Guerrillas Spread Fear, Death and Hardship in Suriname

Bush Negro guerrillas, the descendants of runaway slaves, lurk in the forested hinterlands. Sometimes they strike with surprise attacks, ambushes or sabotage. Sometimes Suriname’s military government sends out armored cars and helicopters to hunt them.

Paramaribo, the capital, sits beside the brown Suriname River, listening for echoes of the distant warfare, watching the economy crumble, spinning dark webs of rumor and fear.

South America’s youngest nation is struggling through a painful new chapter in its short and peculiar history. Suriname, formerly Dutch Guiana, is a rare curiosity of a country on the continent’s northeastern corner, a remote region once known as the “wild coast.”

Population Pastiche

Its population of 400,000, an exotic pastiche reflecting a long colonial past, includes descendants of indentured laborers from India and Indonesia, of Dutch colonists and their African slaves, and of indigenous Indian tribes collectively called Amerindians.

Its territory is three times the size of Holland. Tropical forests cover most of the land and the people are heavily concentrated near the northern coast.

Today, as in past centuries, the vast interior jungles are shared by Amerindians and blacks known as Bush Negroes or Maroons.

The Bush Negroes are descended from slaves who escaped from Suriname plantations in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, established villages deep in the forest and preserved many of their African folkways. Until the early 1800s, the Bush Negroes fought long, desultory wars with the colonial powers.

Now, 12 years after national independence in 1975, the Bush Negroes are fighting again.

It started on July 21, 1986, when a young Bush Negro named Ronny Brunswijk led a small guerrilla band in a surprise assault on an army post at Stolkertsijver, east of Paramaribo. The guerrillas, attacking with hunting rifles and shotguns, captured military weapons and took 12 prisoners.

Economic Targets Hard Hit

More attacks followed, as the Bush Negroes struck heavy blows at economic targets. In November, because of guerrilla action, work stopped at bauxite mines operated by a subsidiary of the Aluminum Co. of America at Moengo in eastern Suriname. In January, the guerrillas dynamited pylons and cut off electricity from the Afobaka hydroelectric dam, 50 miles south of Paramaribo.

Army and guerrilla casualties are estimated at no more than a few dozen on each side. But foreign diplomats say as many as 400 civilians have been killed in the fighting, many by army troops shooting up villages suspected of harboring guerrillas.

About half of the country’s 40,000 to 50,000 Bush Negroes have fled from their villages, taking refuge in the Paramaribo area or in neighboring French Guiana.

Most transportation links have been cut in the war zone, which covers much of eastern and central Suriname.

“Not that it is in rebel hands, but it is also not secure for anyone else,” a foreign analyst said. “They have effectively cut off more than one-third of the country.”

Schools Closed

Schools in the area, operated by Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries, are closed, and medical clinics are out of supplies.

“All the medical work is in shambles,” said a Dutch missionary worker who expressed fear of malaria and yellow fever epidemics.

Since the war began, Brunswijk has become a legendary figure in Suriname. The government depicts him as a bandit turned terrorist, while others see him as a combination of Robin Hood and Rambo.

Few Surinamers regard him as a potential national leader. But many secretly wish him well in his fight against the unpopular government of Lt. Col. Desi Bouterse. Bouterse, 41, is a former army sergeant who seized power in a 1980 coup by noncommissioned army officers.

In 1982, the military rulers terrified the country by rounding up and killing 15 prominent opposition figures. The ruthless action smothered open resistance to the government but stoked widespread resentment of Bouterse and his ruling group.

A Bitter Parting

Brunswijk, 26, was a private in the army and a member of a special security unit that reportedly guarded Bouterse. There are various versions of why Brunswijk was dismissed from the army in 1985, but according to all of them, it was a bitter parting.

He returned to Moengo, his home village in eastern Suriname, and went to work helping his father operate a lumber truck.

Then a masked man robbed a bank, and people said it was Brunswijk. His soccer club, Real Moengo, asked him to present himself for questioning, and he did, according to a relative.

The relative, who asked not to be identified, said Brunswijk was held for about month and then freed.

Another bank was held up, and gunmen carried out a series of highway robberies in eastern Suriname. In Paramaribo, the Brunswijk legend began to take shape. It was said that he distributed proceeds from the robberies to poor Bush Negroes.

“These are not true stories,” the relative said.

Wanted Posters

Authorities put out wanted posters with Brunswijk’s photograph on them. Army search squads invaded Moengo twice in early 1986, according to Brunswijk’s relative. He said soldiers fired into the air, threatened villagers and stole money from their houses.

“There was no peace any more, because the military could come any time,” the relative said. “So Ronny decided to start a rebellion. A lot of people joined him, because a lot of people had bad experience with the military.”

The guerrillas call themselves the Jungle Command. They are backed by anti-Bouterse exiles living in the Netherlands and French Guiana, but the relative said Brunswijk has no ideological motives or political ambitions.

“He is not interested in things like being a minister or even a commander in chief,” he said. “He is just interested in being a free man. . . . He would like to have a free democratic government--no military in the center of power.”

