Hospitality Wearing Thin : Honduras Fears Contras Will Pose Security Threat

The demise of the Contras in neighboring Nicaragua is sending tremors of insecurity through Honduras, the U.S. ally that had staked the most on their rebellion.

In a major retreat that could signal the war’s end, about 10,000 Nicaraguan rebels have marched to base camps in Honduras with their families and civilian supporters since the cutoff of U.S. military aid and the collapse of peace talks with Nicaragua’s Sandinista leaders earlier this year.

In a country already plagued by unemployment, violent crime and human rights abuses that rose with the war next door, many here who willingly played host to the insurgency now fear that the influx of frustrated armed rebels poses a bigger threat to Honduras’ stability than the Sandinistas they were supposed to overthrow. As the Honduran newspaper Tiempo put it: “The Contras have become a Damocles sword over our own security.”

Honduran military officers say the likelihood of a Sandinista attack on Honduras--the military’s original premise for supporting the Contras--is now remote. But civilian leaders assert that the U.S. strategy of building up Honduras as a military bastion in Central America has undermined their country’s economy, its civilian democracy and its independence.

With the seven-year-old war suspended, the U.S. economic aid that had flowed here on a large scale--with few strings attached--as an incentive for Honduran support of the rebels is now being made subject to sharp cuts in public spending that will aggravate the country’s hardships, Honduran officials say.

“We are paying the price for going along with a war that never had consistent backing from the United States,” said Rafael Callejas Romero, the opposition National Party candidate and front-runner for next year’s presidential election. “The bottom line is that the Sandinistas are still in power and the Contras are here. They are very much a Honduran problem.”

Hospitality Waning

In recent interviews, government leaders, politicians and military officers said their hospitality for the Contras is wearing thin. They agreed that Washington bears responsibility for lifting their Contra burden--by sending the rebels back to Nicaragua as disarmed repatriates or rearmed fighters, or by admitting them to the United States as political refugees.

The government is moving to pressure President-elect George Bush to settle the Contras’ fate soon after he takes office in January, despite indications by his aides that the insurgency could be put on hold during months of U.S.-backed peace initiatives.

Two recent Honduran actions appear to be aimed at pressing the United States for a formal commitment to take full responsibility for the Contras here. So far, Honduran officials say, President Reagan has given only verbal assurances to that effect that are not binding on Bush.

Last month, Foreign Minister Carlos Lopez Contreras proposed to the U.N. General Assembly that an international peacekeeping force patrol Honduran borders to keep out rebels from both Nicaragua and El Salvador. Such a force could limit U.S. options by halting the Contras’ movements between their battlefields in Nicaragua and bases in Honduras.

Suspended Talks

Later, Honduras suspended negotiations over a new military protocol that would give the United States greater access to Honduran military bases and allow it to build new permanent military installations here. Honduran sources said the talks will resume with the Bush Administration and will be linked to the Contras’ future.

“We realize that peace cannot be achieved just by sealing off our border,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Eugenio Castro said. “But the United States has to recognize that we cannot absorb so many Contras and their families. We simply don’t have enough food and jobs.”

Col. Manuel Suarez Benavides, the army spokesman, said the rebels have become a liability. “The Contras are not a cushion,” he said. “We do not need them to help defend us against the Sandinistas. On the contrary, they have brought conflict to our border.”

Washington has expanded its presence and influence in Honduras since the CIA began secretly financing the Contras here in 1981. While persuading Honduras to allow Contra bases, the United States has held frequent military exercises that have brought the continuing presence of more than 1,000 American soldiers in Honduras.

Outspoken Impatience

Diplomats from other countries say they seriously doubt that the long-quiescent Hondurans are ready to defy the United States if it chooses to keep the Contra army here. But the Hondurans’ outspoken impatience on the issue reflects the rebels’ unpopularity. In a Gallup survey of 1,300 Hondurans in August, 74% said the Contras should leave.

Popular resentment of U.S. domination in Honduras--over the Contra war and in other ways--burst into the open last April when a Honduran mob burned offices of the U.S. Embassy to protest the arrest and illegal extradition to the United States of a wealthy Honduran suspected of drug smuggling.

“The United States is creating strong anti-Americanism among a people who never had such feelings,” said Manuel Acosta Bonilla, a prominent lawyer and politician. “We are treated as if we would all become Sandinistas were it not for Uncle Sam. Our leaders are guilty too. Instead of analyzing what is the national interest, they do whatever the American ambassador tells them to do.”

