a1532: Re: a1530: Lowenthal (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

FROM: Kevin Pina   <kpinbox@hotmail.com>



Here's an article directly related to understanding Ira Lowenthal's most
recent role in Haiti. I submit the article in its entirety as the context
presented is equally helpful to understanding his work.





In the Aftermath of Invasion

By Jane Regan, Covert Action Quarterly, January 1995


The first time the U.S. invaded Haiti in 1915, the 19-year occupation was
awash in blood. Five thousand Caco guerrillas died fighting the Marines and
their newly trained Gendarmerie d'Haiti. This year's invasion is bathed in
the kleig-lit glow of good intentions. Behind this facade, the goal keeping
Haiti firmly within the U.S. sphere of influence (1) remains constant. So
too does the spirit of Caco resistance which lives on in the democratic and
popular movement.

During the 1915 to 1934 occupation, the U.S. Marines established an
extensive repressive apparatus. They built hundreds of barracks and military
posts for the new Haitian army, one in every small town and hamlet. For six
decades, the army and its appendages, the Duvaliers' Tonton Macoute and the
over 500 repressive Section Chiefs (rural magistrates) repeatedly crushed
the Haitian movement for democracy.

Home of the first successful slave revolution in the hemisphere from 1794 to
1804, Haiti has a long history of struggle for independence and justice. In
1986, after the Haitian popular movement ousted the hideously repressive and
corrupt Duvalier regime, the U.S. embassy and the Haitian military launched
numerous overt and covert maneuvers to bring the country back in line. But
in 1990, the population surprised U.S. planners and Haitian elites by voting
for the last minute presidential candidate, liberation-theologian Father
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Immediately, U.S.-funded institutions began working
against the president's planned reforms such as higher wages and army
restructuring.

Despite government protests, the CIA continued to support the secret police
apparatus within the Haitian army. On September 30, 1991, with CIA approval
and U.S. intelligence officers present at army headquarters, Haitian
soldiers staged a coup d'etat against the democratically elected
Aristide.(2) Gen. Raoul Cedras took effective control of the country and
reinstated the section chiefs sytem outlawed by Aristide.

Under this mechanism of terror, each of 525 rural sections was patroled by
up to 150 assistants known as siveye-rapte (watch and report), adjoint
(assistant), attache (attached) and chkt lawouze (dew-covered stump because
he rises early to go after or spy on people). But the modes of repression
spraying entire neighborhoods with automatic gunfire, gang-raping women,
endlessly exploiting peasant farmers with nothing left to give are no longer
as effective as in the Duvalier days. Along with the Marines, the U.S. is
now importing more subtle means of control to ensure stability and deliver
Haiti into the U.S.-dominated new world order.(3)

U.S. ICES OUT THE U.N.
The coup created more problems than it solved. The plight of Aristide and of
the Haitian people became a cause clebre. Especially irritating to the U.S.
which demands unilateral control of its backyard was the international
support for Aristide. Not only did the U.N. pass numerous resolutions, but
countries with historical and economic ties to the island nation, including
Venezuela, Canada and France, took an active interest in the president's
reinstatement.

Even before the coup, Aristide had tried to use European, Latin American,
and Canadian support to counterbalance the overwhelming U.S. economic and
political presence. For example, much to U.S. consternation, newly elected
President Aristide turned to the Swiss government to train a new security
service for the National Palace. During the coup, it was the French
Ambassador, Rafael Dufour, who came to Aristide's rescue.(4) And when he
fled the country, Aristide's first stop was not Washington, but Caracas.
Within a few months, however, to the great disappointment of many in the
democratic movement, he sought exile in the U.S. despite strong evidence of
Washington's involvement in funding and organizing his opposition and the
coup itself. Belying his CIA-fed reputation as mentally unstable and the
media's penchant for labeling him a firebrand radical, the essentially
reformist president-in-exile pursued a careful strategy for return which
relied on U.S.-led negotiations rather than on his popular base in Haiti.(5)