The relative said the Jungle Command has at least 200 fighters. Stanley Rensch, a Bush Negro teacher in Paramaribo, estimated the number of guerrillas at more than 600.

Ancestral Religious Rituals

Rensch, 47, said the Bush Negro fighters follow ancestral religious rituals, which include a special bath prepared with jungle herbs, before mounting an attack. They believe that the bath and the ceremony will make them bulletproof “if they live up to certain rules,” he said.

He said the guerrillas, many of whom believe in magic, have other rites for making themselves invisible to their enemies.

These magical formulas are referred to as “cultural support.” In a 1986 interview published by an anti-Bouterse exile group, Brunswijk said his weapons included “my cultural support, which I got from my medicine man to protect me from all evil.”

With or without magic, there is no question that the guerrillas’ intimate knowledge of the jungle is a military asset. According to a rumor in Paramaribo, the army has assembled a battalion of Amerindians, called the Delta Force, with equal jungle prowess.

“There is no Delta Force,” said army Maj. Laurens Neede, but he acknowledged that many Amerindians have been inducted into the army to fight the Bush Negro guerrillas.

Indian Villages Attacked

He said in an interview the guerrillas have attacked Indian villages and abused residents. “Because of these events, Indians have come together and have approached the national army and asked to be trained either as soldiers or as militiamen,” he said.

Neede also denied rumors that Libyan military advisers are working with the army. Western diplomats confirmed that the only Libyans believed to be in the country are about a dozen civilians attached to Libya’s embassy in Paramaribo.

Neede, 40, one of 16 noncommissioned officers who led the 1980 coup, heads a government office called People’s Mobilization.

He acknowledged that civilian Bush Negros have been killed by the army, but he accused the guerrillas of using villagers as a shield.

“What happens is that when the national army goes into these areas to combat terrorism, young boys--sometimes very young boys and even women--shoot at the soldiers from huts,” he said. “The terrorists hide behind these people, and the question is asked, how must one view these women and children who shoot soldiers?”

‘Brutal Practices’

The U.S. State Department said in a report early this year on human rights that the Suriname army has used “brutal practices” against Bush Negro civilians.

“Noncombatant Bush Negroes, including women and children, were massacred by the military,” the report said.

Diplomatic estimates of the number killed by the army in the past year range between 300 and 400.

Neede said an army offensive in June “dealt the terrorists serious blows, and since then they have been extremely quiet. But we know that they will come back, because they are going to get money, weapons and supplies from the Netherlands.”

The army mounted another offensive in mid-July, not far from the frontier with French Guiana in the east. Officials said that 30 rebels were killed in heavy fighting and that the survivors were put to flight. But rebel sources in Europe have been quoted as saying the retreat is only a temporary withdrawal and that the war is being stepped up.

Dutch Government Criticized

Neede criticized the Dutch government for not cutting off support for the guerrillas from the Netherlands, where more than 200,000 Surinamers live.

“This struggle can only end when support from the Netherlands ceases,” he said.

The war has ravaged Suriname’s already ailing economy, which is heavily dependent on bauxite and aluminum for export income. Guerrillas have shut down the country’s biggest bauxite mine and its only aluminum smelting plant; they also have stopped lumbering and palm oil production, both major industries for Suriname.

Even before the bush war began, Suriname’s economy was declining sharply. World bauxite prices were in a slump, and $100 million a year in scheduled development aid from the Netherlands has been suspended since the 15 government opponents were killed in December, 1982.

Now, unemployment is estimated at more than one-third of the work force. Foreign exchange for imports is scarce. Businesses lack imported raw materials and retail goods.

“A lot of companies are folding,” one businessman said.

A City Gone to Seed

Paramaribo, the main port as well as the capital, has the look of a once prosperous city going to seed. Its streets are lined with patches of weeds. Discolored white paint is peeling from the clapboard sides of big Dutch-style buildings with shutters, balconies and gabled roofs.

Long lines form at stores for scarce goods such as sugar, cooking oil and cigarettes. Surinamers in Miami and the Netherlands send barrels filled with staple foods, paper products and dry goods to their hard-pressed relatives. According to one diplomat, airport employes break into the barrels and steal food items.

“There are too many people who have nothing,” the diplomat said.

Diplomats say that a dozen or more persons suspected of collaborating with the Jungle Command have been killed by government agents in Paramaribo. About 100 suspected collaborators, including Brunswijk’s teen-age brother Leo, are imprisoned in Fort Zeelandia, an 18th-Century brick building that serves as army headquarters.

Widespread Fears

According to rumors, agents have lists of more people to be picked up or killed. And rumored plans for guerrilla attacks on the city add to widespread fears.

“The problem is that people are scared,” said the Rev. Rudy Planen, a Moravian pastor. “That causes all sorts of rumors to spread.”

Because of widespread discontent, the government is planning elections Nov. 25 for a national assembly. The assembly is to choose a president. But there is skepticism about whether the government really has democratic intentions. A new pro-government political party was founded July 4 to contest the elections, but critics, both foreigners and natives, fear that the elections will be rigged.