Nicaragua Is It Curtains?

• Share

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."