Meanwhile, the Haitian military was also relying on the U.S. with
considerably more to show for it. According to Ian Martin, director for
human rights of the Organization of American States (OAS)/ U.N.
International Civilian Mission in Haiti from April 1993 until he resigned in
December of that year,6 Haiti's high command:

sought U.S. assistance to ensure the army's future. They mistrusted the U.N.
... and the proposal for the Canadians and French, both more committed
supporters of Aristide than the United States ... The United States hoped to
preserve the military an institution it had often assisted and in fact had
created for purposes of internal control during the American occupation of
1915-34.(7)
The extent of U.S. control went even deeper. Many high level military
leaders, some U.S.-trained, were paid CIA informants.(8) For decades, the
Haitian army has benefited from direct cash aid, weapons and even used G.I.
uniforms.

Although Aristide continued to maneuver within the limited space created by
international rivalry, France and Canada predictably fell in step with the
U.S. Subsequent negotiations produced the U.S.-orchestrated Governor's
Island Accord, which Aristide reluctantly signed on July 4, 1993, despite
its obvious loopholes and traps. The accord ensured that the military would
stay in power four more months while the embargo was lifted.(9)

As the accord was being signed, Emmanuel Constant (son of a Duvalier
general), who had been on the CIA payroll since the mid-'80s, went into
action. Within a few months, and with U.S. intelligence advice and
encouragement, he had formed FRAPH. A political front and paramilitary death
squad offshoot of the Haitian army,(10) it began to systematically target
democratic militants and hold the country hostage with several armed
strikes. On October 11, 1993, the day the U.S.S. Harlan County was to land
U.S. and Canadian soldiers, even though the CIA had been tipped off,(11)
FRAPH organized a dockside demonstration of several dozen armed thugs. After
a few cars were thumped and a few diplomats roughed up, the U.S. ship turned
around without even telling the U.N. and its Haiti negotiator, Argentine
diplomat Dante Caputo.

Caputo testily explained to foreign journalists that the boat would be
pulling back into the dock soon; the U.S. only one of the hundreds of U.N.
member nations was not in charge of the operation. As he spoke, his aides in
a hotel high above the capital watched the Harlan County steam toward the
horizon. U.S. Special Assistant Lawrence Pezzullo later revealed that the
CIA had recommended the retreat.(12)

Afterwards, a French military adviser said, Do you know what the real
problem is? The Americans don't want Aristide back, and they want the rest
of us out.(13)

The next day, despite Cedras' public praise for FRAPH patriotism, a visiting
U.S. general affirmed that the Haitian military was still on board, and
expressed his trust in its professionalism. A few days later, hours after
Clinton warned the army to protect the constitutional cabinet, Justice
Minister (and the U.S. embassy's attorney) Guy Malary was gunned down. The
new U.S. ambassador, William Swing, fresh from South Africa, called for
dialogue and reconciliation.

WASHINGTON TURNS BLIND EYE
During the year that followed, the U.N. Civilian Mission, which had left
after the Harlan County, limped back into the country but was promptly
insulted and attacked in a confidential cable leaked from the U.S.
embassy.(14) Meanwhile, the U.S. pressured Aristide to enlarge his
government-in-exile, stalled on tougher U.N. economic sanctions, and
continued cutting backroom deals with anti-Aristide elements. The sanctions
in place disproportionately impacted on the poor while allowing the elites
to get by. In one year alone, the cost of living rose 75 percent while the
value of the currency was halved.

The popular movement faced severe obstacles. The U.S. asylum processing
program chipped away at it by hand-picking and exporting almost 2,000
grassroots leaders. The U.S. also turned a blind eye to the increasing
repression. In the three years after the coup, the 7,000-man army and its
paramilitary assistants killed at least 3,000 and probably over 4,000
people, tortured thousands, and created tens of thousands of refugees and
300,000 internally displaced people. But despite the violence, poverty, and
exploitation, hundreds of peasant, popular, student, church and labor
organizations endorsed the embargo and refused to cooperate with the de
facto authorities.

