Nicaragua Is It Curtains?

By Jill Smolowe.

For the better part of the past year, hundreds of Sandinista troops have wandered in and out of Honduras, looking for the rebel forces known as contras. And for most of that time, the Honduran military has looked the other way. On Dec. 6, however, Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyo shattered that arrangement by ordering his air force to strafe the Nicaraguan positions inside the country. Later that day, Azcona summoned U.S. Ambassador Everett Briggs and urgently appealed for U.S. logistical support. President Reagan responded promptly, authorizing an airlift. Last week U.S. troops flying twin- rotor Chinooks and Huey helicopters ferried hundreds of Honduran soldiers to within 20 miles of the Nicaraguan border. At the same time, Honduran pilots strafed targets inside Nicaragua.

On the surface, the provocative Honduran behavior was a response to a Sandinista attack on Honduran outposts in which three Honduran soldiers were injured and two taken prisoner. Under different circumstances, Azcona might have overlooked the Nicaraguan indiscretion, just as he has ignored more than 60 other Sandinista incursions this year alone. But with the Iran-contra scandal swirling in Washington, the Honduran President was plainly seeking reassurance from the White House. His appeal for U.S. help seemed designed to gauge whether the arms scandal had shaken the Reagan Administration's support for the rebels. More important, it tested U.S. resolve to come to the aid of cooperative allies in the region on short notice. Admitted one source close to the Azcona government: "Irangate has unnerved some top officials, and they just wanted to be sure they could count on Washington."

While the White House's quick response laid some doubts to rest, it did not answer the blunter question that is now being asked from Managua to Washington: Does the deepening U.S. crisis mean that it is curtains for the contras? Although the rebels have held on through several funding crises in recent years, there are doubts in both the U.S. and Central America that they can survive the current ordeal. Last week, as the U.S. press analyzed the contras' prospects in funereal tones, some officials went so far as to offer up eulogies. "I think the counterrevolution is nearly over," said a Latin American military analyst. "If the contras could do something in the next few weeks, that might change things, but they are not capable of it." Even a contra official saw the end coming. "We have got four months to show what we can do," he said. "If we haven't made a very big impression by then, it's all over."

Before the arms scam erupted, the contras were already besieged by charges of corruption, human-rights abuses and military ineptitude. Congressional support was anything but assured after Democrats won control of the Senate in the November elections. Moreover, Washington's Central American allies have long been skittish about the U.S. policy. Days before the Iran-contra link emerged, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams warned, "The Central Americans are scared to death. They're scared about our staying power." Now Washington's friends are all the more concerned that they may get stuck supporting the contras without U.S. help. "We sympathize with their cause," says one Honduran official of the contras. "But without American support, they'll just become bandits."

Honduras, Washington's most cooperative ally in the region, is particularly edgy. By the rebels' own count there are currently 12,000 contras inside Honduras. Officials in Tegucigalpa, the capital, have long fretted that a U.S. pullout would cause the rebels to despair of the struggle and decide instead to try to build a power base in Honduras. Hence, Honduran officials have often quietly pressed their Washington counterparts to get the contras , moving into Nicaragua. Exactly one week after the Iran-contra scandal broke, however, Azcona reportedly demanded that the rebels leave by April. A U.S. State Department spokesman said last week that reports that a deadline had been set were "simply untrue."

In the past year Hondurans have grown increasingly disenchanted with the contra presence. The Las Vegas salient, a chunk of Honduras that juts into Nicaragua and is home base for the main contra camps, is now a war zone. The Sandinistas regularly penetrate Honduran territory in an attempt to cut off the contras before they can infiltrate Nicaragua. President Daniel Ortega warned last week, "The border zone will cease to be a battle zone when the contras are driven out of there." In the meantime, life along the border gets bleaker by the day. "The Sandinistas will shoot at anybody," says a Honduran soldier. Adds Marco Munoz, a local farmer: "They have put mines in the ground, and many people have stepped on them." The situation has become so unbearable that many peasants have fled.

Honduras' unwitting entry into the war has made El Salvador and Costa Rica all the more determined not to get caught in the cross fire. Burned by public disclosures of its role in hosting U.S. arms supply flights, El Salvador has been only too glad to see an end to the contras' private-aid network that operated out of Ilopango air base. In recent months Costa Rica has reasserted its neutrality by shutting down a secret contra airstrip.

While none of this has affected the contras' immediate military situation, the rebels know that the crisis in Washington may yet persuade Congress to pull the funding plug, perhaps this time for good. For one thing, the scandal has revealed the extent of the contras' dependency on Washington. Rebel claims over the past two years of lavish support from foreign governments and private U.S. citizens have proved largely hollow. It is now apparent that some, if not most, of that aid was arranged by U.S. officials. Moreover, the American public, never particularly responsive to Reagan's pro-contra rhetoric, will now associate the rebels with the highly unpopular Iranian arms-for-hostages deals. "We're like yo-yos," fumes a contra official. "The Americans still haven't made up their minds about us."

It is a time when the contras need desperately to prove themselves militarily. But they complain of slow arms deliveries purchased with portions of the $100 million in U.S. aid that began to flow in October after congressional approval last summer. "We are fighting the Sandinistas on the inside and bureaucrats on the outside," says a rebel official. "We received 4,000 bedpans the other day. What do guerrillas want with bedpans?" He also laments the departure of Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, the contras' point man in Washington. "Perhaps if he was still there," he says, "things would be moving faster."

Some Reagan Administration officials predict that the contra program will not be irremediably damaged by the current scandal. They observe that there is no movement afoot at present to halt payment of the remaining $40 million in U.S. aid. "I think when this is all over, Congress will still be willing to back the program," Elliott Abrams said earlier this month. "We have a huge national interest in promoting democracy there." Oklahoma Republican Mickey Edwards pressed the point further in a Washington Post op-ed piece. The Congressman exhorted his legislative brethren to remember that they had approved contra aid because of the "threat posed by the Sandinistas" to neighboring democracies and the failure of the Contadora peace process. He concluded, "The contras still need and still deserve our support."

In the months ahead Congress will undoubtedly scrutinize the contras' performance to determine if they are worth continued U.S. investment. The lastest border fighting may hurt. Since March, hundreds of Sandinistas have been inside Honduras at any one time. The inability of the 12,000 rebels in Honduras to keep those troops south of the border and away from Honduran targets continues to encourage a perception that the contras are no match for the Sandinistas.

There is also the potential for further political surprises. Last week an appeals court in Managua upheld the 30-year sentence of downed U.S. Gunrunner Eugene Hasenfus, thus paving the way for a pardon by Christmas, as President Ortega once hinted might be possible. Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd was expected to ask for Hasenfus' release during a visit to Managua this week. If the Wisconsin gunrunner returns home, various congressional committees are certain to want to question him extensively about the private U.S. supply network.

It is still too early to know whether the contras will drown in the tidal wave of revelations currently washing over the White House. Certainly it is unwise to write off an army that has repeatedly shown staying power, if not fighting prowess. Indeed, in Nicaragua, there is talk that Honduras' recent attacks were a diversionary tactic to allow the contras to infiltrate Nicaragua in time for a spectacular holiday attack. In Honduras, however, the word is that the contras' fireworks will not begin until the end of January. Whenever the contras finally do resume their war, the pyrotechnics will have to be bright, indeed, if the rebels hope to coax more funds from a reluctant U.S. Congress.

With reporting by John Borrell/Tegucigalpa and Ricardo Chavira/Washington