Nicaragua’s Indian Rebels to Seek United Anti-Sandinista Front at Honduras Talks

Threatened with a cutoff in U.S. aid unless they unite, rival factions among Nicaraguan Indians who actively oppose the regime in Managua plan to hold an assembly in steamy eastern Honduras this week to forge a united front against the Sandinistas.

State Department officials have been working for the last month to get the feuding groups to agree on a single representative to sit on the board of the new National Resistance, an umbrella organization of contra organizations, and to form a unified Indian guerrilla command to fight the Sandinistas in Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast region.

William Walker, a deputy assistant secretary of state, flew to Indian refugee areas in eastern Honduras recently to lay out the U.S. position for the rebels.

According to one observer, the message was: “If you’re going to be fighters, we’ll help you. If you’re going to be refugees, here’s the (phone) number of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.”

The Miskito Indians so far have played a minor role in the guerrilla war, with sporadic, small-scale attacks against the Sandinistas in northeastern Nicaragua. The Indians claim to have about 1,200 guerrillas operating inside Nicaragua, but observers say that the number is fewer than 600 and that many of them have spent much of their time in Honduras.

Part of U.S. Effort

Like the Nicaraguan Resistance, formed in April as an expanded successor to an earlier umbrella organization for the contras, the move for Indian unity is part of the Reagan Administration’s effort to improve the contras’ image and win $105 million in new aid from Congress for fiscal 1988.

Previous attempts by the CIA to unite the bitterly divided Indian rebels have failed. The State Department recently took over the project, bringing the leaders of three factions together for the first time in Miami at the beginning of May.

The three Miskito leaders have spent their time recently among Indian refugees in eastern Honduras trying to organize their supporters for the assembly, which could draw anywhere from 200 to 2,000 Indians. The assembly is expected to begin Wednesday.

The Indians say they are skeptical about long-term possibilities for unity.

“If they want a forced marriage, they’re going to get a forced marriage,” said Roger Herman, a spokesman for KISAN, one of the three factions.

But, Herman acknowledged, “They have told us if there isn’t unity, no group will get any aid. It is not in our interest to lose the aid.”

The three leaders competing for power are:

-- Wycliffe Diego of KISAN, an acronym for Coast Indians United in Nicaragua. KISAN was formed at an assembly arranged by the CIA in 1985 and was allied with larger groups of Spanish-speaking contras in the United Nicaraguan Opposition, the old umbrella organization.

-- Steadman Fagoth of Misura, an acronym for the names of the three ethnic groups of Nicaraguan Indians, the Miskitos, the Sumos and the Ramas. Fagoth was expelled from Honduras in 1985, accused of committing human rights violations, and has been living in the United States.

-- Brooklyn Rivera of Misurasata, a Costa Rica-based group that is ideologically distinct from the other two because it stresses Indian rights above the insurgency goals of the contras. Rivera has attempted to negotiate with the Sandinistas in the past.

U.S. officials also are reportedly insisting that rebels from among the English-speaking Creoles of eastern Nicaragua join the Indian command structure, although the Creoles distrust the Indian rebels.

“We will form an alliance, but we will not be under their command,” a Creole leader who calls himself Samba said.

Called a CIA Invention

Among the Indians, Rivera has long dismissed Diego’s KISAN as a CIA invention. Many KISAN members, meanwhile, reject Rivera because of his talks with the Sandinistas. Fagoth, accused in the past of killing rivals or insubordinates among his fellow Indian rebels, has been called “a crazy man” by Diego supporters. They once warned that Fagoth would be killed if he tries to return to the region of Honduras, called the Mosquitia, where the Indian refugees are concentrated.

While KISAN appears to command most of the Indian guerrilla fighters, it is not clear which, if any of the leaders, has the support of noncombatant Indian refugees; nor is it clear how many of the refugees want to see the rebel fight continued against the Sandinistas.

One foreign observer in the region said that when the rebel chieftains gather for their assembly, they may be surprised by a peace demonstration conducted by refugees saying they are tired of the war.

Thousands of refugees have returned to Nicaragua from Honduras in recent months, either on their own or through a U.N. repatriation program. The returning Indians cite harsh conditions in Honduras plus improved treatment by the Sandinistas. Early Sandinista abuses and fighting in the areas of their traditional communities sent the Indians fleeing to Honduras in the first place.

About 15,000 Indians still live in U.N. refugee camps in eastern Honduras--down from 21,000 at the peak in April, 1986. Relief workers estimate that another 7,000 to 8,000 refugees live in settlements along the Honduran bank of the Coco River, which marks part of the boundary with Nicaragua.

The move for unity among the Indian refugees comes in the wake of an Indian autonomy conference held by the Sandinistas in eastern Nicaragua in April. That multi-ethnic assembly drew about 2,000 delegates, of whom 200 were voting members who approved the draft of a law that would give Indians some autonomy in their home region, the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua.

The law, which must be approved by Nicaragua’s national legislature, would let the Indians elect regional councils that could levy taxes, undertake short-term economic projects and administer health care, education and internal commerce. It would leave long-term economic development and fishing, mineral and lumber rights in the hands of the central government, which would negotiate a share of income from such resources for the Indians.

Samuel Mercado, a spokesman for Rivera’s Misurasata group in Costa Rica, said in a telephone interview that the law is “hollow” because it leaves so much control with the central government. The Indians want full control of the natural resources they consider theirs, he said.

KISAN rejects all Sandinista proposals. “We believe you cannot make a pact with the Communists,” KISAN spokesman Herman said.

Border Meeting Site

The coming rebel assembly will be held about six miles from the Nicaraguan border in Rus Rus, a village of wood and palm-thatch huts perched on stilts above rain-soaked terrain. The swampy region, accessible only by air or boat, is a kind of Wild West under the authority of the Honduran army.

Soldiers wearing camouflage grease paint have begun periodic searches of the nearby U.N. refugee camps, and hidden grenades were found during at least one search. Relief workers complain that the Indians have been exploding grenades in the river to catch fish.

During May, Honduran soldiers detained five Nicaragua-based U.N. workers, allegedly because they crossed into Honduran waters of the Coco River. All were released within 10 days.

Military officials also have detained Ampinio Palacios, a Miskito commander accused of forcibly recruiting youths into contra ranks last year, and they detained a Creole commander, known by the pseudonym Amin, because he allegedly killed three Creole combatants, rebel and other sources said. But they added that the army inexplicably released a Miskito fighter accused of raping a 15-year-old girl.

Relief workers say an atmosphere of intimidation that was fostered by the rebels in the refugee camps last year has been sharply reduced, in part because of reduced tensions between rival leaders. They said that the rebels disobey the rules by recruiting in the camps but that they are now using persuasion rather than force.

Observers say the fact that the three leaders are talking to each other and touring the region together is a major step forward, but they also say that unity could easily shatter, given longstanding animosities among the groups and their three top leaders.

As KISAN’s Herman said, “All three want to be the maximum leader.”