U.S. liberal sectors, including the Congressional Black Caucus and
TransAfrica, finally joined the outcry against the administration.
Washington, threatened with a continuing refugee problem and charges of
waffling, prepared for a full-fledged invasion. On July 31, 1994, the U.S.
got the U.N. fig leaf it needed. Resolution 940 allowed the U.S. to
intervene at the head of a multinational force to facilitate the departure
of the Haitian military chiefs. Clinton rounded up a couple dozen partners
and Marines began training a token force of 266 Caribbean soldiers in Puerto
Rico.

SEND IN THE CAVALRY
With the U.N. out of the way, Clinton went after public support for an
invasion. Labelling the Haitian military thugs and criminals, he showed
visiting journalists photos of disfigured and dismembered victims. A
last-minute sleight of hand by former President Jimmy Carter turned this
century's second U.S. military occupation of Haiti into the permissive entry
of 20,000 troops and millions of dollars worth of weapons and material.

On September 19, the day the U.S. invaded, Caputo resigned, denouncing the
unilateral action of the U.S. as part of a scenario planned long before and
saying the U.S. treatment of the Haitian military regime with honor and as
heroes of the film was scandalous. When U.S. soldiers stood by as Haitian
police beat citizens, he said it was revolting.(15)

Rather than disarm the Haitian army and its paramilitary assistants
(Clinton's thugs and criminals ) as promised in writing to the Aristide
government, or purge the human rights violators,(16) the U.S. is now in
effect overseeing a kind of massive School of the Americas for the entire
Haitian armed forces. Everyone can now be trained at once, rather than
piecemeal at bases in Georgia or Texas.(17) On-the-job training began under
the banner of cohabitation and cooperation.(18) Working side-by-side, U.S.
and Haitian soldiers make arrests, share intelligence, and respond jointly
to calls from the homes and shops of the bourgeoisie and coup supporters.
When a Haitian soldier misbehaves or a paramilitary unit gets out of hand, a
few underlings are arrested, turned over to the Haitian police, and then
usually released.

In the capital, cohabitation is overseen by two Americans. Former New York
City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly oversees the police monitors who are
accompanying Haitian police and soldiers on their patrols, while Col. Mike
Sullivan directs the 1,250-person Military Police.(19)

Quickly, cohabitation has turned to complicity. On October 3, two dozen
low-level FRAPH members and police were arrested in a showy raid, but most
were later released. Two days later, the U.S. embassy organized a press
conference complete with U.S. embassy equipment and U.S. security forces to
promote the CIA-linked FRAPH's new message of reconciliation. No mention was
made of the fact that the Civilian Mission has repeatedly and directly
accused FRAPH of responsibility for specific, heinous crimes.

In Port-au-Prince, embassy and U.S. army officials claim that FRAPH has been
dissolved and that the army is in sad shape.(20) The reality on the ground
is that both forces remain armed and present in virtually every community
across the country.

U.S. failure to disarm the paramilitary squads is absolutely disquieting,
said a U.N. official who feared U.N. troops would pay for the U.S. laxity
when they take over Phase 2 of the Resolution 940 mission next year. We
would like to see a much more massive disarmament.(21)

A U.S. officer confirmed that his Special Forces unit had not disarmed the
local soldiers (or Tonton Macoutes or FRAPH members) because theirs was a
joint, co-op type mission. ... Whether they have actually committed an
atrocity in this country, that's not up for us to ... determine, he said.
They still have to protect themselves ... and have to uphold the law.(22)

The laws the U.S. is most concerned about upholding are those that control
endemic looting and establish stability in the streets.

