From 1912 through 1933, except for one nine-month period, U.S. Marines were stationed in Nicaragua; the U.S. administrations said they were needed to protect American citizens and property. From 1927 to 1933, Sandino led a revolt against the conservative regime and their U.S. supporters, and U.S. troops finally left in 1933, but not before they had set up the National Guard, a militia designed to look after U.S. economic interests after the marines’ exit. Anastasio Somoza Garcia was put in charge of the National Guard, and he ruled the country along with Sandino and President Carlos Alberto Brenes Jarquin, a figurehead politician. Half a century later, the fragments of this National Guard would became the focal point of U.S.-supplied AKs.
With U.S. support, Somoza Garcia took full control of the country, and the National Guard assassinated Sandino in 1934. The Somoza clan held dictatorial power through torture, intimidation, and military force until 1979. During the family’s reign, which was passed along to sons and brothers, they built an enormous fortune through bribery, exports of coffee, cattle, cotton, and timber, and by accepting financial and military aid from the United States—as long as they remained anti-Communist. Like Charles Taylor in Liberia, the Somozas ran Nicaragua for their own personal benefit.
Opposition was building, however. Buoyed by the success of the Communist revolution against Cuban dictator General Fulgencio Batista in 1961, Sandinista forces backed by Cuba staged raids from Honduras and Costa Rica against Somoza’s National Guard troops. Although Cuba did not produce AKs, it received them from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries as well as North Korea and supplied them to rebel forces in Nicaragua. Aside from hunting rifles and other scrounged firearms, the AK became the Sandinistas’ main weapon. Cuba had previously backed pro-Communist rebels in Angola with weapons, funding, and troops and was doing the same for the Sandinistas despite protests from the United States.
U.S. officials were torn. On one side was a dictatorship that was growing more brutal as the revolutionaries became more active. On the other side was the specter of the Soviet Union gaining a foothold in Nicaragua as it had done in Cuba. The United States continued to support Somoza with funds and weapons until December 1972, when an earthquake destroyed much of Managua, killing ten thousand people, leaving fifty thousand families homeless, and ruining about 80 percent of the city’s commercial buildings.
Instead of keeping order, Somoza’s National Guard joined much of the looting that followed the earthquake, but what happened next shocked and horrified the international community even more than the soldiers’ behavior.
With millions of dollars in relief aid pouring into Nicaragua, Somoza took advantage of the situation, keeping most of the money that was intended for victims. Funds earmarked to purchase food, clothing, and water and to rebuild Managua were diverted into Somoza’s personal bank account. By 1974, his wealth was estimated at more than $400 million. Even his supporters were sickened by the dictator’s actions, and opposition within the business community, one of his strongest allies, was rising.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) grew during this time as anti-Somoza sentiment grew throughout the country. Somoza responded with even more repression, prompting President Jimmy Carter to make military assistance contingent upon human rights improvements. Somoza stepped up his oppression. Street protests continued, and the country was in a state of siege. Strikes were commonplace and the economy was in ruins. Somoza relied on foreign loans, mainly from the United States, to prop up the country’s finances.
Somoza’s eventual downfall was precipitated by the assassination in January 10, 1978, of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal, outspoken publisher of the newspaper La Prensa and leader of the Democratic Liberation Union (UDEL). A massive nationwide strike paralyzed the country for ten days, and Sandinista attacks on government forces continued—but Somoza clung to power.
In 1978, the United States stopped military assistance to Somoza, forcing him to buy weapons on the world market. In one instance, no longer able to purchase M-16s from the United States, Somoza’s National Guard bought Israeli Uzi submachine guns and the Galil, that country’s version of the AK, first introduced in 1973. Because of his outlaw behavior, many countries refused to sell arms to Somoza. Israel was among them, at first, but the Israelis succumbed to pressure from pro-Somoza entities within the U.S. military, fearing that refusal would cut off their own U.S. funding.
The Israelis had built the Galil, named for its inventor, Israel Galili, in response to the poor performance of their standard-issue FN-FAL during the 1967 Six-Day War. (Israel Galili is often confused with Uziel “Uzi” Gal, the inventor of the Uzi submachine gun.) Having seen the reliability of the AKs used by Arab nations in battle, the Israelis realized that their rifles were not tough enough for desert conditions. In addition, the Israeli army was overwhelmingly a conscript force with most troops considered reservists available for a call-up during emergencies only. With little ongoing training, these soldiers could be hard on their weapons—leaving them in the dirt during bivouac, for example, something a professional soldier would never do—and the AKTYPE rifle could withstand abuse. (In an odd but practical concession to these unprofessional, part-time fighters, the bipod stand included with the weapon sported a bottle-cap opener. This would keep Israeli soldiers from damaging the flanges on their magazines by opening bottles with them.)
For Somoza, a major draw of the Galil was that it fired the 5.56mm round, the same as the M-16, so his army could use the tons of U.S.-supplied ammunition it still had on hand. The rifle was also inexpensive, less than $150 each.
As Somoza’s popularity waned, the National Guard became even more brutal in their attacks, including widespread bombing of León after the Sandinistas had taken control of that city. Still, Somoza would not yield to pressure for inclusion of the Sandinistas in the government.
