War on The Installment Plan

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr

It has been a long winter of discontent for the contras. First there was the allegation last November that funds from U.S. arms sales to Iran had been illegally diverted to bank accounts held by the rebels fighting Nicaragua's Sandinista regime. Since that bombshell, congressional criticism of the U.S.-backed contra movement has mounted. Now a power struggle within the rebel leadership may further damage the cause.

Amid the turmoil, the Reagan Administration must try to persuade the new Democratic Congress this week to release the last installment of $100 million in aid that was granted to the contras last year. To win release of the final $40 million, the Administration must assure lawmakers that the current rebel leadership is representative of Nicaragua's democratic opposition, even as two of the movement's three directors are threatening to resign. "As things stand now, we can't certify that the leadership is what it should be," says an Administration official. "It's a very, very serious problem."

Nevertheless, even Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, co- author of a bill to withhold the funds, concedes that the contras will get their money. Senators who voted for the contra aid bill last year are unwilling to reverse their stand so quickly, Dodd believes. Moreover, if both the House and Senate voted for an aid cutoff, they still could not round up the two-thirds majorities needed to override a certain presidential veto. Dodd doubts that the issue will come to a Senate vote. Says he: "I'm not sure if it makes sense to hand the President a victory right out of the box."

Congress is not likely to be so compliant on the larger issue of renewing contra aid in the next fiscal year. Last week the Administration decided to wait until September to send its official request to Capitol Hill for $105 million in new assistance, hoping that by then the rebels' military progress would attract more support. Such reasoning could be wishful thinking. Last August, the House approved contra aid by a mere twelve votes. Notes Florida Democrat Dante Fascell, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee: "A strong President, at the height of his popularity, was just able to drive it through." In the wake of Iranscam, he predicts, "there will be a lot of people saying 'Not this time.' "

In pushing the case for the contras, the Administration stresses the rebels' claim that they now have about 10,000 soldiers inside Nicaragua and are fighting to inspire a popular insurrection against the Sandinista regime. However, those troop estimates cannot be independently verified, and there is little evidence that the contras are sparking a civilian uprising. On the contrary, the liberal human-rights group Americas Watch issued a report last week citing myriad abuses committed by the rebels. Although the 170-page document takes the Sandinistas to task for their harsh treatment of prisoners, it is most critical of the contras for waging "indiscriminate attacks" against civilians, including children.

If the contras cannot show some progress in the field, then they probably do not deserve further American support. That was the assessment of Admiral William Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who criticized the contras last week for their failure to win a major military victory. Crowe offered a warning to the rebels: "You've got to have some kind of success, or you're not going to get a continuing commitment."

The rebel leadership is no longer successful even at sticking together. Two of the contra directors, Arturo Cruz and Alfonso Robelo, have threatened to quit the U.S.-sponsored United Nicaraguan Opposition because of their differences with Adolfo Calero, head of the largest and best-armed contra organization, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force. Cruz and Robelo say Calero has ignored them and undercut their attempts to democratize the movement. Cruz recently told TIME that the UNO chiefs were not "spokesmen for the people" but rather a "cluster of bickering leaders." In Costa Rica, Robelo reportedly told U.S. officials that he would resign unless Calero and his cronies were ousted.

The schism among the contras is aggravated by a rift between the State Department and the CIA. State, convinced that the contras need civilian leadership to develop political and diplomatic support, forced Calero to accept the UNO power-sharing arrangement. The CIA, however, has indulged Calero's backhanded treatment of the UNO. "The CIA thinks the key to everything is the battlefield," says a State Department official. "In their view, if the contras start winning, the political and diplomatic support will follow." Contra supporters may wince at Calero's authoritarian tactics but they are unlikely to abandon him. Says a State Department representative: "Calero commands a lot of loyalty. His guys hold all the guns. If we were to drop him, there would be terrible disruption and dissension." Still, observers believe that the presence of Cruz, a former Sandinista Ambassador to Washington, remains essential to making the contras palatable. Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, the Administration's chief architect of Central American policy, said of Cruz, "Nobody is irreplaceable. But he comes as close as you can get." Last week the State Department tried to salvage the movement by working to expand the UNO coalition and subsequently reduce Calero's dominance.

Despite the contras' difficulties, the Administration is convinced that Congress will continue to support the rebels in the absence of a better strategy for containing the Sandinistas. Speaking at a meeting of the American Bar Association in New Orleans, Secretary of State George Shultz last week reiterated the Administration view that the Sandinista regime is a "Soviet ( stronghold on the mainland." By supporting the Nicaraguan insurrection, said Shultz, "we may avoid direct military involvement by the U.S. in the future." Such dire warnings are intended to present the American people with a stark choice: pay for the contras now or pay for a war later.

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira/New York and Michael Duffy/Washington