HAITI: How Washington set the stage for uprising
Lee Sustar
The media have a standard story line to explain the uprising in Haiti -
one-time populist leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide has become a corrupt
authoritarian who is relying on armed gangs to crush a popular uprising. In
reality, the anti-Aristide opposition that is behind the uprising shaking
Haiti today is a Washington-connected collection of Haitian businessmen and
a scattering of former leftists.
If they succeed in ousting Aristide, they'll try to turn back the clock to
the days when military officers and paramilitary gangs ruled Haiti through
sheer terror. Any doubts as to the nature of the rebellion in the city of
Gonaieves, which was siezed by rebel gangs on February 5, should be put to
rest by the role played by leaders of the military dictatorship of the
1980s.
While the media has described the rebellion as led by former Aristide
supporters, a key player is Jean Tatoune Pierre, who backed the 1991 coup
that overthrew Aristide. Others involved include members of the Front for
the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), a paramilitary organization
that terrorised and assassinated Aristide supporters during the military
regime that lasted until US troops restored Aristide into office in 1994.
Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former FRAPH leader, is centrally involved in
Gonaieves, as is Guy Philippe, a former police chief in the city of
Cap-Haitien who was accused of plotting a coup in 2000. By seizing
Gonaieves, they've essentially cut Haiti in two.
Washington's stated attitude to the uprising has been contradictory. On
February 12, State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher declared that
reaching a political settlement will require some fairly thorough changes
in the way Haiti is governed, and how the security situation is maintained.
The New York Times interpreted this to mean that the Bush administration
has placed itself in the unusual position of saying it may accept the ouster
of a democratic government.
The following day, US Secretary of State Colin Powell rounded up ministers
from CARICOM, the organisation linking the government of Caribbean
countries, the US and Canada, to declare, We will accept no outcome that in
any way illegally attempts to remove the elected president of Haiti. But
deeds matter more than words - and there's no doubt that Washington set the
stage for the uprising.
The top FRAPH leader, Emmanuel Constant, who claims he was a CIA employee,
remains at large in New York City. Major funding for Haiti's umbrella
opposition group, Democratic Convergence, comes from the National Endowment
for Democracy, a US foundation notorious for funnelling US aid to
counterrevolutionary forces in Central America during the Cold War.
While the Haitian opposition's high-sounding democratic rhetoric is repeated
by Western reporters, their right-wing supporters have carried out a
systematic campaign of violence against Haitian journalists and pro-Aristide
activists. If Aristide's supporters are armed, it's because they face armed
opponents.
If Powell backtracked on supporting the opposition, it isn't because the US
is reluctant to intervene in Haiti. The US invaded and occupied Haiti in
1915 and stayed for 19 years - an early example of regime change. Washington
then bankrolled a succession of Haitian dictators, including the 30-year
rule of the Duvalier family until an uprising, led in part by Aristide,
drove it from power in 1988.
On January 31, the US pressured Aristide into signing an accord with the
opposition, mediated by CARICOM, in which Aristide agreed to disarm his
supporters, reform the police force, appoint a new prime minister
acceptable to the opposition and call new elections to replace the
legislature, whose term expired January 13. This deal was in keeping with a
pattern established when 20,000 US troops invaded Haiti to return Aristide
to office nearly a decade ago.
Aristide, who as a Catholic priest became a mass leader of Haiti's poor in
the overthrow of the military dictatorship in the 1980s, became a
collaborator with free-market, neoliberal reforms dictated by Washington.
This included opening up a big free-trade zone on the border with the
Dominican Republic, funded by a World Bank loan that will benefit sweatshop
owners - and paying back debts to the International Monetary Fund that date
from the dictatorship.
All this has meant that Aristide has been unable to deliver promised reforms
to the poor - and his popular support has eroded as a result. Aristide
increasingly relies on a small network tied to his party.
The uprising was likely initiated by far-right paramilitaries who are
unwilling to settle for the negotiated solution. They gambled that Aristide'
s popular support had been so weakened that they could grab power quickly -
and that the more respectable right-wing front men would go along.
Instead, the poor rallied behind Aristide once more, with a mass turnout
forcing the cancellation of an