So far, the Contra army here has not disintegrated as fast as some Hondurans had feared. The rebel commander, Enrique Bermudez, is telling his troops that he is “absolutely certain” the Bush Administration will rearm them. News of Bush’s election was greeted with jubilant gunfire and all-night celebrating in the Contra camps, rebel soldiers said, and just recently about 500 Contra recruits finished a six-week basic training course in Honduras.

Camps Abandoned

Still, as many as 1,000 soldiers, by the estimate of one rebel official, have abandoned the camps in recent months. Many have slipped away via Mexico to enter the United States illegally. Others are trying to survive here in one of Latin America’s poorest economies, where unemployment already exceeds 30%.

In Danli, a city near the Nicaraguan frontier, Contras have shot up taverns and have been blamed this year for the unsolved murder of a leading merchant. Francisco Campos, president of the coffee growers association in the border region, estimated that the rebels have caused production losses of $6 million to $8 million while displacing thousands of farmers along the border.

“We have lost our tranquillity,” Campos said. “The best favor the United States can do is take these Contras and put them in Texas. Let them fight the Sandinistas from there. Nothing personal against the Contras, but this is just not our struggle.”

The war’s impact is not limited to the border area. At least 100,000 illegal Nicaraguan refugees have dodged U.N.-supervised camps set up for them, and many of them are underbidding Hondurans for unskilled jobs all over the country. A growing number of violent crimes in the capital and other cities are committed with the AK-47 automatic rifles being sold by Contra deserters for $350 each. Honduran economists say at least $500 million in capital has left the country during the war years.

$1 Billion in Aid

Despite more than $1 billion in U.S. aid during the 1980s, a sharp increase from previous levels, the Honduran economy has grown slower than the population in every year but one--1987. This year it is stagnating amid an unprecedented burst of double-digit inflation.

The health minister said this month that three-fourths of all preschool children are malnourished and that corn consumption, an indicator of nutrition, is declining. The country cannot produce enough basic grains and milk to feed its people, partly because farmers are drawn to the capital by a swelling government bureaucracy.

During the Contra war, Honduran officials used their allies on the U.S. National Security Council to elude conditions on aid that were set by the U.S. Agency for International Development with the aim of closing Honduras’ fiscal deficit. Now, some of the AID financial assistance is being channeled through the World Bank, making austerity conditions harder to avoid.

“All Honduras has gained from this American aid is a parasitic mentality,” Manuel Gamero, editor of Tiempo, said. “The money was given not so much to develop the country but to help achieve a military objective. The United States needed a dependent ally.”

Military Dominance

Among other costs of the Contra war counted by critics of the government is the dominance of the Honduran military, which some say wields more power today than it did before relinquishing direct control of the government in 1982. Many Hondurans say that expanding U.S. aid to the military--including a new fleet of sophisticated F-5 fighter jets--has weakened civilian authority.

International human rights groups hold the armed forces responsible for the disappearances of about 120 suspected leftists in Honduras during the early 1980s. They accuse military-controlled police units of continuing to torture people accused of being dissidents.

Vice President Jaime Rosenthal quit the government last April after the armed forces threatened to close Tiempo, of which he is part owner. In an interview, Rosenthal said that senior military officers, under U.S. pressure, had kept President Jose Azcona Hoyo from keeping a promise made during the 1985 election campaign to move the Contras off Honduran soil.

In a scandal that illustrates both the military’s power and the rising violence of Honduran society, a Supreme Court justice and a police officer fired pistols at each other on a Tegucigalpa street last year during a confusing police chase after teen-age car thieves.

The justice was killed, and police Sgt. Victor Manuel Rodriguez was arrested. The Supreme Court ordered him jailed and tried by a civilian tribunal, but the armed forces insisted on the jurisdiction of its own courts. The military prevailed, and the sergeant was placed under a loose form of house arrest--until he was arrested last July on charges of shooting a man dead in a barroom brawl.

“There is a feeling here that if we don’t do things the way the military establishment wants, we will have a coup,” Rosenthal said. “But for me the real issue is not how strong we are militarily. If we cannot show that our system is better than Nicaragua’s, that our standard of living is higher, no army will be able to contain the desire of our people to adopt the Nicaraguan system.”

Nicaragua extended a cease-fire with the Contras and called for a meeting of Central American presidents. Page 24.