I think there's a greater degree of confidence on the part of the Haitian
police, Sullivan proudly assured foreign reporters. I think you can see on
the streets that the Haitian people are more calm than they were two days
ago ... I think we have had an impact on the looting.(23)

The impact on human rights abuses is less definitive. In one incident, U.S.
soldiers helped Haitian soldiers arrest three people, one a member of the
peasant movement, on the unfounded suspicion of involvement in the killing
of a Haitian soldier and an attache. When U.S. journalists visited them in
jail, one had not been fed in three days. Another time, U.S. soldiers
protected the home of a Haitian soldier who had just knocked out a woman's
six front teeth because she had been cleaning the street for Aristide's
return. Seven weeks after the permissive entry, Haitian soldiers and their
assistants continue to threaten, beat and even murder pro-democratic
citizens.

U.S. TO TRAIN NEW FORCES
According to a member of Aristide's transition team, the U.S. originally
promised that the Haitian government would be allowed to vet the entire
military structure and to kick out human rights abusers.(24) Over the next
three to five years, the Haitian army and police are to be replaced by a
police force of 10,000 new recruits and re-trained former soldiers. The army
itself will be pared down to about 1,500. With success predicated on weeding
out corruption and human rights violators, prospects for genuine reform are
not good. Over the last four decades, a virtually unchecked Haitian army,
police, and paramilitary have operated with impunity. According to the
transition team member, the constitutional government has been given
information on fewer than 1,000 of the up to 4,000 human rights abusers it
would like to expel. To top it off, control of the vetting has shifted. A
panel of five Haitian army officers, most chosen by the U.S. and two of whom
actually participated in the coup, will have the final say on who is in and
who is out.(25)

Furthermore, the new forces will be trained by the International Criminal
Investigations Training and Assistance Program (ICITAP], an institution
which was founded by the FBI in 1986 and is currently being run by the
Justice and State departments to fortify the development of emerging
democracies in the Western hemisphere. (26)

Staffed by FBI agents, Secret Service, narcotics agents, and police
officers, ICITAP has been involved in many Latin American countries, most
notably Panama, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Its record is not encouraging.
In Guatemala, the reformed military and police have been implicated in
numerous human rights violations. The Catholic Church there reported 257
summary executions so far this year. (27) In El Salvador, the new police
force accepted a number of human rights abusers from the repressive National
Police, and many observers, including those from the U.N., have criticized
the force for violations.(28) A former ICITAP employee stationed in
Guatemala admitted that Giving the Haitian police training and skills will
not stop kidnapping and murders carried out at the behest of the military.
(29) Although the Haitian government wants France and Canada to participate
in running the program, ICITAP is demanding exclusive control.

THE INVISIBLE INVASION
While the Aristide government is struggling to maintain some control over
personnel and training for the new security forces, it has practically given
up fighting U.S. development schemes and democracy enhancement projects. We
realized we can't fight this huge machine, said a transition team
member.(30) Behind closed doors, the U.S. Agency for International
Development (AID), the World Bank, the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED), and scores of U.S.-funded groups are institutionalizing a more
permanent, less reversible invasion. The troops of this intervention called
democracy enhancement by AID and low intensity democracy by others are
technicians and experts. Their weapons are development projects and lots of
money. Their goal is to impose a neoliberal economic agenda, to undermine
grassroots participatory democracy, to create political stability conducive
to a good business climate, and to bring Haiti into the new world order
appendaged to the U.S. as a source for markets and cheap labor.

As in other countries, this democracy promotion industry will support those
projects and people willing to go along with its agenda and will mold them
into a center. In the crude old days, grassroots organizers unwilling to be
co-opted would have been tortured or killed. Now, they will simply be
marginalized by poverty and lack of political clout.

