Sandinistas Hunt Contras in a Low-Intensity Conflict

The Sandinista column crept through a morning mist that turned each tree and soldier into a silhouette and engulfed the hills above in white. By 6 a.m., the soldiers had been marching for nearly an hour in search of about 80 rebels they knew to be nearby.

The translucent mist and the steep terrain could provide cover for an ambush, a tactic currently favored by the U.S.-backed contras, as the rebels are known . The soldiers stopped often to listen for movement among the echoes of howling dogs and roosters, and they stiffened when a flock of vultures suddenly took flight.

But there was no ambush. And there was no battle. By the time the mist cleared away, so apparently had the rebels, dissolving into the tropical countryside.

“Their objective is not to engage in combat with us,” said Luis Maradiaga, one of the soldiers. “Their objective is to penetrate to the south, to ambush us and sabotage. But they avoid combat.”

Guerrilla Warfare Veterans

The Nicaraguan soldiers belonged to the Simon Bolivar Irregular Warfare Battalion, one of about 15 units trained in low-intensity warfare and known by their Spanish initials BLI. The special battalions, led by veterans of the guerrilla war that brought the Sandinistas to power in 1979 and made up of the country’s most physically fit draftees, are the backbone of the government’s counterinsurgency war.

Soldiers from the Simon Bolivar battalion took two reporters on an operation earlier this month in the northern province of Jinotega, a coffee and cattle region that has been an important front in the 4 1/2-year war between the Marxist-led government and the contras.

The view from the rain-soaked hills in northern Nicaragua was of a low-intensity war that is costly to the Sandinistas in lives and resources but poses no military threat to their army, the effectiveness of which improves yearly.

The journey also provided a view of the army as a tool for building revolutionary consciousness among young men and peasants throughout the countryside. Each company is assigned a political instructor from the Sandinista National Liberation Front to provide ideological training.

“You know, President Reagan helps us build our consciousness,” said Maradiaga, political instructor of the battalion’s 5th Company. “The army and the war teach us to share. Thanks to Reagan, we are all sleeping in the rain.”

Full Battles Infrequent

During the 5th Company’s three-day patrol, the Sandinista soldiers fought only twice with groups of contras in brief skirmishes that first were mistaken for thunder. The soldiers said they had not had a full battle with the contras in three weeks.

The military objective of the army operation was to keep the contras away from towns and economic targets, and to prevent them from heading south to join the rebel Nicaraguan Democratic Front’s command in the central provinces of Boaco and Chontales. If the Sandinista soldiers could not engage the contras in sustained battle, then at least they wanted to keep them on the run, tire them out, force them to exhaust their food and ammunition so that they must head north to resupply in Honduras.

After a period of relative quiet early this year, the contras increased their ambushes and attacks in March to coincide with lobbying in Congress on President Reagan’s request for $100 million in military and economic aid for the rebels. The aid was approved by the House on Wednesday night. The contras also wanted to get a jump on the rainy season that makes movement and resupply more difficult.

The upsurge in activity also came after the contras received non-lethal supplies bought with aid money appropriated by the U.S. Congress last year. But recently, according to Western diplomats and Sandinista military people, the supplies have been running low and activity is leveling off. They say that many of the contras inside this country--estimates range from 4,500 to 7,000--have headed back toward the Honduran border.

Discontent With Draft

Soldiers in the field say they are waiting to see if the plodding contra war turns into “a real war” with the United States.

“We don’t want open war, but with the steps they are taking, well, that’s the way it happened in Vietnam,” said Julian Lopez, an enlisted man with three years in the Sandinista Popular Army. “With the approval of $100 million, all that would be left is for the gringos to come directly to fight. They (the contras) have the logistical support, military support, supplies.”

Despite widespread discontent with the draft and reports of army desertions, many of the conscripts interviewed in the Simon Bolivar battalion appeared to be as committed to the Sandinistas as their permanent army commanders are. They say that they readily accept the fact that military service has taken them away from their studies, families and girlfriends for two years. Their commanders say the draftees are screened for their “ideological clarity” before being assigned to these special units.

Young people and their parents both have protested the Patriotic Military Service, as the draft is called here, and many evaders have fled the country. During a protest in December, 1984, residents of Nagarote, a town northwest of Managua, erected barricades to keep army recruiters out. Simon Bolivar battalion commanders said there have been some desertions, but they offered no figures.

Most of the Simon Bolivar soldiers interviewed said they do not aspire to military careers or political jobs, but they firmly declare that the Sandinista revolution will not be worn down by what they call “U.S. aggression.”

“We are clear why we are here,” said Francisco Martinez, 22, a battalion scout who tracks the contras. “No one can endure this easily, but it is easier if you know why.”

Memories of Somoza

When his obligatory service is up in two months, Martinez will return to university studies and will automatically be put in the military reserves. He wants to be an agronomist. “It is not only the military who defends our country. Nicaragua needs more technicians,” Martinez said.

The soldiers call their enemy La Guardia , after the National Guard of the late Anastasio Somoza, the dictator toppled by a Sandinista-led insurrection in 1979. The contra army, organized by the CIA in 1981, includes disaffected peasants, draft evaders and former Somoza supporters, and some of its leaders were officers in the old National Guard.

The Simon Bolivar battalion is led by Sandinista regulars or permanent soldiers, many with experience in the mountains as guerrillas fighting Somoza.

The 5th Company’s leader, Juan Perez, 30, was a Sandinista combat guerrilla in Jinotega before what the Sandinistas call “the triumph”--their victory over Somoza. Perez has been fighting the counterinsurgency war in northern Nicaragua for four years. A quiet and intense leader who has applied to become a militant, or core member, of the Sandinista party, he says his battle is for socialism.

