On Central America
Neier, Aryeh
The astonishing thing about the Reagan administration's policy toward Nicaragua is its resiliency. Twice in the space of a year, it appeared that the administration's sponsorship of a proxy...
...Senate was won by the Democrats and when the Iran-contra scandal began to unravel and a pattern of lying, corruption and other sleaziness was revealed...
...It follows that if the peace process fails, both sides should anticipate that the Sandinistas will crack down again...
...Twice in the space of a year, it appeared that the administration's sponsorship of a proxy war was on the brink of failure: in November 1986, when control of the U.S...
...As for the number who have been relocated—either because they had to flee their homes or because soldiers came and told them to go—it is probably about ten times as great...
...Three years ago, the contras focused particularly on efforts SPRING • 1988 137 Comments and Opinions to disrupt Nicaragua's coffee exports by attacking the seasonal workers who went to the Northwest to take part in the harvest...
...and again in August 1987 when the five Central American Presidents astonished Washington by agreeing to a peace plan that approximated a regional declaration of independence...
...military assistance to the contras was a severe setback...
...And, the Reagan administration can be counted on to seize the best opportunity to bring a new military aid proposal before the Congress...
...But it is too soon to celebrate the end of the war...
...Another purpose that is served by attacks on civilians is further disruption of the economy...
...At this writing, congressional democrats are developing their own MARCH 15, 1988 package of "humanitarian" aid to the contras...
...L addition to the probable revocation of the civil liberties that were restored in late 1987, the consequence of the failure of the peace process would be the slaughter of additional thousands of civilians in rural areas and the forcible relocation of additional tens of thousands...
...As in any such conflict, the aim of each side is to control the civilian population...
...Many antagonists of the Sandinistas labeled their liberalizing gestures as insincere, opportunistic, and subject to revocation...
...Inevitably, the peasants victimized by this practice, and others who fear that they too will be driven off their land and out of their homes, resent the Sandinistas...
...But faith in the Reagan administration's ability to turn Congess around yet again, and trust in its intransigent determination to oust the Sandinistas, are likely to keep the contras— and the conflict — going . From a human rights standpoint, the current military stalemate and the prospect of a prolonged 136 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions low-intensity conflict are a prescription for disaster...
...Contra attacks on civilians—especially the attacks on noncombatants for being Sandinistas or for having aligned themselves with the Sandinistas—have earned the contras hatred and contempt in the urban areas...
...training and military equipment the U.S...
...Forcible relocation serves the purposes of the Sandinistas because it deprives the contras of a civilian population base in rural areas...
...It is an argument for maintaining a war that must have few parallels: a prediction of future denials of civil liberties...
...and most of the forcible relocation will be by the Sandinistas...
...Though the killing of so many civilians and the forcible relocation of so many more has served the purposes of the combatants, it has also made it difficult for them to prevail...
...Now, in 1988, it seems that the administration has been stymied...
...Also, they have developed a base of rural support, principally in the sparsely populated central and southeastern sections of the country...
...It is difficult to say whether Ortega's figures are right, but to anyone who has followed the war, they do not sound farfetched...
...Knowledge of those movements would permit the army to engage the contras in battles in which the contras lack the ability to choose the time and place and in which they are outnumbered and outgunned...
...It is safe to predict that continuation of the war will mean a great deal more repression, a great deal more victimization of noncombatants, and a great deal more suffering...
...In January, the state of emergency under which Nicaragua had been ruled for six years was ended, restoring habeas corpus, abolishing the widely criticized special tribunals in which those accused of contra activity were tried, and establishing strict time limits on incommunicado detention and on pre-trial detention...
...Perhaps paradoxically, these practices are effective military measures for the combatant forces and, at the same time, have much to do with each side's inability to defeat the other militarily...
...supplied to the contras before the cut-off date mandated by the congressional vote have made the contras a more effective fighting force than two or three years ago...
...By targeting known or suspected Sandinista sympathizers in rural areas, they eliminate those who might report their movements to the armed forces...
...By a U.S...
...The usual concomitant— as we know from such other current and recent conflicts as those in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mozambique, Peru, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka—is that civilians who are thought to support the other side frequently become the objects of attack...
...If that pressure abates and they no longer require the sympathies of American, European, and Latin American democrats, so the argument goes, they would soon make their ruthless totalitarian nature manifest...
...q 138 • DISSENT...
...The rate of new arrests on allegations of providing support to the contras declined...
