In the third article in this series, I covered the first of the Central American civil wars featured in The Guerrilla Generation, El Salvador. In this article, I move on to the other Central American conflict and the last game in the pack, The Guerrilla Generation: Nicaragua. As with the game on El Salvador, the United States played a major role in the Nicaraguan civil war, serving as the external backer of the Contra insurgency against the Sandinista government. The Reagan Administration hoped to use the Contra insurgency as a means of pressuring the Sadninista regime into reforms, or at a minimum ceasing their alleged aid to the Salvadoran FMLN insurgency discussed in the last article. Nicaragua offers veteran COIN players the largest divergence from existing COIN mechanics, with a unique insurgent faction that almost entirely relies on external support and foreign sanctuaries to operate. Nicaragua also features alongside El Salvador in the “Resisting Reagan” Campaign scenario, which will be covered in my next InsideGMT article.

I specifically chose the Contra war in Nicaragua over the earlier Sandinista insurgency that toppled the Somoza regime in 1979 because I wanted to maximize the variation in the types of insurgencies featured in the multipack. The Contra war provides an opportunity for COIN players to explore an insurgency that heavily relied on external support, largely launching raids from external sanctuaries in Honduras and Costa Rica. Keeping Contra Commandos within Nicaragua will often prove difficult, particularly when faced with US Aid cut-offs. The Contra player aims to inflict as much damage as possible to the economy of Nicaragua through Sabotage and tying down Sandinista Troops. Contra Commandos frequently launched attacks on civilian targets associated with the government or economic development, such as transportation infrastructure, schools, or agricultural cooperatives. The nature of the Contra insurgency also shaped the Sandinista counterinsurgency response, which largely focused on mobility and firepower to counter raids by marauding Contras. Given the Contras’ more limited reliance on the local population, Sandinista counterinsurgency generally used less civilian victimization than other Governments in the multipack or broader COIN series. I hope these dynamics together give a very different feel than any other insurgency yet included in a COIN multipack or main series volume.

US Backed Counterrevolution

A large number of officers and soldiers of the Somoza regime’s brutal National Guard fled Nicaragua when the regime fell to the Sandinista insurgency in 1979. These former regime elements began to be organized by the governments of Argentina, Honduras, and the United States to form a counterrevolutionary insurgency against the new Sandinista government. Local unrest and armed group formation was already occurring in northern Nicaragua and among the indigenous communities in the departments of the Atlantic coast, due to opposition to Sandinista policies. External support helped to pair the former National Guardsmen with these disgruntled communities to form the first Contra camps inside the border areas of Honduras. Although Argentina dropped out of the scheme after falling out with the United States over the Falklands War, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) stepped in to enhance efforts to organize the Contras. The CIA had previously organized counterrevolutionary irregulars in Cuba (see the Cuba Libre: Resisting Revolution expansion by Joe Dewhurst), in Laos during the Vietnam War, and continued to do so in other countries resisting communist rule throughout the 1980s, such as Afghanistan and Angola. United States clandestine aid through the CIA greatly increased the size of Contra forces in Honduras, and also opened a new front with the formation of another Contra group operating out of Costa Rica.

The initial goal of the foreign backed Contras was to interdict supplies from Nicaragua headed for the FMLN insurgency in El Salvador. However, quickly the goal of the insurgency expanded to applying broader pressure on the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, with the hope of forcing it to shift away from Sandinista policies, or even better a complete collapse of the regime. Most in the CIA considered this to be well beyond the capabilities of the Contra, but vast amounts of economic devastation was nonetheless caused by Contra raids. The Reagan administration increased the economic losses even further by revoking US aid to Nicaragua, declaring an economic embargo, and carrying out military exercises in the region to force the Sandinista regime to vastly expand its military in response to the threat of US invasion. In The Guerrilla Generation: Nicaragua, the Contra player aims to lower Sandinista Political Will by spreading their pieces and Sabotage markers throughout Nicaragua, to foment Unrest in the Departments. In addition, by Sabotaging Port spaces and forcing the Sandinista player to divert Troops from Out of Play to containing Contra raids, the insurgency can further lower Political Will. However, the Contras’ ability to apply pressure will heavily depend on maintaining the flow of aid from the United States.

The Organization and Strategy of a Cross-Border Insurgency

The Contra insurgency’s heavy dependence on external support presents both organizational advantages and challenges for the group. First, the Contra insurgency does not need to worry about Resources in the same way as many other insurgent factions in the COIN series. The number of Contra Operations spaces is instead limited by the position of the US Aid Track. When support from Washington is flowing, the Contra player will be on the offensive. However, if US Aid is sharply reduced, then the Contra player will need to carefully plan out each space chosen. Second, the Contra player has the advantage of (mostly) invulnerable foreign sanctuaries in Honduras and Costa Rica where they can build up their raiding parties. This forces the Government player to thinly spread their forces to try to block several different avenues of infiltration. However, this reliance on foreign sanctuaries does come with drawbacks. The host country might decide to restrict the Contras’ access through Events, and the foreign spaces are not completely invulnerable to Sandinista incursions if the Government is willing to pay a price in Political Will.