“We are fighting to build our country. We want to combat underdevelopment, illiteracy, to penetrate the back country so farmers will have schools, medical attention and can attend to their crops,” Perez said.

“Capitalism only benefits those who know how to take advantage of it. Socialism is for the good of all,” he said.

Perez’s commander is Capt. Julio Cesar Ochoa, 27, head of the Simon Bolivar battalion. Ochoa was a member of the Sandinista Front in the neighboring province of Matagalpa during the insurrection and has been in the regular army since the Sandinistas came to power.

Seek Farmers’ Backing

Perez’s political officer, Maradiaga, a career soldier, has been under arms for nine years, first with the Sandinista guerrillas during the revolution and now with the army. Maradiaga, 24, teaches the troops how to get along with the peasants and works with the farmers himself.

The Sandinistas have worked hard to win support from the independent-minded northern farmers, many of whom resent the state-run economy and the war fought in their cabbage fields.

In an move to deny the contras a civilian infrastructure, the government also has forcibly relocated thousands of peasants from the north. Those who remain are important sources for information on contra movements and for food for the soldiers.

During the recent operation, Maradiaga and two other soldiers walked to a rural store in El Mojon to buy bread and chat with the men and children there.

“Hello, Grandfather,” he said to an elderly man splitting wood on the store porch. “How old are you?”

“I’m 89,” the man said with a toothless smile. His name was Jose Pineda, and Maradiaga bought him a cup of coffee.

“Ever know the General?” Maradiaga asked, referring to Augusto Cesar Sandino, a soldier from whom the Sandinistas take their name and who fought against U.S. Marines sent to Nicaragua in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

“Sure, I met him when he married my niece,” Pineda said proudly.

Tells of Kidnaping

Maradiaga asked the store owner, Don Carlos, if he was having any problems getting supplies from the state Ministry of Internal Commerce. He was not. Then Maradiaga told him in a slightly patronizing voice that the Sandinista soldiers understand why storekeepers and farmers sell food to the contras--because if they refused, the rebels would consider them enemies.

“We are all human and have to eat,” said Don Carlos. “What if I said no? They could kill me.”

The contras apparently have not helped their case with the peasants in the El Mojon area. Don Carlos said that two local men were kidnaped by the rebels during the last month.

One of them, Francisco Ajenor Ureda Altamirano, 29, was a Sandinista supporter. Ureda’s sister, Patricia Garcia, and his aunt said that Ureda was taken from their wood-and-mud house by the contras at 2 a.m. on May 21.

“They banged on the door and when he opened it they said, ‘What is your name?’ And he told them,” Ureda’s aunt said.

“ ‘Are you the one who came here yesterday on foot at 2 p.m?’ He said yes, he came to see his mother. ‘What do you do?’ they asked.

“He said he was a painter and they said, ‘Well, you painted us (informed on the contras). Let’s go,’ ” she said.

Ureda has not been seen since.

Pose as Civilians

The non-governmental Permanent Commission on Human Rights says its knows of 35 such abductions or disappearances since late 1984. Americas Watch, the New York-based human rights group, has reported that it gathered testimony on about 90 “murders and disappearances” carried out by the contras in 1985.

Simon Bolivar battalion soldiers said that contras sometimes dress as civilians and hide in the peasants’ houses, and Capt. Ochoa said his soldiers occasionally pose as civilians, too, to gather intelligence. Both tactics clearly could subject peasants to potential abuses from the opposing sides.

In the presence of reporters, however, the Sandinista soldiers were gracious with the farmers, careful to close cattle gates when crossing their property and to pay for the cheese and tortillas that they got from civilians. When coming upon a house, most of the soldiers hung back while one or two approached the families to talk quietly.

The peasants were encouraged to seek minor medical help from the army medic, and several did.

The strength of the Irregular Warfare Battalions is in their detailed knowledge of the peasants’ terrain. They comb each knoll, learning the cow pastures and barb-wire fences, the wooded areas of trees strung with philodendron.

The soldiers wear out a pair of boots every three months, trudging through mud in patrols of 15 to 30, armed with Soviet-made AK-47s, Belgian-made FAL automatic rifles and 82-millimeter mortars. They said they rarely call for heavy artillery or helicopter support these days because it is not needed against small groups of contras.

A Western diplomat in Managua said, however, that the reason helicopters are now being used less often is that the contras have captured Sandinista surface-to-air missiles, giving them the firepower to down the helicopters.

Adopt Guerrillas’ Style

Sometimes the soldiers cover as much as 15 miles in a day. Sometimes they hike for only an hour. They say the enemy determines their movements. This time, the contras were trying to approach the town of San Rafael del Norte, about 100 miles north of the capital, so the soldiers’ pursuit was short range, in circles.

The soldiers live the life of guerrillas, wearing camouflage fatigues, cutting firewood with machetes and sleeping under plastic sheets in torrential rains. They keep their spirits up with jokes and boyish boasting.

And they sometimes talk about politics.

“You know, in the United States there are doctors who drive Rolls-Royces,” said Hector Uriel Martinez, a medical intern who volunteered to do his social service work with the army.

The soldiers show off shoelaces and canteens captured from the contras with “Made in U.S.A.” labels. On a portable radio they sing along to Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” in accented English. For dinner, they fry green bananas, kill and skin a cow and boil the meat.

They hike, eat, sleep and hike, always armed, and they call each other companero , or comrade.

“At first it’s hard to be in a BLI,” said draftee Miguel Gadea, 19. “But then you gain confidence in the land and in the rest of your comrades, and that gives you the morale to fight.”