The country continued to deteriorate. High unemployment, violence, inflation, food and water shortages, and massive debts racked the nation. In February 1979, the Sandinistas formed a junta combining several anti-Somoza groups that garnered a broad following. By March, the FSLN, now better equipped with small arms, launched a final assault on many areas, and by June these AK-wielding soldiers had secured most of the country.
In July, Somoza finally resigned, and with U.S. help fled to Miami and then to Paraguay, where he was murdered the following year, reportedly by leftist Argentine guerrillas.
Faced with a debt of $1.6 billion, an estimated 50,000 citizens dead and 120,000 homeless, the Sandinista administration was doomed from the start despite an optimistic citizenry. But even with widespread disease and lack of food and water, for many people the situation was still better than under the brutal Somoza regime.
With no cohesive government in charge, FSLN leaders formed coalitions, and finally in 1980 a government incorporating large numbers of Nicaraguans was formed. Not everyone embraced the new regime, however. President Jimmy Carter tried to work with the FSLN, but his successor Ronald Reagan, who took office in January 1981, immediately began to isolate and vilify the new government, claiming it was arming pro-Soviet guerrillas in El Salvador.
Nicaraguan problems aside, Carter had lost the election in part because Americans blamed him for not securing the release of fifty-two U.S. hostages held by Islamic fundamentalists at the American embassy in Tehran. The hostages were released twenty minutes after Reagan’s inauguration, leading to speculation that a secret deal now known as the “October Surprise” had been reached between Reagan’s campaign officials, notably William Casey, and Iranian officials to hold the hostages until after the election, thus ensuring that Carter would not win. In return, Iran would receive military and funding support to help fight their war with Iraq that had been ratcheting up for years and fully commenced on September 22, 1980, when Iraqi troops invaded Iran. This covert involvement of the United States in the Iran-Iraq war would later become a crucial element in the spreading of AKs a half a world away in Nicaragua.
As the
Sandinistas took hold, the Reagan administration supported opponents with funds and military aid. The core of these were remnants of Somoza’s original National Guard, who operated hit-and-run raids from camps in Honduras where many of them had fled after the dictator’s fall from power. These Contras (from contrarevolucianarios) grew in strength as Nicaraguans became less enamored with the slow economic progress of the Sandinista government. Because they had to spend more and more of their budget on fighting the Contras, the Sandinistas were left with less for social reform. In addition, they grew less tolerant of legitimate opposition groups and began employing intimidation tactics against those who did not believe in the revolutionary movement. Even La Prensa, once ardently anti-Somoza, voiced its concern over the tactics of the Sandinistas, who, during a state of emergency declared in 1982, censored the newspaper.
As hostilities grew, small arms rushed into Nicaragua. The Sandinistas received support from the Soviet Union, mainly through Cuba and the Warsaw Pact nations. The Sandinista army at first was poorly equipped and ill managed. Their weapons consisted of some AKs from Cuba and whatever was left behind when Somoza’s National Guard fled the country. This hodgepodge was gradually replaced by AKs only. The Contras had very few weapons save some hunting rifles, shotguns, and pistols. This changed immediately after they began to be funded by the United States beginning in 1981 when William Casey, newly appointed CIA director, suggested to Reagan that he support $19 million for the agency, which Congress later approved, to establish opposition to the Sandinistas. In 1982, the CIA created Contra bases in Honduras. In southern Nicaragua and northern Costa Rica, CIA-supported Contra camps were established under the leadership of a former Sandinista commander with the colorful moniker of “Commandante Zero.”
Congress was becoming increasingly uneasy about the conflict, however, and the situation came to a head when the CIA illegally mined one of Nicaragua’s harbors, sinking a Soviet freighter. In December, Congress unanimously passed the Boland Amendment to the 1983 military budget bill, which made it illegal for the CIA to continue funding the Contras. This did not stop the Reagan administration. They continued to fund the Contras through third parties, other countries, and through other U.S. government agencies that, the White House maintained, were legally outside the Boland Amendment’s edict.
In August 1985, the Contras received a shipment from Poland of ten thousand Polish-made AKs worth about $6 million. Polish officials denied they would ever directly sell weapons to a group opposed to the Marxist Sandinistas. Polish embassy official Andrzej Dobrynski said publicly, “It is so preposterous, it is undignified even to deny it.” Indeed, Nicaraguan president and Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was a guest of honor at ceremonies in Warsaw commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II.
U.S. officials claimed that the Contras had hijacked the Polish shipment, intended for an unspecified Latin American country, but government critics suggested that the United States had bought the AKs for the Contras despite the congressional prohibition. They said that although it did seem preposterous, Poland needed the money so badly that it was willing to go against its political ideology for cold cash.
Neither side budged from their accusatory position until late 1986 when Sandinista soldiers monitored a camouflaged Vietnamera C-123 cargo plane that had taken off from a field outside of San Salvador and was nearing the Nicaraguan town of San Carlos. As the plane flew down to twenty-five hundred feet, preparing to drop its load, a nineteen-year-old soldier fired his shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile. Direct hit. The plane spiraled, trailed smoke, and crashed, but not before a single parachute opened, safely lowering Gene Hasenfus of Marinette, Wisconsin, to the ground.