Sophisticated propaganda campaigns will set the stage for the demonstration
elections that will bestow legitimacy on the project.(31) A month before the
invasion, on August 26, in Paris, representatives of the Aristide government
met with some of the major cogs in this U.S.-dominated machine: the World
Bank, International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank and
bilateral funders. The Aristide team verbally agreed to impose a neoliberal
structural adjustment plan (SAP) that included the sale of public utilities
and publicly owned businesses (euphemistically called the democratization of
asset ownership ), liberalization of trade, and payment of debts. The
agreement implied a reduction in already pitifully inadequate social
services and an increasing reliance on non-governmental institutions and the
private sector.(32) Asked if the plan would support a raise in minimum wage
static since 1983 at about $1 a day AID chief Brian Atwood said: I don't
think that this economy is ready to consider such measures.(33)

A transition team member said that demands by the World Bank and other
funders go beyond a neoliberal economic structure and include a political
agenda. The international funders hoped to see a government of
reconciliation which would guarantee stability and a sound economic
environment, *34 he said. In the context of Haiti, reconciliation is a
codeword for sharing power with the people who engineered and supported the
coup d'etat, and maintaining their ability to control much of the political
and economic life of the country.

AID BYPASSES ARISTIDE
Like ICITAP police and military training, most of the financial aid will
bypass the Aristide government. Not only those funds slated for SAPs, but
also the almost $600 million earmarked for economic, governance and
humanitarian projects will remain largely under U.S. control. A transition
team member reported that when members of the constitutional government ask
about or criticize AID projects, U.S. officials say: `It doesn't really
concern the Haitian government.'(35)

Any hopes that the U.N. might intercede on Haiti's behalf dissipated when
U.N. Development Program director in Haiti, Juan Luis Laraburre, resigned in
May 1994, blaming pressure and restrictions placed on him by the most
powerful states.(36) A more recent UNDP technician was more amenable to the
U.S. agenda. The government has no absorption capacity, he explained. The
best situation would be for the government to oversee the projects without
having government employees do the actual work.(37) Under this arrangement,
the monies will go straight to the private sector, non-governmental
organizations (NGO), or local leaders and politicians chosen by AID and
NGOs. The most important U.S.-based groups NED, the Washington-based Center
for Democracy (CFD), the International Republican Institute and the National
Democratic Institute are almost wholly funded by U.S. taxpayers. The key
Haitian player the U.S.-founded and funded Programme Integre pour le
Renforcement de la Democracie (PIRED) is headed by U.S. anthropologist and
longtime Haiti resident Ira Lowenthal.

PIRED
The bulk of PIRED's funds and the font of Lowenthal's influence is a $15
million, five-year democracy enhancement project funded wholly by AID
through the Alexandria, Virginia-based America's Development Foundation, a
spinoff of NED. It has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into popular
organizations, labor unions, peasant groups, foundations, and human rights
groups linked to political leaders and parties.

PIRED has also promoted the U.S. asylum processing program, through which at
least 60,000 grassroots militants were interviewed extensively about their
activities, enabling the U.S. government to create a detailed database of
the democratic movement which many speculate has been used for more than
immigration matters. With PIRED's tutelage and cash, scores of labor unions
and neighborhood groups have gone from demanding higher wages and denouncing
U.S. imperialism to thanking Bill Clinton and promoting reconciliation.(38)

A $200,000 PIRED grant went to a foundation associated with Port-au-Prince
Mayor Evans Paul, a strong proponent of reconciliation apparently being
groomed by the U.S. to succeed Aristide. When Paul was reinstalled in his
office by U.S. troops in October, Lowenthal was there, beaming. A mainstream
newspaper noted with relief that Paul is very different from Aristide and
that he has matured from leftist street agitator to statesman. In the same
story, wealthy businessman and former coup-backer Gregory Mevs gave his nod
to Paul and a U.S. diplomat said, There's no one on the horizon who can come
near the guy.(39) Many are concerned that Lowenthal, who was also a frequent
visitor to army general headquarters in recent months, has too much power
over the millions being pumped into Haiti. In a confidential memo to U.S.
lawmakers, an Aristide aide complained that PIRED should be taken out of the
loop because it has been repeatedly involved in attempting to create
political solutions through power sharing arrangements with the military
regime.(40) Lowenthal is basically running the show, explained the
transition team member. He is like the new governor of Haiti. All local
programs go through him.

