Word: contra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...size of the contra force. Despite their shortcomings, the contras are an authentic army of Nicaraguans, mainly peasants, fighting for their liberty against a repressive tyranny supported and maintained in power by the Soviet Union. The contras are many times larger than the Sandinistas ever were. If you put the major leftist insurgencies in Latin America together, they still wouldn't add up to as many as the contras...
...contra reform. Right now, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (F.D.N., the largest contra army) and United Nicaraguan Opposition (the main contra political organization) are a little bit like the tail wagging the dog. The military has to become subordinate to U.N.O. It's also important that the military be represented, so it's not just a bunch of politicians running the army. There is also a need for unity with other groups. One reason for the success of the Sandinistas is that they've been fighting a one-front...
...analyst is now urging the contras to shed their "cia-imposed leadership." He says that it is resented by the combat troops, considered "hostile to democracy" and is damaging to the unity of the various contra factions. He believes that if the contras unite under a common political banner, with such respected democrats as Arturo Cruz and Alfonso Robelo at the top, Nicaraguans and Americans will support the rebels as a legitimate democratic resistance force...
...condemnations of the contra leadership do not please White House officials, his calls for "military pressure" to force the Sandinistas to the bargaining table do. Thus Leiken has been accused of being a mouthpiece for the Reagan Administration. Yet he has condemned Reagan's failure to forge a bipartisan consensus. "I think the Administration has chosen to divide the country rather than unite it by using inflated, hyperbolic rhetoric," he says. "The struggle within the elite in the U.S. has taken precedence over what's going on in Nicaragua...
...Nation that Leiken's writings are packed with "calumnies and falsehoods." Kevin Kelley of the Guardian, a small radical newspaper in New York, fumed in an article that "Leiken has clearly perfected a political formula that appeals to neoliberal publications." Leiken has been called a press agent for various contra leaders, and his willingness to testify before congressional committees has brought charges of opportunism. Even analysts who respect Leiken's knowledge of Nicaragua are disturbed by his strong advocacy posture. Says Peter Bell, president of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in New York City: "I don't believe that anyone...