The Contras Have It All Backward : To Succeed, a Guerrilla War Must Start With Popular Support

The theory of action in guerrilla warfare seems to be acquiring renewed importance in U.S. military circles. A special warfare operations detachment at the U.S. Southern Command in Panama has been trying to teach the Nicaraguan contras the basics in guerrilla methods, mostly by learning from the example of the Salvadoran rebels. At first glance this seems quite straightforward; however, it is mostly an exercise in self-delusion.

In the first place, a successful guerrilla war builds its foundations from the bottom up. Salvador Cayetano Carpio, the late founder and leader of the Popular Liberation Front in El Salvador, referred to this as “the accumulation of revolutionary elements throughout the process of prolonged people’s war, moving from the simple to the complex.” This is an arduous process that begins within society, with the purpose of building a broad-based popular front. It took the Salvadoran rebels nearly two decades to develop a front unified enough to challenge the government’s armed forces.

In contrast, the contra machinery was assembled in, and remains largely based outside, the country that it is supposed to “liberate”--in contrast to all successful guerrilla movements in the 20th Century. The contras have no discernible logistical links with the urban sector, and their leaders have not led popular organizations of significance.

Guerrilla tactics are best developed by those directly involved in the war. Mao Tse-tung wrote, “If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution.” In other words, it is not up to U.S. military experts to determine tactics and strategy, but to the contras themselves. This seems hardly possible. When the contras are in Nicaragua, their contact with the population is minimal. They hardly have the overview that a popular front provides in logistics and intelligence, which guerrilla forces require to carry out their operations.

As Carpio put it, a guerrilla force must fight within “an overall strategy in which all methods of struggle (may) be used and combined in dialectical fashion.” All methods--psychological and physical, defensive and offensive, political and military--combined in such a way that the opponent is hardly ever doing what he thinks he is doing. For example, a rural “offensive” by government forces becomes a “defensive” if the rebel forces step up their operations in the urban sector. Similarly, a military “victory” may well be a psychological “defeat.”

In El Salvador earlier this month the army suffered a double defeat, losing a key infantry base and then losing face in a largely unsuccessful scramble after the guerrillas, who had melted into the countryside.

Last but not least, a successful guerrilla movement is a popular nationalist movement based on strong historical roots and situated in a particular historical context. It cannot be created at will. The Salvadoran insurgency was born in Agustin Farabundo Marti’s 1932 uprising that cost the lives of 30,000 peasants. The Sandinistas have Augusto Cesar Sandino, who was assassinated by the first Anastasio Somoza in 1934. In contrast, the contras’ only historical ties are to the second Anastasio Somoza’s National Guard and its Argentine military advisers--hardly a catalyst for popular nationalist action.

With years of analysis, the United States may have learned from its Vietnam experience how to counter the methods of guerrilla forces. But there is an essential difference between conducting and reacting to a guerrilla war: In guerrilla warfare the determining factor is voluntary popular support. Without that, the contras will cause much suffering and nothing more.