...Those holding this view contend that it is pressure from the contras that prevents the Sandinistas from showing their true colors...
...The February 3 vote in the House of Representatives barring U.S...
...Subsequent to the signing of the Central American Peace Plan on August 7, 1987, some improvements in human rights took place in Nicaragua, at least insofar as the government's practices are concerned...
...others called the moves good-faith efforts to show compliance...
...According to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, by January 1988 the number killed in the war was more than 25,000, "the majority of whom are women, children and poor farmers...
...The only difference between the two sides is that some of the antagonists contend that the Sandinista liberalization is a ruse designed to get the United States to cut off support for the contras and that once the contras are out of the way, the Sandinistas would crack down again anyway...
...Those remaining in prison on charges relating to the conflict were offered their freedom if any country outside Central America would accept them and there were indications that the Sandinistas were holding back on freeing them outright principally in order to have something to give in exchange for a cease-fire agreement...
...Neither side suggested that such moves would have been undertaken except in the context of the peace process...
...The attacks on peasant cooperatives serve yet another purpose of the contras...
...In addition, it may persuade some peasants to resist contra efforts to establish themselves in their vicinity for fear that the Sandinistas will respond by sweeping the peasants off their land Finally, of course, forcible relocation permits the Sandinistas to create free-fire zones on the theory that all civilians have been removed and that those remaining must be contras...
...As the tactics of both sides that seem to work in the short term also seem to prevent them from prevailing militarily in the long term, it is difficult to imagine how the war might end...
...It has all been a remarkable lesson in the effectiveness of political intransigence...
...The purpose is to punish them for choosing the wrong side and thereby to deter them and others from repeating the mistake, or to demonstrate that the other side lacks the power to protect them, or to expel them from their homes so as to deprive the other side of the food, shelter, care for the sick and wounded, and information that may be provided by sympathetic civilians...
...The state security detention center in Managua, where many detainees had reported mistreatment and poor conditions, was opened briefly to outside inspection and refurbished...
...By a negotiated settlement...
...If the same pattern holds true as in the past several years, most of the slaughter will take place at the hands of the contras...
...At the same time, there is virtually no prospect that the contras will prevail in combat against the Sandinistas' large, experienced, and apparently loyal army...
...Nearly a thousand prisoners held on charges that they had committed politically motivated offenses—between 20 and 25 percent of the total number and, excluding the Somoza National Guardsmen imprisoned since 1979, 40 percent or more of all those held for violent and nonviolent offenses with a political purpose— were released...
...By destroying these cooperatives, the contras mean to express their hatred for the Sandinistas and to warn the rural population of the dangers of aligning themselves with Sandinismo...
...invasion to install the contras in power...
...Moreover, U.S...
...The cooperatives embody the proclaimed socialist aspirations of the Sandinistas, and many of them occupy land that was expropriated from the Somoza family and those considered by the Sandinistas to have been Somoza associates...
...This will make it very difficult for the Sandinistas to wipe them out militarily...
...More recently, they have attacked the gold-mining communities in the Northeast...
...Both times, however, the administration maintained its course, mostly by displaying the will to prevail...
...Contra attacks on civilians serve several purposes...
...No one doubts that the Sandinistas made these moves in an effort to demonstrate compliance with the Central American Peace Plan and, thereby, to generate pressure on other parties to bring the contra war to an end...
...It would be foolhardy to predict that any of these, or none of these, will take place...
...More freedom of expression was permitted than at any time since the Sandinistas imposed a state of emergency in March 1982 in response to the onset of the contra war a few months earlier...
...Like any guerrilla force, the contras require the support of a sympathetic civilian population and cannot risk operating for an extended period in the vicinity of hostile civilians...
...The Sandinistas are comparably plagued by the consequences of their tactic of forcibly relocating peasants...
...The very methods that permit the contras to survive as a rural force also seem to impede their ability to make converts in the cities...
...And throughout the conflict, they have attacked peasant cooperatives, which have been relatively successful in producing cash crops...
...This resentment, as well as resentment over the arrests of peasants thought by the Sandinistas to be contra supporters, seems to have produced increased support for the contras in rural areas...
...By a lasting congressional cutoff of aid to the contras and their gradual disappearance...
...Though many residents of the cities have become disaffected from the Sandinistas because of economic suffering, this does not seem to translate into widespread support for the contras...
Vol. 35 • April 1988 • No. 2