SOME AID SUCCESSES EXPOSED
A consistent pattern of AID funding to groups which cooperate with the
military and paramilitary is hard to ignore. One AID-funded project, the
Centres pour le Developpement et la Sant (CDS) has had FRAPH members
including those accused of brutal murders on its payroll. CDS operates 12
health centers around the country and received at least $4 million in AID
funding last year. It also has a database which includes records on most of
the 180,000 residents of the poor, staunchly pro-Aristide neighborhood of
Cit Soleil and is directed by Dr. Rginald Boulos, a close associate of Marc
Bazin, the presidential candidate the U.S. had supported against Aristide in
the 1990 election. According to residents, CDS, which offers the only health
care in the area, turned away people who admitted to voting for Aristide in
the 1990 elections.(41)

Another major channel for U.S. aid also shows few qualms about associating
with the army's death squads. The New-York-based Planning Assistance (PA)
has already carried out pilot local governance projects in Les Cayes and
Gona^Kves. Head of the project in Haiti, Joe Coblantz, admitted that
programs included FRAPH members. Coblantz said he was worried that with the
return of constitutionality, local participants would not allow opposition
members like FRAPH to take part. The two FRAPH people in Cayes, he said,
were the most civic-minded members of the community committees PA set
up.(42) In Gona^Kves, PA was working with local leaders, but not the legally
elected mayor, who has been in hiding during most of the past three years.
When a vice mayor took over the office, he adorned it with a portrait of
Franois Duvalier.

AID's collaboration with Duvalierists and death squads goes back decades and
reflects a consistent policy. During the embargo, when other major donors
such as Canada and France suspended all but emergency humanitarian programs,
AID took the opportunity to work extensively and safely with pro-regime
people and groups who were not part of the democratic movement. This summer,
the development group Oxfam America charged that AID has been working with
the cooperation or at least tacit approval of the Haitian military and
paramilitary apparatus.

In a letter and report to the House Appropriations Committee, Oxfam asked
that all non-humanitarian funding be frozen until the restoration of the
constitutional government.

It is impossible for opponents of the coup regime, either in the
legislature, civil society, political parties or local government, to
operate openly. ... Numerous allegations have been made by the Haitian and
U.S. media, citizens delegations and others, that USAID funded projects have
been knowingly or unknowingly ... politically and financially manipulated by
the military regime and its civilian supporters.(43)
BALLOTS VS. BULLETS
With the U.S. publicly committed to restoring Haitian democracy (while
retaining control over the economy), aid is targeted less at relief of
suffering than results at the ballot box. In early January, over 2,000
elected offices at the regional and local levels expire. The U.S., through
its aid entities, is trying to build a grassroots movement complete with
hand-picked leaders and local political parties to ensure a favorable
result.(44) In December 1995, when Aristide's term is up, the presidency
itself will be the prize.

Those elections are the insurance policy for our aid, an AID official
said.(45) A large chunk of aid is directly keyed to the elections
themselves. A $24 million Elections Assistance project will help create a
powerful council to oversee all elections; support civic education campaigns
by non-governmental organizations; and engage in political party
strengthening, media training and support, mediation and other activities.
Perhaps anticipating cries of foul, the project is backed by multilateral
donors with $4 million coming from non-U.S. sources.(46)

Despite that veneer, U.S. manipulation of the electoral process is fairly
blatant. In Hinche, one AID consultant told a visiting delegation that
Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, head of the pro-Aristide Mouvman Peyizan Papay
(MPP) is out of touch and too political to be involved in the upcoming
elections.(47)

On a national level sidestepping the fact that with 67 percent of the vote,
Aristide personifies Haiti's political center the U.S. is trying to create
its own moderate center. In May and June, the U.S. ambassador, PIRED, and
Marc Bazin who was supposed to have focused that center in 1990 hosted a
series of meetings of different centrist parties and personalities, most of
whom were open supporters of the coup and subsequent de facto regimes.(48)

