The Reagan administration`s newly funded war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua promises to be a protracted conflict of small unit engagements, growing civilian casualties and little chance for a clear victory by either side, officials familiar with the planning said.
Although U.S. officials will be able to give open assistance to the 15,000 ”counter-revolutionaries”–known as contras–for the first time since June, 1984, administration sources privately display little enthusiasm for committing American forces to the battle.
Moreover, administration officials, congressional sources and military experts indicated in interviews they consider it unlikely that Sandinista control of Nicaragua will be removed during Ronald Reagan`s presidency. ”I think the time has passed,” a civilian defense official said.
Many in the administration, one key planner said, ”do not expect to resolve it (the Nicaraguan situation) in their time.” He said he foresaw candidates in the 1988 presidential election being presented with the dilemma of advocating an increase in the size of the war, or ending it.
”It is going to be left to the next administration,” another official said, ”to see if it has the stomach for this, or will pull the plug and declare the (contras) brain dead.”
A new administration in 1989 well could be presented with a situation not dissimilar to what President John F. Kennedy found in 1961 when he inherited a vast, well-advanced plan to invade Cuba through the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy later gave the go-ahead order, and the invasion failed.
For public consumption, the Reagan administration and the leaders of the various groups that make up the Unified Nicaraguan Opposition claim that though the contras cannot take power militarily, the economic crisis in Nicaragua and other pressures could result in an insurrection that would topple the Sandinistas.
Privately, many see an endless struggle that saps Nicaraguan military strength and makes it impossible for the Sandinistas to foment disorder in neighboring Central American states. But they admit this is unlikely to exert sufficient pressure for the Sandinistas to break their strong ties with Cuba and the Soviet Union.
The tenor and style of the war will be set in part by the training given the contra forces by the CIA and the Defense Department. Plans still are under discussion within the administration, and the details are sketchy.
Honduras so far has refused to permit training on its territory, but many in the administration believe it will relent if increased aid and other assurances are offered by the U.S.
Such an inducement may have come last week when the administration announced it would sell new high-performance jet fighters to Honduras. The country already has the most powerful air force in the region, although its fleet consists only of 12 Mystere B-2 fighters designed by the French 20 years ago.
The administration is prepared to sell the Tegucigalpa government Northrop F-5E jets or the Israeli-manufactured Kfir fighter bombers. It is expected that for this and other considerations, Honduras ultimately will permit rank-and-file contras to train on its territory.
Officers and noncommissioned officers could be trained at sites in the U.S. One location now under study is Eglin Air Force Base on Florida`s west coast. This air base and prison compound already houses several of the most secret squadrons of support aircraft for special forces and counterterrorism units, and has been a jumping-off point for CIA ”black flights” for more than two decades.
There has been consideration of training the contras at Ft. Ethan Allan in Puerto Rico, but Hispanic nationalism tensions in the island territory may end that plan.
The location chosen by the trainers must be big enough to use 81 mm. mortars and to demonstrate hand-held weapons, such as the Stinger air-defense missiles. That rules out small bases in populated areas.
In addition to training sites, the administration is planning to build staging bases on three islands off the Nicaraguan coast. Two of them, the Swan Islands, are 135 miles off the Nicaraguan coast in the Caribbean Sea; they were used by the CIA in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
The other is El Tigre, already a key site in the battle for Nicaragua. Located 12 miles from Nicaragua and a mile off the Honduras coastline, it was the site of a specialized radar station when the Reagan administration sought to spot weapons shipments being slipped into El Salvador. Now, it is the site of a secret U.S. surveillance post that eavesdrops on Nicaraguan military communications.
The choice of a staging area on the Carribbean side of Nicaragua suggests administration planners may be reconsidering one option often talked about in 1983. This plan saw the contras seizing a port in Nicaragua, possibly Puerto Cabezas or Bluefields, and declaring free territory and a revolutionary government. Then strong anticommunist governments like South Korea and Chile could recognize the contras as a state, and contra forces could receive shipments of arms and supplies openly.
The two ports are isolated from the populated agricultural and urban centers of Nicaragua, which are located along the country`s Pacific coast. The ports would be a poor place from which to mount an attack on Managua, but also would be relatively secure from Managua`s forces.
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The Sandinistas now have fortified these ports and maintain a considerable military force in the eastern section of the country, although it offers little protection for nearly 250 miles of coastline.
Essentially, the main front in this newly funded war is the same as it has been since 1982–the border between Honduras and northern Nicaragua.
The Nicaraguan armed forces–with some 120,000 people under arms–are regarded as the strongest land force in Central America. The 70,000-member regular army, more than half of which are conscripts, is augmented by a militia and border units.
Since the first contra attacks four years ago, the Nicaraguans have created a ”free-fire zone” in the northern provinces by moving out civilians and lining the path south with interlaced 152 mm. howitzer emplacements. It would be nearly impossible for a large contra force using traditional tactics to penetrate this defense without tactical air-support bombers that could blast Nicaraguan positions.
The contras are committed by terrain and armaments, even with the addition of antiaircraft missiles or guns, to small-unit tactics. Last week the Defense Department claimed the Nicaraguans received six heavily armed Soviet MI-25 gunships, known as Hinds by NATO forces, which gives them 12 of the ”flying tanks.” The Sandinistas also have 35 MI-17 troop carrying helicopters.
This air power will enable the Sandinistas to attack dug-in contra positions, and to swiftly move their combat-hardened infantry battalions along the front.
The $100 million in contra aid voted in Congress well may be augmented by as much as $400 million in CIA and military funds shifted from other covert activities, or ”borrowed” against future appropriations. Part of this money will be spent to try to give the contras an effective antiaircraft capability, but the options are not easy.
The hand-held SA-7 Soviet-made ground-to-air missile has been used in Afghanistan, and found not to be effective against the Hinds. The American Stinger may be more effective, but is a complicated weapon to aim and fire, making it unsuitable for the uneducated peasant volunteers of the contra forces.
The gunships played an important role in August, 1985, when the contras massed a force of 1,500 men to attack La Trinidad, 60 miles south of the Honduran border. Using the Hinds, the Sandinistas forced the contras to withdraw in significant disarray after only a few hours.
Since 1982 the contras have tried to operate an effective second front from Costa Rica, but Costa Rican government resistance and disagreements among the contra leadership have stymied the effort.
Many experts believe that the contras should pursue an ”insurgency”
strategy, one that would involve slow infiltration of Nicaraguan society, recruitment of new rebels in the towns and villages of Nicaragua and the use of military force only to occasionally press the objective of general revolution.
But the contra leadership has remained largely in the hands of former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza`s National Guard officers, who were trained in traditional military tactics. And even the contras` early advisers from the Argentinian army taught traditional military methods.
American assistance also often is criticized because it is not suited to the patient creation of an insurgency such as the Viet Cong employed in the early years in Indochina, but is geared toward gaining a quick reward.
Up to now, the contras` insurgency techniques have been primitive, and their relationship with the Nicaraguan people has been marred by widespread reports of torture and brutality. The thousands of recruits who have joined the contra ranks have been created mainly by the fighting itself. Many of the campesinos living in the disputed territory in northern Nicaragua–victims of attacks from both sides–chose the food and safety of a Honduran camp over removal to refugee camps in southern Nicaragua.
Renewed heavy fighting in this free-fire zone almost surely will mean increased civilian casualties.
It is difficult to estimate the total amount of U.S. contra aid from 1982 to 1986, but $127 million is one accepted figure. If as much as $500 million were to be spent in the next two years, the lethal level of the war could increase dramatically.