dominated by former Somoza guardsmen and that only 40 officers from the National Guard remain in its ranks, plus 200 other, lower-ranking members.

It is clear, however, that the top positions are dominated by ex-guardsmen. In addition, Bermudez is reserving a political role for himself if the rebels win. “I have a moral responsibility to the men who have fought to see that the victory is not twisted,” he said. “We do not want to go from one dictatorship to another.”

Unification Stymied

The National Guard connection has stymied efforts of rightist rebel leaders such as Bermudez and the Nicaraguan Democratic Force’s civilian leader, Adolfo Calero, to unify with some moderate and most leftist Nicaraguan dissidents and guerrillas. Most notably, former Sandinista leader Eden Pastora, now heading his own contra faction from bases in Costa Rica, resists ties with the FDN, which he characterizes as “genocidal.”

Nonetheless, some moderate politicians are expected to join soon with FDN leaders in signing a unity letter that will spell out a common purpose in overthrowing the Sandinistas.

Bermudez, his gray-speckled hair grown long from life in the bush, claims purely patriotic reasons for joining the rebellion.

“I knew the Sandinistas were Marxist-Leninist,” he explained.

His reasoning is loftier than the usual ones to be found at the camp. Longtime supporters of the contras, usually non-combatants, joined because they lost farms and businesses after the Sandinistas seized power. Younger, newer adherents signed up in response to a particular feature of Sandinista rule that they found unattractive--the bullying that accompanied the march to single-party power.

The headquarters camp is a sprawling complex and a highly conventional one for a force that has turned to unconventional warfare. With its pine huts, kitchens and hospitals, the base would barely be mobile in case of attack.

Guerrilla Greetings

Soldiers greet each other with the guerrilla names that they gave themseves upon enlisting--Machete, the Persecuted One, L-26. Bermudez’s code name is Commander 380.

Some were big-time farmers, some cultivated small plots, some had no land at all. The lower the rank, the browner the skin. They all seem to have some score to settle with the Sandinistas.

Payo, an elderly guide for reporters, said he once owned a cattle ranch near the Managua airport. Not long after the Sandinistas took power, they called in a bank debt that he was unable to pay.

“It was humiliating,” said Payo. “They wouldn’t let me into my own house. I never saw my furniture again.”

Working-Class Rebel

Lima, 25, whose name stands for the initials of his real identity, was a youth from the working-class Managua neighborhood of San Judas when the Sandinistas triumphed. He had ambitions of becoming a National Guard officer, but graduation from military school was still a year away.

He claims that the ne’er-do-wells in his neighborhood were suddenly coming to power and harassing him. Eventually, someone killed his brother--who, Lima said, was a Sandinista sympathizer.

He went to Guatemala and four years ago joined the FDN.

“Give us some aid, and we will make the north tremble,” he proclaimed.

Lima’s body is like a relief map of battle. He lost his right arm in 1984 to a mortar accident. His right leg was wounded in the same explosion. Shrapnel broke his left leg in several places, and only an operation in the United States saved it. His left wrist is also shrapnel-scarred, and his hearing is impaired from experiencing too many explosions at close range. “I have plenty to tell my grandchildren,” he said.

Two Peasants Slain

Gary, a longhaired rebel folk singer, was once a Sandinista border guard. He said he revolted after the Sandinistas killed two peasants suspected of collaborating with the contras.

He composed a song about the incident. “There was knock on the door,” the song goes. “The campesinos opened it. They thought the house was burning . . . . “

Until three years ago, Jonathan, another contra, owned a small cattle and coffee farm in the northern town of Santa Clara. When the Sandinistas instituted their centralized pricing plans, he decided that the pay was too low to continue farming. He made connections with the rebels through relatives.

“Plenty of farmers joined at the time,” he said.

Jonathan returned to the north last year on a particularly deadly mission during an attack on the town of Ocotal, where his relatives now live. The contras killed several Sandinista militiamen and suffered casualties themselves, including the task force commander.

Fleeing the Draft

New recruit Castillo, like many in his training class, is fleeing the Sandinista draft. He says government agents have begun a roundup of youths around his hometown in Quilali. He and five friends decided to abandon their mountain home for the contras.

Castillo recognizes the irony of escaping one army to join another. He explains the contradiction: “The Sandinistas try to take you by force. Here it is voluntary. That is the difference.”

Castillo’s sidekick, Crescencio Garcia, says he was repelled by Sandinista offenses against his religion. Garcia, a Protestant, says local officials robbed money collected for his Rays of Light church in Rancho Grande, Matagalpa, and killed a lay preacher.

“My proposition now is to fight,” said Garcia. “We can no longer just pray for deliverance.”

The Nicaraguan Democratic Force exploits these feelings of neglect and abuse with a program that calls for liberty and democracy. They declare themselves a Christian movement. They promise a return to an open economy.

Elections are a priority for the leaders, who discuss them as a long-term goal, but are rarely mentioned by the followers.