The Center for Democracy headed by CFD president and NED founder Allen
Weinstein takes a slightly different tack. One participant in their mission
to Haiti wished to build an opposition in parliament. Deputy Samuel Madistin
said the team was openly looking to support political groups who supported
the coup d'etat. The CFD has joined up with the right wing before to meddle
in Haitian affairs. Last spring it flew mostly right-wing parliamentarians,
including Deputy Robert Mond, a former Tonton Macoute and FRAPH supporter,
to Washington. They presented a compromise parliamentary plan in which
Aristide would make some concessions in return for the resumption of
negotiations. The plan was exposed as having originated in the State
Department, and Aristide refused to go along.(49)

An Aristide transition team member who has studied the AID briefing papers
and talked to representatives of various programs, has a rather glum
assessment of the upcoming campaign season. Many of the new AID programs
will be run through the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), a new
AID-linked institution which is supposed to oversee transitions to
democracy. OTI will work with PIRED, and the Office of International
Migration (OIM), which has worked in Haiti for two-and-a-half years helping
the INS carry out its extensive asylum interviews. The transition team
member sees the OTI and OIM approach as a combination of psychological
pressure and thinly veiled bribery. The representatives come to a town or
hamlet, offer funding for development projects, and then attempt to
influence townspeople in their choice of candidates for the upcoming local
and regional elections. They will go so far as to recommend that people from
Lavalas, the movement that brought Aristide to power, not run for office.
AID projects, they explain, would work much better with more professional
people.(50)

This pressure will undoubtedly be coupled with an increasingly organized
presence from the right. If FRAPH does not emerge as a distinct political
party, as Constant has promised on several occasions, then it will reinvent
itself. In whatever form, it will probably receive funding and support from
its traditional sources the army and the CIA just as El Salvador's ARENA has
for so long. And as in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the paramilitary right may
continue to target democratic leaders.

But despite the threat of continued repression from the yet-to-be-disarmed
paramilitary forces and the complex dance of cooptation, the president and
the democratic and popular movement retains some maneuvering room and still
hopes to counterbalance U.S. influence. Recently, the European Union
promised at least $128 million in long-term development, some of it direct
to the government of Haiti; France committed another $50 million, and the
U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization announced a new project together
with the Haitian government agriculture ministry to strengthen local peasant
farmers. These programs may help support the government slightly and offset
AID's planned decentralized disbursements to handpicked officials and
groups.

PSYOPS AND PROUD OF IT!
In addition to aid and overtly political projects, the U.S. is also engaging
in psychological operations. An official PSYOPS handout from the embassy
this fall said their work consists of planned operations to convey selected
information to influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and
ultimately the behavior of people, organizations or governments, but claims
it is not propaganda, brainwashing or disinformation since PSYOPS relies on
the truth. Col. Jeff Jones, who heads the mission, said his team has worked
in Panama, Somalia, and the Persian Gulf. Their goal is to contribute to
U.S. national interests. He added that his operations always use persuasion
... first [to] try to teach what this thing called democracy is all about
[since] there's not a lot of experience down here.(51)

The PSYOPS team has admitted to preparing radio campaigns, taped messages
broadcast from tanks and helicopters ( We came to install democracy in this
country!, Stay calm! and so on), leaflets dropped from the air, songs,
posters ( Avoid this! under a picture of looting, Friends! with a picture of
a police officer, Haitian and U.S. flags together) and numerous other
operations. Tanks blast popular music in the streets and U.S.soldiers are
told to interact with the populace.

