Sandinistas Rout Contras From Nicaraguan Jungle

The Sandinista army, in its biggest offensive of the war, has dislodged 800 U.S.-backed rebels from a remote jungle valley that was their chief overland supply route and command headquarters inside Nicaragua.

But the contras also claimed victory in the two days of fighting in the Bocay River Valley, which cost the government a downed helicopter but resulted in relatively few casualties on either side.

Lt. Col. Manuel Salvatierra, who supervised the offensive, said that 3,000 troops landed in helicopters Sunday and Monday near rebel positions not far from the mouth of the river and sent the bulk of the contras fleeing to Honduras.

Rebel spokesmen said that their forces eluded the offensive, dispersed into hills overlooking the valley but still inside Nicaragua, and were harassing the large government contingent that remained near the border.

“The real victory belongs to the resistance, which destroyed a Sandinista helicopter in the air and tricked the regime into diverting thousands of troops and tons of equipment into an empty jungle,” the rebels’ Radio Liberacion said Friday morning.

A diplomat with access to Western intelligence on the fighting said the rebels lost a strategic position but escaped with their forces largely intact. He said most of them were in Honduras.

“The action was at least as expensive for the Sandinistas as it was for the contras, but the Sandinistas obviously think it was worth it,” the diplomat said. “They were afraid of the perception that they had lost control of any territory, however remote, and you cannot get more remote than the Bocay Valley.”

The Bocay River flows north through Jinotega province into the Coco River, which forms Nicaragua’s border with Honduras. That juncture is 65 miles north of the nearest road or civilian settlement, an area so inhospitable that “not even wild animals live here,” Salvatierra said.

The valley has been the rebels’ main infiltration route from Honduras since January, when new supplies of weapons, uniforms and other military gear began to arrive in abundance for the first time in two years, bought with the $100 million in aid approved by the U.S. Congress last September.

Hit-and-Run Tactics

As many as 9,000 rebels have marched that route and spread through central and eastern Nicaragua for an offensive of hit-and-run guerrilla attacks.

Since February, rebel leaders of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force have brought reporters from a dozen U.S. news organizations on overland and canoe trips up the Bocay, Amaka and Wina rivers to show their control of the area and their bases for forwarding supplies to rebels operating deeper inside this country.

The Sandinistas’ vulnerability to the spreading offensive was underscored by two rebel strikes since the army began moving its forces north to the Bocay Valley.

Two weeks ago, the contras overran a Sandinista military outpost in east-central Nicaragua, killing 22 soldiers, according to Western intelligence reports. Last Sunday they destroyed storage tanks at a chemical and fuel depot in the southeastern town of Rama.

Rainy Season Begins

The contras have been able to operate deep inside Nicaragua because of the efficiency of an air supply operation organized for them by the CIA. But with the rainy season at hand, air drops are more difficult, so the contras were working to develop a system of river bases here in the valley.

Nicaraguan Defense Minister Humberto Ortega said Wednesday that the Sandinista offensive was both a propaganda and military defeat for the contras.

“They have abandoned their famous liberated zone and their strategic base that the CIA charged them with setting up,” he said. “The area is clean and totally controlled by our troops.”

To prove the point, the army flew 70 reporters in five helicopters Thursday to the mouth of the Bocay and an abandoned rebel camp 2 1/2 miles upstream. They saw Sandinista soldiers patrolling the river bank and bathing in its waters.

But beyond reclaiming the valley, the army had little to show for the operation, except that it could swiftly move four infantry battalions aboard three-fourths of its Soviet-supplied helicopter fleet, 24 MI-17 troop transports and 12 MI-24 gunships.

The Sandinistas said that they killed 52 contras in scattered fighting. But reporters were shown no captured weapons and just two bodies, identified as contra stragglers shot two days after the offensive ended.

The government said that eight Sandinista soldiers died, four in an MI-17 helicopter shot down Sunday. The rebels said they lost four dead while killing or wounding 27 government soldiers.

On a bluff at the confluence of the Bocay and Amaka rivers, reporters were shown a collection of five huts that the army called the valley’s main rebel base.

When the army arrived there Monday, soldiers said, the rebels were gone. They left behind hammocks, backpacks, food rations and five pack mules tethered to trees. Draped across some bushes was a parachute printed with the letters “FDN,” the Spanish initials of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the main contra fighting group.

“They took all their vital supplies, including their anti-aircraft defenses, with them,” said Capt. Carlos Gonzalez, a battalion commander.

From a clearing at the mouth of the Bocay, reporters could see a dirt airstrip on the Honduran side of the Coco River. It had been a landing point for airborne rebel supplies that were then shipped upriver, but Thursday it was abandoned.

According to Western intelligence reports, about 300 Sandinista soldiers crossed into Honduras to secure the airstrip and remain hidden in the jungle near it.

Capt. Silvio Gonzalez, commander of another Sandinista battalion, said a group of rebels that retreated about six miles into Honduras had fired mortar rounds across the river Thursday morning.

Army officials who briefed reporters made it clear that their aim was not only to chase the rebels out of the valley but also to inflict heavy casualties. Two factors, however, appeared to defeat this objective.

Inexplicably, Ortega announced the offensive two weeks in advance, eliminating the advantage of surprise. Then he ruled out a major incursion into Honduras to trap retreating rebel forces.

The Sandinistas made repeated incursions into Honduras last year, provoking Honduran air strikes inside Nicaragua in December. Noting the presence of U.S. troops for joint maneuvers in Honduras this month, Ortega said he chose not to risk a broader conflict.

Col. Salvatierra, the offensive’s director, said the landing operation was designed to shut off any rebel retreat into Honduras but was set back by the downing of the helicopter. Ortega said its fuel tank was exploded by automatic weapons fire, but the rebels claim to have hit it with a Red Eye, a missile they acquired from the United States last month.

In a briefing for reporters, Salvatierra expressed disappointment that the rebels did not try to hold their ground.

“We thought the action was going to be much more violent,” he said. “We thought they would show more disposition to fight, but it just turned out that way.”

Enrique Bermudez, commander of the Nicaragua Democratic Force, said in a radio broadcast Thursday that his troops “are not interested in maintaining territory.”

Another rebel official, who declined to be named, said the dislodged contras had split into small groups on either side of the valley to harass the Sandinista forces.

“The Sandinistas don’t know that terrain,” she said. “They will stay in the valley, which is very open. They cannot hold their position. They will need a lot of supplies from the air, and their helicopters will be vulnerable to attack.”

The whereabouts of Mike Lima, the contras’ operations chief for the valley, was disputed. The Sandinistas said he had been driven back into Honduras.

But the rebel official said that Lima, a one-armed former Nicaraguan National Guard officer, was so far inside Nicaragua that “it would take a week to get him out.”

Two other contra commanders, known as Papilion and Victor, were wounded in the offensive and evacuated to a Honduran air base, rebel officials said.

Richard Boudreaux reported from the Bocay Valley and Marjorie Miller from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.