U.S. Intervention within the Nicaragua Contra War Essay

U.S. Intervention within the Nicaragua Contra War - Essay Example The CIA was responsible for U.S. operations involving the contras. Aid was later done covertly under the Reagan administration. Although many Nicaraguans also opposed the Sandinistas, few of them supported the contras because they focused on civilian targets and their brutality raised condemnation among the population and human rights groups (Horton 1998). The first contra groups such as the MILPAS were peasant militias formed by former Sandinista supporters. Formed in Honduras as the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN), it was headed by Enrique Bermudez, a former National Guard colonel and Jaime Irving Steidel, a Honduran-born field commander. Steidel was later replaced by Oscar Sobalvarro. In 1983, a political directorate was created under Adolfo Calero, a businessman and anti-Sandinista politician (Brown 2001). The creation of the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) and the Sandino Revolutionary Front headed by Eden Pastora in 1982 in Costa Rica established a second front. The ARDE was composed mainly of Sandinista dissidents and those who overthrew Somoza. They were primarily opposed to the increasing Cuban influence in the Managuan government. Although Pastora clearly stated his ideological difference from the FDN, he nevertheless called his campaign as the â€Å"southern front† to emphasise a common campaign against the Sandinistas (Brown 2001). Amerindian tribes such as the Misurasata, Sumo and Rama created a third front in 1981 against what they considered the Sandinistas’ genocide campaign against them. These tribes had a number of grievances against the Sandinista regime including: exploitive natural resource policies which deprived ethnic groups access to their ancestral lands and their subsistence activities; arrest and execution of the majority of Misurasata leaders; the bombing and occupation of more than half of Miskto and Sumu villages; the forced conscription of young men into the army; the eviction and relocation of 100,000