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In the history of Nicaragua, the Contras () were the anti-communist right-wing rebels who waged a Contra War against the Marxism governments of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and the Junta of National Reconstruction, which came to power after the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979.
In the aftermath of the Nicaraguan Revolution, where the political dynasty (1936–1979) of the Somoza family was overthrown by the Sandinistas, various groups were formed in opposition to the Sandinistas, including by Samoza allies and former members of the National Guard, and also by Anti-Somozistas' groups whom had previously been aligned with and fought alongside the Sandinistas. The United States and several other countries provided military assistance and financial aid to the Contras. In 1981, the CIA and Argentina's Secretariat of Intelligence persuaded several Contra groups to unite into the larger Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN). In 1986, the Boland Amendment was passed to end U.S. aid to the Contras; yet the Reagan administration continued to illegally fund the Contras, which resulted in a scandal known as the Iran–Contra affair. By 1987, most of the Contra militias had united into the Nicaraguan Resistance, within which the Nicaraguan Democratic Force was the largest group.
During the war, the Contras' tactics featured terrorism and human rights violations against civilians. The Reagan administration said that the Contras' tactics did not include attacks against civilians. The CIA said that Contra terrorism resulted from "the poor discipline characteristic of irregular forces", that terrorism was not an official military doctrine of the Contras, and that the Contra leader responsible was executed. The Global Terrorism Database reports that Contras carried out more than 1,300 terrorist attacks. (2025). 9780415671422, Routledge. ISBN 9780415671422
After a cutoff in U.S. military support, and with both sides facing international pressure to bring an end to the conflict, the contras agreed to negotiations with the FSLN. With the help of five Central American presidents, including Daniel Ortega (then-President of Nicaragua), the sides agreed that a voluntary demobilization of the contras should start in early December 1989. They chose this date to facilitate free and fair elections in Nicaragua in February 1990 (even though the Reagan administration had pushed for a delay of contra disbandment).
Based in Honduras, Nicaragua's northern neighbor, under the command of former National Guard Colonel Enrique Bermúdez, the new FDN commenced to draw in other smaller insurgent forces in the north. Largely financed, trained, equipped, armed and organized by the U.S.,"On the basis of the available information, the Court is not able to satisfy itself that the Respondent State 'created' the Contra force in Nicaragua, but holds it established that it largely financed, trained, equipped, armed and organized the FDN, one element of the force." As seen at: International Court of Justice 1986, VII (4) it emerged as the largest and most active Contra group."The largest and most active of these groups, which later came to be known as ... (FDN)". As seen at: Lee et al. 1987, p. 29
In April 1982, Edén Pastora ( Comandante Cero), one of the heroes in the fight against Somoza, organized the Sandinista Revolutionary Front (FRS) – embedded in the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) – and declared war on the Sandinista government.Lee et al. 1987, p. 32 Himself a former Sandinista who had held several high posts in the government, he had resigned abruptly in 1981 and defected, believing that the newly found power had corrupted the Sandinistas' original ideas. A popular and charismatic leader, Pastora initially saw his group develop quickly. He confined himself to operate in the southern part of Nicaragua;"He insisted on operating in the southern part of Nicaragua." As seen at: Lee et al. 1987, p. 32 after a press conference he was holding on 30 May 1984 was bombed, he "voluntarily withdrew" from the Contra struggle.
A third force, Misurasata, appeared among the Miskito people, Sumo and Rama Amerindian peoples of Nicaragua's Atlantic coast, who in December 1981 found themselves in conflict with the authorities following the government's efforts to nationalize Indian land. In the course of this conflict, forced removal of at least 10,000 Indians to relocation centers in the interior of the country and subsequent burning of some villages took place.The Americas Watch Committee. "Human Rights in Nicaragua 1986" (print), Americas Watch, February 1987. The Misurasata movement split in 1983, with the breakaway Misura group of Stedman Fagoth Muller allying itself more closely with the FDN, and the rest accommodating themselves with the Sandinistas: on 8 December 1984 a ceasefire agreement known as the Bogota Accord was signed by Misurasata and the Nicaraguan government. A subsequent autonomy statute in September 1987 largely defused Miskito resistance.[1]
On 4 January 1982, Reagan signed the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the CIA the authority to recruit and support the Contras with $19 million in military aid. The effort to support the Contras was one component of the Reagan Doctrine, which called for providing military support to movements opposing Soviet Union, communist communist state.