The final, and possibly most important, difference for the externally backed Contra insurgency is that they do not have the standard Rally or Recruit Operation like other insurgent factions in the COIN series. Contra Commandos, the faction’s equivalent pieces to Cells or Guerrillas, cannot be placed directly into Nicaragua with normal Operations. The Organize Operation allows the Contra player to build up Commandos in Foreign Countries and replace Commandos with Bases in Nicaragua, but they must rely on other means to get Commandos into Nicaragua. The Infiltrate Operation and Raid Special Activity both allow for moving Commandos, while the Supply Special Activity allows them to place Commandos into Nicaragua spaces already containing Contra pieces, so long as they can trace a path of spaces with Contra pieces back to a Contra Base in a Foreign Country. Even worse, at the Redeploy Phase of every Propaganda Round, the Contra player may only keep Commandos in Nicaragua spaces up to the current value of the US Aid Track. Like historically, during periods of US Aid cutoffs, the Contras will mostly retreat to their sanctuaries in Honduras and Costa Rica to prepare for new raids into Nicaragua. Even for insurgencies receiving extensive external support, the lack of internal support from the local population creates major logistical difficulties.

Luckily for the Contras, if, due to Events or the Reset Phase, the US Aid Track gets too low, there is a convenient work around! Why not simply circumvent Congressional restrictions by raising the money elsewhere, perhaps by selling arms to Iran? To model the Reagan Administration’s clandestine efforts to circumvent Congressional restrictions, the Contra player may choose to spend their turn carrying out a special “Iran-Contra Pass”, which raises the US Aid Track by 2 but also places Evidence into the Iran-Contra Affairs Box. The more Evidence that accumulates, the more likely the whole affair will blow back in the Contra player’s face. Therefore, this risky approach should only be pursued when things get desperate, particularly since the Government player may add additional Evidence through Events.

The Government Response

The Contra insurgency’s heavy reliance on external support meant that the Sandinista Government’s counterinsurgency response differed from the standard approach of either winning over (Support) or dominating (Control) the local population, as often depicted in the COIN series. The Sandinistas needed to eliminate the Contra Commandos raiding in from foreign sanctuaries before they could cause too much devastation. The best equipped forces for this task are the Government’s Troops cubes who can use the Air Lift and Bombard Special Activities to respond with maneuver and firepower. The Bombard Special Activity also includes the option of using large concentrations of Troops on the border with Honduras or Costa Rica to target Contra pieces in those countries, but at the risk of losing Political Will from international condemnation. However, with most of the Sandinista military guarding against a possible US invasion, the number of Troops cubes is limited, unless the Government player Mobilizes more from Out of Play. Doing so will allow the Government to better prevent the Contras from placing Unrest markers, but at the expense of losing a few Political Will each turn from the economic opportunity costs of large-scale mobilization.

Their lack of Troops will mean the Sandinista player often relies more on Militia pieces. Militia act like Police in other COIN games, but are a little more mobile with their Garrison Operation, and the Sandinista player can also pay extra to include them in an Assault Operation. The advantage of the Militia pieces is that the Sandinista player possesses lots of them and they can be fairly cheap to place (even free if the Contras have angered the local population by placing a Terror marker in the space). However, half of the Militia each turn will demobilize, meaning that they have less staying power than Troops. Militia also cannot be used with the Government’s most powerful Special Activities, Air Lift and Bombard. Therefore, even when the Contra player may be floundering due to US Aid cuts, the Government player’s stretched resources means they are rarely given a respite.

Given the clandestine nature of US support for the Contra insurgency, most of the books on the conflict are journalistic or academic accounts of specific aspects. Good accounts by journalists include Christopher Dickey’s With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua, Glenn Garvin’s Everybody Had His Own Gringo: The CIA & the Contras, or Stephen Kinzer’s Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua. For a more academic account, see Lynn Horton’s Peasants in Arms: War and Peace in the Mountains of Nicaragua, 1979-1994. Scenarios on the Nicaraguan civil war are depicted in Victory Game’s Central America (1987) and quite famously served as the setting for one of the earliest wargames that tried to capture the complexities of irregular conflict, Nicaragua! (1988) by Joe Miranda: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7058/nicaragua. Like with El Salvador, both games came out during the conflict and did not benefit from all the data and research subsequently released after its conclusion.

In the fifth and final InsideGMT article in this series, I will cover the “Resisting Reagan” Campaign Scenario, which allows players to play El Salvador and Nicaragua side-by-side in either two player or multiplayer modes, with additional mechanics to model the broader struggle between the Reagan Administration and the Central American Peace Movement back in the United States.

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Previous Articles: 

The Guerrilla Generation: Uruguay

The Guerrilla Generation: Peru