Word: fdn
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...Katz's article did manage to deplore the actions of those protesters who sought to impose their personal views on the entire Harvard community by interfering with the presentation of Jorge Rosales of the Nicaraguan FDN (Contras), calling them "totalitarian," and rightfully so. Unfortunately this one creditable statement was in danger of being lost in a morass of obfuscation and extraneous debate. Most of the article deals with a rather torturous examination of whether the Contras as "murderers" ("which [Mr. Katz] tend[s] to agree is the case") should be allowed to speak. The very title of the piece...
...principal contra army, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), consisting of about 15,000 men, is spread among four bases north of Nicaragua in Honduras. Two small rebel bases lie just inside Nicaragua to the south, close to the border, and several camps and a base are in Costa Rica. Says Enrique Bermudez, the FDN's commander in chief: "Close to 70% of our fighting force has become confined to our camps, defending them on the one hand and awaiting supplies on the other." The main contra base, in the middle of the jungle 30 miles inside Honduras, has a cluster...
...FDN rebels themselves tend to be untrained and uneducated peasants. "The FDN," says Robert Leiken, a Latin American expert from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "has shown little interest in recruiting educated, urban cadres, who tend to have political differences with the FDN leadership." According to the Administration report, contra fighters often lack the skill to read maps, maintain technical equipment or carry out tactical maneuvers...
...members of deposed Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle's National Guard, the instrument of oppression in Nicaragua for more than four decades. For most Nicaraguans, this makes them something less than the "moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers," as Ronald Reagan has described them, and makes it harder for the FDN to inspire the populace...
...army seems to have the upper hand in its four-year-old war against the U.S.-backed opposition forces known as the contras. "When we are attacked, we have to respond with fire," declares Defense Minister Humberto Ortega Saavedra (see box). The main insurgent group, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), declared earlier this year that it had infiltrated 14,000 of its guerrillas into Nicaragua from Honduras and positioned an additional 3,000 along the border. Last week the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry charged that the border forces were poised to invade Nicaragua with the support of the Honduran army...