By December 1981, the United States had already begun to support armed opponents of the Sandinista government. From the beginning, the CIA was in charge.Lee et al. 1987, p.3 The arming, clothing, feeding, and supervision of the ContrasLee et al. 1987, p. 3 became the most ambitious paramilitary and political action operation mounted by the agency in nearly a decade."In December 1982, The New York Times reported intelligence officials as saying that Washington's 'covert activities have ... become the most ambitious paramilitary and political action operation mounted by the C.I.A. in nearly a decade ... Lee et al. 1987, p. 33
In the fiscal year 1984, the U.S. Congress approved $24 million in aid to the Contras. After this, since the Contras failed to win widespread popular support or military victories within Nicaragua, opinion polls indicated that a majority of the U.S. public was not supportive of the Contras,"... opinion polls indicated that a majority of the public was not supportive." Lee et al. 1987, p. 3 the Reagan administration lost much of its support regarding its Contra policy within Congress after disclosure of CIA mining of Nicaraguan ports,"Following disclosure ... that the CIA had a role in connection with the mining of the Nicaraguan harbors ..., public criticism mounted and the administration's Contra policy lost much of its support within Congress". Lee et al. 1987, p. 3 and a report of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research commissioned by the State Department found Reagan's allegations about Soviet influence in Nicaragua "exaggerated", Congress cut off all funds for the Contras in 1985 by the third Boland Amendment. The Boland Amendment had first been passed by Congress in December 1982. At this time, it only outlawed U.S. assistance to the contras "for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government", while allowing assistance for other purposes. In October 1984, it was amended to forbid action by not only the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency but all U.S. government agencies.
Nevertheless, the case for support of the Contras continued to be made in Washington, D.C., by both the Reagan administration and the Heritage Foundation, which argued that support for the Contras would counter Soviet influence in Nicaragua.
On 1 May 1985 President Reagan announced that his administration perceived Nicaragua to be "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States", and declared a "national emergency" and a trade embargo against Nicaragua to "deal with that threat". It "is now a given; it is true", the Washington Post declared in 1986, "the Sandinistas are communists of the Cuban or Soviet school"; that "The Reagan administration is right to take Nicaragua as a serious menace—to civil peace and democracy in Nicaragua and to the stability and security of the region"; that we must "fit Nicaragua back into a Central American mode" and "turn Nicaragua back toward democracy", and with the "Latin American democracies" "demand reasonable conduct by regional standard."
Soon after the embargo was established, Managua re-declared "a policy of nonalignment" and sought the aid of Western Europe, who were opposed to U.S. policy, to escape dependency on the Soviet Union. Since 1981 U.S. pressures had curtailed Western credit to and trade with Nicaragua, forcing the government to rely almost totally on the Eastern bloc for credit, other aid, and trade by 1985. In his 1997 study on U.S. low intensity warfare, Kermit D. Johnson, a former Chief of the U.S. Army Chaplains, contends that U.S. hostility toward the revolutionary government was motivated not by any concern for "national security", but rather by what the world relief organization Oxfam termed "the threat of a good example":
The government's program included increased wages, subsidized food prices, and expanded health, welfare, and education services. And though it nationalized Somoza's former properties, it preserved a private sector that accounted for between 50 and 60 percent of GDP.
The CIA officer in charge of the covert war, Duane Clarridge, admitted to the House Intelligence Committee staff in a secret briefing in 1984 that the Contras were routinely murdering "civilians and Sandinista officials in the provinces, as well as heads of cooperatives, nurses, doctors and judges". But he claimed that this did not violate President Reagan's executive order prohibiting assassinations because the agency defined it as just 'killing'. "After all, this is war—a paramilitary operation", Clarridge said in conclusion. Edgar Chamorro explained the rationale behind this to a U.S. reporter. "Sometimes terror is very productive. This is the policy, to keep putting pressure until the people cry 'uncle. The CIA manual for the Contras, Tayacan, states that the Contras should gather the local population for a public tribunal to "shame, ridicule and humiliate" Sandinista officials to "reduce their influence". It also recommends gathering the local population to witness and take part in public executions. These types of activities continued throughout the war.
In April 1987, an American aid worker named Benjamin Linder was killed by Contras. After the signing of the Central American Peace Accord in August 1987, the year war related deaths and economic destruction reached its peak, the Contras eventually entered negotiations with the Sandinista government (1988), and the war began to deescalate.
By 1989 the U.S.-backed Contra war and economic isolation had inflicted severe economic suffering on Nicaraguans. The U.S. government knew that the Nicaraguans had been exhausted from the war, which had cost 30,865 lives, and that voters usually vote the incumbents out during economic decline. By the late 1980s Nicaragua's internal conditions had changed so radically that the U.S. approach to the 1990 elections differed greatly from 1984. A united opposition of 14 political parties organized into the National Opposition Union (Unión Nacional Oppositora, UNO) with the support of the United States National Endowment for Democracy. UNO presidential nominee Violeta Chamorro was received by President George H. W. Bush at the White House.
The Contra war escalated over the year before the election. The U.S. promised to end the economic embargo should Chamorro win.
