Contras’ Raids Send Message to Managua

With a series of swift attacks, including one that featured apparent executions of war prisoners, U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebels have mocked Sandinista efforts to bottle them up along the Honduran border.

During recent weeks, the rebels, known as contras, have launched pre-dawn raids in towns deep inside Nicaragua. At the least, the assaults represented propaganda victories for the rightist insurgents of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, largest of the anti-Sandinista guerrilla groups.

The message: The contras are back.

With the offensive following hard on a Sandinista campaign to cut the rebels’ lifelines from sanctuaries in Honduras, the war in Nicaragua has begun to take on an ebb-and-flow pattern.

29 Soldiers Killed

Early in August, rebels dipped down as far as La Trinidad, south of the important market town of Esteli, in a raid that killed 13 government defenders. Along the way, the rebels ambushed a military truck, leaving 29 soldiers dead.

Sappers blew holes in a bridge that links Esteli and other northern towns with the south along with three other rural spans.

In Cuapa, a village even farther south in cattle-ranching Chontales province, a similar attack produced more devastating results. Rebels overran a militia post, killing 10 defenders, and then ambushed a truck bringing reinforcements. The ambush killed 31 more soldiers, according to townspeople.

The residents added that the rebels took between 8 and 10 soldiers from Cuapa to the mountains and executed them there.

The Sandinista government in Managua, while publicizing the reported executions and the deaths of soldiers in combat, has remained silent about the ambush. The blackout on information reflects Sandinista sensitivity toward admitting either rebel successes or heavy casualties.

Since the beginning of the year, the government army has concentrated on sealing up the borders with both Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south in an effort to keep the rebels from harassing important farm and population centers.

The effort in the north, involving tens of thousands of troops, seems to have failed. In the south, guerrillas under the command of former Sandinista leader Eden Pastora have been ineffective for months.

“The border is long; the mountains are high,” said Lt. Ricardo Centeno, commander of the so-called territorial units defending La Trinidad. “We know the routes, but the contras evade us, one way or another.”

Fighting during August so far has touched several northern and central provinces. In La Trinidad, the insurgents, dressed in olive-green uniforms, shot up a militia command post and rocketed a health clinic next door.

Bus Waylaid

Along the Pan American Highway, rebel commandos ambushed a jeep carrying three government policemen, who were shot to death and their bodies then burned. The rebels also waylaid a bus and incinerated it after evacuating the passengers. Both incidents occurred slightly north of La Trinidad.

Perhaps most disturbing for the government was a lack of support for the army by large segments of La Trinidad’s population. In fact, peasants reportedly led the contras through Sandinista lines in the mountains.

The government has been unable to create a local militia in La Trinidad, and soldiers have been sent in to protect the town.

“La Trinidad has always been rebellious and divided,” said Josefa Castillo. “Many people here own private property. They are not in favor of the revolutionary process.” Castillo was in mourning for her husband, a Sandinista neighborhood committee chief who was killed during the attack.

Local Aid Played Down

Sandinista officials tried to minimize the help given the contras by local residents. “We don’t ignore the fact that some people help the counterrevolutionaries,” said Manuel Morales, the top Sandinista official in Esteli. “But the main aid comes from the United States government.”

Despite the damage, some good news for the Sandinistas came from La Trinidad. Reinforcements arrived from Esteli within hours to give chase to the rebels.

Also, a Soviet-supplied MI-24 helicopter gunship entered the fight, the first confirmed use of the powerful aircraft. The MI-24 reportedly fired rockets and machine-gun bullets at the fleeing contras.

Such a response makes attacks on towns risky for the rebels, although the government’s claims of 200 enemy dead in the La Trinidad incident seem exaggerated.

Slipping Into Town

In Cuapa, the news for the Sandinistas was universally bad. Rebels entered the town without being detected and overran the military command post. They killed not only the guards on duty but some regular troops passing through on leave.

Snipers hiding in heavy brush along the winding road from the provincial capital of Juigalpa ambushed an East German-made truck ferrying reinforcements to Cuapa.

On the morning of the attack, the contras, reportedly numbering several dozen, attempted to hunt down Sandinista officials in the town. The rebels seemed to be heeding tips offered in a CIA-produced manual last year on how to “neutralize” Sandinista representatives.

The rebels found the mayor, Hollman Martinez, and took him from his home to the village square, where they set up a kangaroo court. They asked the crowd gathered for the occasion if Martinez had harassed the townspeople.

The citizens said no, he was a good man who had done no harm. The contras turned him loose the next day.

Hunting Leaders

The guerrillas also searched in vain for Sandinista neighborhood leaders, but residents would not turn them in.

“The contras came to my house, but they had the wrong name,” neighborhood official Luis Torres said. “I told them who I was, but they went away.”

However, up to 10 soldiers and a woman who was the town librarian and a recruiter for the unpopular military draft had no such luck.

The soldiers were found shot to death the next day along a river bank, apparently executed, according to residents of Cuapa. The woman, Alba Escobar, has not been heard from.

“They called her by name in the plaza and put her in a pickup truck,” said her father, Rene Escobar. “I pray they let her come home.”

Cuapa, a small market center surrounded by cattle ranches, avoided much of the violence during the Sandinista revolution of 1979 and has shown little enthusiasm for what has followed.

Sandinista rule has offered little to the people of Cuapa. Most residents are land owners, and prices for their cattle have dropped steadily. The Sandinista brand of Marxism has clashed with conservative, Catholic rural tradition.

Draft Unpopular

Virtually all the youths in Cuapa have fled the draft. One who did not was shot down in the contra attack, further alienating the independent-minded residents from the government.

Since the attack on Cuapa, the Sandinistas have sent a political team armed with propaganda films to persuade the villagers to fight the contras. So far, however, no one has wanted to join the village militia, one of the civil defense units that are supposed to secure towns while the Sandinista army pursues guerrillas in the countryside.

Curbing rebel harassment is difficult for the government, especially since sanctuaries in Honduras and Costa Rica are all but off limits to major Sandinista attacks. The governments of both countries were once thought to be worried about having contras on their soil. But since a renewal of funding for the rebels by the U.S. Congress this spring, the concern seems to have dissipated.

Last week, President Reagan signed a foreign aid bill that included $27 million in “non-lethal” assistance for the contras. The infusion of U.S. dollars will take care of transportation, boots and beans--everything short of weapons and bullets. Arms reportedly come from private donors.

Earlier this year the contras were said to be weakening because of lack of assistance and pressure from host governments to reduce their activities along the border. But rebel leaders in Honduras now estimate that about 10,000 guerrillas are fighting in Nicaragua.