Contras’ Battle Hinges on Ballots in Congress

With the war in Nicaragua reduced to sporadic clashes set off by rebel ambushes on mountain roads and trails, even the poorest farmer and isolated soldier in the remote northern hills of this country seem to know that the next important rounds will be fired in Washington--by ballot in Congress.

The rebels, once backed directly by U.S. funds funneled through the CIA, have withdrawn in large numbers across the frontier into Honduras, soldiers of the Sandinista army say. They have left behind small groups to harass traffic and shoot up remote outposts.

Lull in the Fighting

The Sandinistas, who are taking advantage of the lull to man strategic high ground in the mountainous north, attribute the decline in the fighting to two factors.

They say that Nicaragua’s policy of relocating peasants from their homes in rebel-infested areas has deprived the insurgents of food and shelter, precipitating their retreat. And they believe that uncertainty over resumption of U.S. aid, an issue soon to be decided in Congress, has prompted the rebels to conserve their supplies.

“Our zone is pretty clear,” said Lt. Santos Zelaya, a Sandinsta army officer here in San Sebastian de Yali. “There is nothing for the contras to eat, so they left. We will see if they come back after the vote.”

The vote is on President Reagan’s request for $14 million in aid for the rebels, a conglomeration of disenchanted peasants and elements of the old National Guard of deposed rightist dictator Anastasio Somoza. Many contra military leaders are former guard officers.

Nicaragua’s leaders consider $14 million unimportant in itself. Approval or disapproval is not expected to turn the tide of the rebel campaign immediately.

But as an indication of U.S. intentions toward Nicaragua, the vote is seen as a turning point. Approval of the $14 million would move U.S. involvement out of the “covert” category and would signify open hostility, Nicaraguan leaders say.

‘Intervention Into Law’

“It is essentially a war credit. They are putting intervention into law: a declaration of war,” said Victor Tirado, a member of the nine-man Sandinista directorate that governs Nicaragua.

The war--even at reduced levels--has created major problems for an agriculture-based economy that is already battered by lower production caused in part by official pricing policies.

Government leaders recently predicted that Nicaragua, beset by shortages of basic foods and fuel, faces further austerity. They blamed these conditions on the pressures of a “war economy.”

“The situation demands more discipline, austerity and conservation by all,” President Daniel Ortega said in a speech to Sandinista labor leaders.

Prices for almost everything have been skyrocketing recently, and the government appears to be preparing the population for disappointment in forthcoming salary adjustments meant to keep pace with inflation. Ortega said that peace along Nicaragua’s relatively urban Pacific coast is being “subsidized” by the blood of soldiers in the northern mountains.

More Austerity Ahead

“New wage adjustments will not mean the workers will be able to acquire more consumer goods,” Ortega explained. “The people must understand clearly the gravity of the economic situation and that the country is at war, even if we (in the big cities) still have baseball games, take trips, enjoy Easter holidays.”

The joys of spring that Ortega mentioned are clearly less evident in northern Nicaragua.

“More warfare will finish us all,” said Father Miguel Angel Vasquez, the parish priest in San Sebastian de Yali.

Yali is a mountain town depressed by three years of fighting. Farmers have stopped working the surrounding fields of corn and coffee and the cattle pastures because of such dangers as contra ambushes and return mortar fire by the Sandinista army.

Vasquez said that military mobilization, draft evasion and discontent with government policies have depleted the supply of farm labor.

Travel Too Costly

Transport to market towns has practically ended. Only one passenger truck a day travels to nearby San Rafael del Norte. The cost of the journey has skyrocketed from 15 cordobas (about 55 cents) to 300 (about $10.71), prohibitive for the ragged farmers who live in surrounding villages.

“I have lived here 55 years and have never seen things so bad as now,” said Julio Rodriguez, who operates a small hotel.

“Maybe the vote (in Congress) will end things one way or the other,” Rodriguez said.

Northward beyond Yali, along a single dirt road that winds among small pastures and plots of coffee plants, the landscape turns bleaker.

A dusty resettlement camp at a place called Las Colinas houses farmers who were relocated in February from their homes in La Rica, now a mountain no-man’s land. The displaced villagers live in tin-roofed, open shacks built by the government.

Rusted Truck Carcasses

“They say we can go back when the war ends,” said Maria Contreras, a grandmother caring for seven children whose fathers were either pressed into the army or were fighting with the contras. “Maybe we can go--in the year 3000,” she quipped.

Just beyond Las Colinas lay the rusty carcasses of army trucks shot up by the contras during the past year.

A toothless woman in the last inhabited home along the road says she has heard of the vote in Congress, but doesn’t exactly know whom it would favor.

“Contras or compas (slang for the army), I really can’t tell the difference,” she said.

Houses beyond her frond-roofed shack are empty. In La Rica, two miles away, reporters were greeted only by a cat moving among the ruins of a house that the contras burned because it belonged to a Sandinista sympathizer.

This was contra country, and a sign on an abandoned store suggests why La Rica was evacuated: “Rebel farmer--give yourself up to the closest military post, with your war gear,” the scrawl said. “The Revolution will be generous with you. We’re waiting at Las Colinas.”

‘Used to Be Terrible’

Residents along the road from Yali to La Rica said that it has been several weeks since they heard firing in the hills. Only the speed of army trucks racing along the road to avoid ambush suggests a danger.

“It used to be terrible,” said Armando Molina, a coffee farmer. “In January, I was standing in the fields when--wham!--a mortar came down 100 yards away. It sprayed shrapnel everywhere. The only good thing was that we could make knives out of the pieces.”

Along the northern border with Honduras, a relative calm also prevails. In the town of San Fernando, soldiers bathed in a rushing stream and washed their clothes.

Sandinista officer Carlos Gusen said that in recent days, only the ambush of a tobacco truck near Jalapa had marred the quiet.

“We have been able to scale some of the hills near the frontier. We hope to catch the contras when they come in,” said Gusen, whose post is a scant three miles from Honduras.

“There are just a bunch of small groups of contras left operating,” Gusen said. “Of course, they make things difficult.”

He said that with or without new funding for the contras, he expects fighting in the hills to continue indefinitely.