The UNO scored a decisive victory on 25 February 1990. Chamorro won with 55 percent of the presidential vote as compared to Daniel Ortega's 41 percent. Of 92 seats in the National Assembly, UNO gained 51, and the FSLN won 39. On 25 April 1990, Chamorro assumed presidency from Ortega.
According to the London Spectator, U.S. journalists in Central America had long known that the CIA was flying in supplies to the Contras inside Nicaragua before the scandal broke. No journalist paid it any attention until the alleged CIA supply man, Eugene Hasenfus, was shot down and captured by the Nicaraguan army. Similarly, reporters neglected to investigate many leads indicating that Oliver North was running the Contra operation from his office in the National Security Council. "Who Helped Oliver North?" The Spectator, 15 May 1987
According to the National Security Archive, Oliver North had been in contact with Manuel Noriega, the military leader of Panama later convicted on drug charges, whom he personally met. The issue of drug money and its importance in funding the Nicaraguan conflict was the subject of various reports and publications. The contras were funded by drug trafficking, of which the United States was aware. Senator John Kerry's 1988 Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems".
The Reagan administration's support for the Contras continued to stir controversy well into the 1990s. In August 1996, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb published a series titled Dark Alliance, alleging that the Contras contributed to the rise of crack cocaine in California.
Gary Webb's career as a journalist was subsequently discredited by the leading U.S. papers, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. An internal CIA report, entitled, "Managing a Nightmare", shows the agency used "a ground base of already productive relations with journalists" to help counter what it called "a genuine public relations crisis." In the 1980s, Douglas Farah worked as a journalist, covering the civil wars in Central America for the Washington Post. According to Farah, while it was common knowledge that the Contras were involved in cocaine trafficking, the editors of the Washington Post refused to take it seriously:
If you're talking about our intelligence community tolerating — if not promoting — drugs to pay for black ops, it's rather an uncomfortable thing to do when you're an establishment paper like the Post. If you were going to be directly rubbing up against the government, they wanted it more solid than it could probably ever be done. "Kill The Messenger: How The Media Destroyed Gary Webb" Huffington Post, 10/10/2014
An investigation by the United States Department of Justice also stated that their "review did not substantiate the main allegations stated and implied in the Mercury News articles." Regarding the specific charges towards the CIA, the DOJ wrote "the implication that the drug trafficking by the individuals discussed in the Mercury News articles was connected to the CIA was also not supported by the facts." The CIA also investigated and rejected the allegations.
On top of that, Oliver North helped Carl Channell's tax-exempt organization, the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, to raise $10 million, by arranging numerous briefings for groups of potential contributors at the premises of the White House and by facilitating private visits and photo sessions with President Reagan for major contributors.Lee et al. 1987, p. 6 Channell in turn, used part of that money to run a series of television advertisements directed at home districts of congressman considered swing votes on Contra aid. Out of the $10 million raised, more than $1 million was spent on pro-Contra publicity.
The United States, which did not participate in the merits phase of the proceedings, maintained that the ICJ's power did not supersede the Constitution of the United States and argued that the court did not seriously consider the Nicaraguan role in El Salvador, while it accused Nicaragua of actively supporting armed groups there, specifically in the form of supply of arms.International Court of Justice 1986, VIII (1) The ICJ had found that evidence of a responsibility of the Nicaraguan government in this matter was insufficient."In any event the evidence is insufficient to satisfy the Court that the Government of Nicaragua was responsible for any flow of arms at either period." As seen at: International Court of Justice 1986, VIII (1) The U.S. argument was affirmed, however, by the dissenting opinion of ICJ member U.S. Judge Schwebel,"But the Court, remarkably enough, while finding the United States responsible for intervention in Nicaragua, failed to recognize Nicaragua's prior and continuing intervention in El Salvador." As seen at: International Court of Justice 1986, Dissenting Opinion of Judge Schwebel who concluded that in supporting the Contras, the United States acted lawfully in collective self-defence in El Salvador's support."concluded that the United States essentially acted lawfully in exerting armed pressures against Nicaragua, both directly and through its support of the contras, because Nicaragua's prior and sustained support of armed insurgency in El Salvador was tantamount to an armed attack upon El Salvador against which the United States could react in collective self-defence in El Salvador's support." As seen at: International Court of Justice 1986, Dissenting Opinion of Judge Schwebel The U.S. blocked enforcement of the ICJ judgment by the United Nations Security Council and thereby prevented Nicaragua from obtaining any actual compensation. "Appraisals of the ICJ's Decision. Nicaragua vs United States (Merits)" The Nicaraguan government finally withdrew the complaint from the court in September 1992 (under the later, post-FSLN, government of Violeta Chamorro), following a repeal of the law requiring the country to seek compensation.
