Nicaragua Draft Taking Firm Hold : Conscription Used to Instill Ideology, Official Concedes

The military draft that has helped turn Nicaragua’s army into Central America’s largest is a permanent measure meant in part to instill Sandinista ideology in the nation’s youth, not simply a temporary policy in response to the rightist insurgency, a top Nicaraguan official says.

Officially called Patriotic Military Service, the draft as a long-term program adds to an increasingly militarist character of rule by the Sandinista Front for National Liberation, Nicaragua’s governing party.

“It’s strategic, sure. There would have been military service without the contras, “ said Victor Tirado, one of nine Sandinista Front directors, each with the title comandante, who rule Nicaragua.

States of Alert

Nicaragua is a country in virtually a constant state of military alert for what the government has long predicted will be a U.S. invasion. War fever is bubbling again as Nicaragua awaits word as to whether the U.S. Congress will approve a Reagan Administration request for $14 million in aid for the rebels, called contras, who are fighting the Marxist-led Sandinista regime.

During almost six years of Sandinista rule, the government has to some extent militarized nearly every segment of society. A favorite slogan of the Sandinista government is, “All arms to the people.” It could as well be, “All people to arms.”

Neighborhoods are organized into militia brigades. Street corner armories are filled with Soviet-made AK-47 rifles and ammunition.

Workers are called regularly from their factories for service in the countryside. Agricultural technicians go to the fields carrying weapons.

Rifles Replace Bats

School children learn how to arm and dismantle rifles. During a recent anniversary celebration of the founding of Sandinista militias, semiprofessional baseball teams marched in their playing uniforms, carrying rifles instead of bats.

The total number of men under arms is hard to come by. The Pentagon has estimated the size of the regular Popular Sandinsta Army at 41,000 troops and the reservists and militiamen on active duty at 21,000. Another 57,000 people serve in civilian militias but are not on active duty. The population of Nicaragua is 3 million.

Military conscription began in 1984. It was announced originally as a measure needed to confront a growing threat from the contras, who received U.S. aid through the CIA until Congress halted that funding in mid-1984.

About 30,000 youths were drafted in 1984, and about the same number are scheduled to be called up this year.

The draft set off a flight of youth into hiding. Parents fought with draft registration agents to keep their sons home. Some youths fled the country to avoid induction.

Unrest Called Temporary

Tirado shrugged off such unrest as a merely temporary phenomenon.

“In 20 years, there will be no discontent,” he said.

Recent call-ups have been accompanied by propaganda aimed at convincing youths that joining the army is not only the manly and patriotic thing to do but that failure to appear for an induction physical examination can mean jail.

Messages on the radio liken draftees to lions on the loose; draft evaders are derided as “birds,” a reflection here on the draft-evaders’ masculinity.

The official newspaper Barricada recently printed details of draft-evasion trials. The contrite youths said they would serve if set free, but they were sentenced anyway, the newspaper said.

Although the war was the reason given for conscription, Sandinsta officials foresaw a draft as far back as 1979, long before the contras launched their first attacks from Honduras.

That year, a report by Sandinista leaders to front members predicted that a task of the new Sandinista Army would be to institute “obligatory military service.” No details were made public then.

Tirado denied that emphasis on a political role for the army contributes to a militaristic society. Any burgeoning militarism is a result of U.S. hostility, he asserted.

“What militarism is there here?” he asked. “When the U.S. says it doesn’t approve the $14 million, militarism will end here. But while they are still asking for $14 million to pressure Nicaragua militarily, militarism advances here.”

As it does in most other Central American countries, the army here retains a strong political role for itself.

Conscription Armies

Neighboring El Salvador and Honduras both have conscript armies, and in both, military leaders proclaim that their institutions are guardians of constitutional law.

According to Sandinista dogma, the real role of armies in countries such as El Salvador and Honduras is to keep the poor in line for the benefit of landowners, business people and the rich.

In Nicaragua, on the other hand, the army is supposedly keeping capitalists and other well-to-do people under control on behalf of the poor. The army makes the difference between a robust Sandinista Front able to advance its political program and an impotent leftist party merely clinging to power, according to Sandinista doctrine.

In a 1981 speech, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega said that opponents of the Sandinistas want a democracy that means “for them to have the army--the power--and for us, the Sandinistas, to be . . . an organization that (only) moves, prints its newspapers.

“They, the bourgeoisie, would be the ones to control power,” he said.

“Now, it is the opposite. Here in Nicaragua, power is held by the Sandinistas.”

Sandinista leaders hold that, to play the role of power broker effectively, soldiers must be “clear” in their ideological outlook, guided by the teachings of Marx and Lenin, as well as by such Sandinista heroes as Carlos Fonseca Amador, one of the front’s founders, and Augusto Cesar Sandino, a Nicaraguan rebel figure from whom the front takes its name.

“The fundamental strength that we must consolidate in the army is ideological firmness and political mastery of problems,” Ortega said.

Tirado explained that political education is not given just to formal members of the party, many of whom are in the army, but also to draftees.

“It’s in order to make them conscious of the revolution, beginning with Sandinista ideology,” he said. “It’s political. Here everything is political.”