When soldiers reached the wrecked plane, they discovered seventy AKs, 100,000 rounds of ammunition, rocket grenades, jungle fatigues, boots, and two dead Americans. One of the dead crew members, William J. Cooper, carried an ID card from Southern Air Transport, a Miami company once owned by the CIA and still thought to have ties to the agency. The plane had previously been used in 1984 as part of a government sting, filmed by the CIA, showing the Nicaraguan interior minister involved in selling cocaine. Reagan had publicly displayed a still photograph from the film months earlier to bolster the administration’s position that the Contras should be supported to fight the Sandinistas, who were now drug dealers. He could not have known that the photo later would provide solid evidence of his illegal connection to the Contras.
Any doubt about the CIA’s involvement in funding the Contras, including the AK shipment from Poland, disappeared as the captured Hasenfus spilled the beans on the entire operation, telling about flying missions for the CIA, bringing weapons and supplies to the Contras. Even Reagan supporters felt betrayed at the disconnect between the administration’s public rhetoric denying aid to the Contras in violation of law and the mounting evidence to the contrary. The fact that the plane carried Soviet-style AKs added a more sinister veneer to a situation that was growing more disturbing every day.
In November 1986, the scandal grew even larger when the Lebanese magazine Ash Shiraa reported that the United States had been selling weapons to Iran. Profits from the arms deals were being used to buy weapons and for direct funding of the Contras. These weapons sales to Iran reportedly funded Hasenfus’s ill-fated flight.
During congressional testimony about the Iran-Contra affair—which only covered activities from October 1984 to 1986—investigators uncovered more details about arms shipments. For example, investigators learned that White House aide Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North had shredded documents pertaining to the arms sales shortly after Hasenfus’s plane was shot down. Contra leader Adolfo Calero offered documents showing that he had established a financial structure to funnel aid to the Contras. North, who was at the National Security Council, had set up dummy corporations and bank accounts to transfer money to Calero’s organization. Two former military officers, Major General Richard V. Secord and Major General John K. Singlaub, were also involved in the ruse.
Calero testified that Secord and Singlaub were particularly pleased at the bargain prices the group had received. The Contras paid half of the going rate for ammunition, about nine to twelve cents a round, and $145 for AKs, which normally cost $230 on the open market. He went into great detail about the $6 million Poland deal, handled by Singlaub, that netted several thousand AKs and millions of rounds of ammunition.
Calero also testified that Secord said that he had not profited from the total $11.4 million arms deals, but he later learned that Secord had lied and doubled the price of the AKs that he sold to the Contras.
Further media investigations revealed that the CIA maintained stateside warehouses of Soviet bloc weapons, mainly AKs, as did the Defense Department. In several instances, records showed that these AKs entered the United States from Eastern Europe and landed at the port of Wilmington, North Carolina. Many had their serial numbers removed so they could not be traced to their country of origin.
The televised hearings from May to August 1987 captured the attention of Americans as they watched North and others endure hours of probing questions. When Congress issued its findings on the Iran-Contra scandal, they said that North had been the main negotiator of the deals despite his pleas that he was only following orders from superiors. In May 1989, he was convicted of obstructing Congress and destroying government documents. His conviction was later overturned.
The results of the Iran-Contra probe—the full report was issued in January 1994, seven years after it began—never uncovered the entire story, because CIA officials refused to disclose the full extent of their involvement with the Contras. North, the principal dealmaker, also refused to answer many questions put to him, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The report concluded, “The underlying facts of Iran/contra are that, regardless of criminality, President Reagan, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence and their necessary assistants co
mmitted themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up the President’s willful activities.”
While this was a low point in U.S. history, the real legacy of the Iran-Contra scandal was that it brought tens of thousands of AKs to Nicaragua. These arms have spread throughout Central and South America, wreaking havoc and devastation not only in these countries but also in the United States, which has become a final destination for drugs produced there.
BY 1989, EXHAUSTION WAS SETTING in among the Nicaraguan combatants, but as happens in many postwar situations, like Afghanistan and in Sierra Leone, the large number of cheap leftover arms gave people a way to survive amid the chaos. As in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other Middle Eastern countries, the weapons became a way to make a living. As the war wound down, there were widespread reports of soldiers and former soldiers armed with AKs hijacking government trucks for food. Citizens bought rifles for protection against such gangs, while others set up firing ranges so well-to-do people could fire these plentiful weapons safely, for a fee, in a convivial setting. Still others, seeking to obtain hard currency, sold caches of leftover AKs to rebels in other countries such as El Salvador.
By 1989, the civil war in El Salvador was already a decade old. The country had been ruled by a string of dictatorships since the 1930s, but the seventies saw the growth of more active guerrilla movements, most notably Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which opposed the oppressive right-wing government. Between 1979 and 1981 about thirty thousand people were killed by government death squads, and the moderate presidency of José Napoleon Duarte from 1984 to 1989 failed to end the war. Instead, it grew even more violent.
AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War Page 12