Human Rights Watch released a report on the situation in 1989, which stated: "The contras were major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict, including by launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians, selectively murdering non-combatants, and mistreating prisoners." "Nicaragua" Human Rights Watch, 1989
In his affidavit to the World Court, former contra Edgar Chamorro testified that "The CIA did not discourage such tactics. To the contrary, the Agency severely criticized me when I admitted to the press that the FDN had regularly kidnapped and executed agrarian reform workers and civilians. We were told that the only way to defeat the Sandinistas was to ...kill, kidnap, rob and torture". "Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua (Nicaragua V. United States of America): Affidavit of Edgar Chamarro" International Court of Justice, 5 September 1985
Contra leader Adolfo Calero denied that his forces deliberately targeted civilians: "What they call a cooperative is also a troop concentration full of armed people. We are not killing civilians. We are fighting armed people and returning fire when fire is directed at us." The New York Times, 23 November 1984.
In 1985, The Wall Street Journal reported:
Human Rights Watch, the umbrella organization of Americas Watch, replied to these allegations: "Almost invariably, U.S. pronouncements on human rights exaggerated and distorted the real human rights violations of the Sandinista regime, and exculpated those of the U.S.-supported insurgents, known as the contras ... The Bush administration is responsible for these abuses, not only because the contras are, for all practical purposes, a U.S. force, but also because the Bush administration has continued to minimize and deny these violations, and has refused to investigate them seriously."
There were isolated protests among the population against the draft implemented by the Sandinista government, which even resulted in full-blown street clashes in Masaya in 1988."Sometimes they used force as they rounded up young men for military service, and there were occasional confrontations. But only in the town of Masaya, 19 miles southeast of the capital of Managua, did the conscription spark a full-blown street clash ... For several weeks before the latest outburst in Masaya, the opposition newspaper, La Prensa, had been reporting isolated protests against the draft." As seen at: However, a June 1988 survey in Managua showed the Sandinista government still enjoyed strong support but that support had declined since 1984. Three times as many people identified with the Sandinistas (28%) than with all the opposition parties put together (9%); 59% did not identify with any political party. Of those polled, 85% opposed any further US aid to the Contras; 40% believed the Sandinista government to be democratic, while 48% believed it to be not democratic. People identified the war as the largest problem but were less likely to blame it for economic problems compared to a December 1986 poll; 19% blamed the war and US blockade as the main cause of economic problems while 10% blamed the government. Political opposition groups were splintered and the Contras began to experience defections, although United States aid maintained them as a viable military force.
After a cutoff in U.S. military support, and with both sides facing international pressure to bring an end to the conflict, the contras agreed to negotiations with the FSLN. With the help of five Central American presidents, including Ortega, the sides agreed that a voluntary demobilization of the contras should start in early December 1989. They chose this date to facilitate free and fair elections in Nicaragua in February 1990 (even though the Reagan administration had pushed for a delay of contra disbandment). "U.S. Endorses Contra Plan as Prod to Democracy in Nicaragua" The Washington Post, 9 August 1989
In the resulting February 1990 elections, Violeta Chamorro and her party the UNO won an upset victory of 55% to 41% over Daniel Ortega. Opinion polls leading up to the elections divided along partisan lines, with 10 of 17 polls analyzed in a contemporary study predicting an UNO victory while seven predicted the Sandinistas would retain power.
Possible explanations include that the Nicaraguan people were disenchanted with the Ortega government as well as the fact that already in November 1989, the White House had announced that the economic embargo against Nicaragua would continue unless Violeta Chamorro won. "Bush Vows to End Embargo if Chamorro Wins", The Washington Post, 9 November 1989 Also, there had been reports of intimidation from the side of the Contras,"The policy of keeping the contras alive ... also has placed in jeopardy the holding of elections by encouraging Contra attacks on the electoral process. Thus, while the Bush administration proclaims its support for human rights and free and fair elections in Nicaragua, it persists in sabotaging both." As seen at: "Nicaragua" Human Rights Watch, 1990 with a Canadian observer mission claiming that 42 people were killed by the Contras in "election violence" in October 1989. "U.S. trying to disrupt election in Nicaragua, Canadians report" The Toronto Star, 27 October 1989 Sandinistas were also accused of intimidation and abuses during the election campaign. According to the Puebla Institute, by mid-December 1989, seven opposition leaders had been murdered, 12 had disappeared, 20 had been arrested, and 30 others assaulted. In late January 1990, the OAS observer team reported that "a convoy of troops attacked four truckloads of UNO sympathizers with bayonets and rifle butts, threatening to kill them." This led many commentators to conclude that Nicaraguans voted against the Sandinistas out of fear of a continuation of the Contra war and economic deprivation.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> U.S. Policy Towards the Contras from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives
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