7611: Recent Killings of Americans and Insecurity (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

PLEASE POST ANONYMOUSLY

A journalist friend, I will only say he is not Haitian, recently gave a
chilling account of what he learned during a clandestine interview with a
former Captain of the FAHD who is living quietly in Port au Prince. According
to the former officer he was among those who was forced to shed his uniform
and flee for the Dominican Republic following the safe passage of Cedras and
Biamby to Panama, a fact that remains a source of extreme bitterness for him
today. The journalist also related that this man said he had reached a point
in his life where he has grown weary of carrying the ghosts of his victims
with him and hoped that God might provide redemption for the guilt of his
sins. 

The former captain claims that many former military and police had enriched
themselves after the coup by forming and managing street gangs that assisted
in the day to day operations of drug dealing, extortions and contraband. He
further claims that many of these same networks still exist today and are part
of the recent escalation of robberies and killings that have come to fall
under the general rubric of insecurity. He stated the escalation is directed
and orchestrated with the purpose of providing impetus to the recent argument
for the reinstitution of the military. He argued that the strategy was to
create such an intense climate of insecurity that the people would be forced
to accept the return of the military to re-establish order. If the people did
not support the return of the military than at least sympathy for its return
could be garnered from Washington, PARTICULARY IF AMERICANS WERE SPECIFICALLY
MADE TARGETS OF VIOLENCE. While he stated that some ties existed between the
former miltary responsible for directing the violence and the Convergence, the
move was largely independent of them although the door was opened wider for
them by Goog's call for its return. The Captain said he saw Goog as a fool for
doing so because what may have started as a political ploy against Aristide
might in the end swallow all of them whole.

True? I am not sure. Just the prospect that it might be true frightens the
hell out me and forces me to remain anonymous.