The overt objectives of the PSYOPS are, among other things, to discourage
Haitian on Haitian violence, encourage reconciliation, present a positive
image of U.S. intent, and support the restructuring of the Haitian
military.(52) The underlying goal, said an Aristide aide recently, is to
make the Haitian people see the troops as their saviors. In order for this
whole plan to work, they have to break down the anti-Americanism. Then the
two states become merged and go forward hand-in-hand for U.S. style
democracy and development.(53)

NEXT FOR THE MOVEMENT?
The most visible and profitable merger is that between the U.S. military and
the Haitian business class. Haitian-American Maj. Louis Kernisan of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, posted in Haiti from 1989-92, predicted: You're
going to end up dealing with the same folks as before, the five families
that run the country, the military and the bourgeoisie.(54) The smart money,
then, is on the occupation and its low intensity tactics to help control the
troublesome population. The modern sector of the business class is already
rebuilding, restructuring, reorganizing, and reaping profits. The Mevs
family one of the most outspoken supporters of the coup and the subsequent
regimes has numerous contracts with the occupying forces. It is renting them
an industrial park, storing their fuel and leasing land for a weapons depot.
They are also in on a huge joint venture with Florida Light and Power to
electrify Haiti with a 110-megawatt plant and World Bank-funded power
lines.(55)

In the meantime, President Aristide and the Lavalas sector, or what could be
defined as the reformist strains of the democratic movement, appear to be
satisfied with working within the limits imposed by the U.S. So far, there
is no sign the government will balk at the structural adjustment guidelines
being imposed.

Aristide has endorsed the democratization of the economy and is currying
favor with the private sector. His ministers speak only of reconciliation
and peace, and appear to have forgotten the need for justice and judgement.
And when asked why the Aristide government does not expose the high-level
U.S. maneuvers and meddling, one close adviser and human rights activist
said: Denounce them, don't denounce them. They're still there. Maybe we can
find a way to keep them from taking up all of the terrain. (56) In October,
the Haitian masses got a hint of the lay of the land when the Aristide
government announced gasoline would double in price. Workers at two state
industries electricity and the flour mill have already held massive press
conferences to protest privatization and denounce the stalling on
anti-corruption reforms.

With or without Aristide and his entourage, however, the democratic and
popular movement will continue. Now that there is a temporary break in the
targeted repression which prevented telephone calls and small meetings as
well as congresses and demonstrations many groups are beginning to organize
again.

The U.S. military, development, political, and propaganda apparatus does not
control all elements in Haiti. The population, about 65 percent of which
lives outside the major cities, is highly politicized and proud of Haiti's
history as the first independent black republic. The culture and language
are not easy for the U.S. to penetrate. (The PSYOPS people, for example, had
to hire 33 extra linguists.) Although no open rifts have yet occurred, some
development, church, popular and peasant organizations are threatening to
fight the new government's neoliberal agenda, and thus break openly with the
president. Also, some of the U.S. institutions in Haiti, including AID and
PIRED, are being increasingly discredited. There are anti-CDS graffiti and
protests in Cit Soleil. Many organizations choose no funding rather than
accept U.S. largess. Despite the continuing danger, leaders and
organizations of the democratic and popular movement are beginning to
organize and members are returning from exile or hiding.

Anti-occupation leaflets and bulletins are circulating. Urban organizers are
putting together neighborhood watch committees to protect their areas and
carry out their own disarmament. Peasants are meeting in the villages and
hamlets. By mid-October, the state university student organizations had
emerged and successfully wrested control of five of the 11 faculties from
the illegal regime. Long a center of democratic struggle, the university is
demanding the autonomy guaranteed in the 1987 constitution.

Although the population at large is still positive or at least ambivalent
about the occupying troops, the leaders and organizations of the democratic
and popular movement are organizing against the occupation and all that it
forebodes. Calling it an outrage to our pride, the Federation Nationale des
Etudiants Haitiens decried the occupation as nothing more than the logical
follow-up to the coup ... against the Haitian popular masses and their
arrival on the political scene.(57)

The representative of a popular organization from a small city west of the
capital, already targeted for harassment by U.S. troops and for arrests by
the Haitian army after a large, pro-justice demonstration, reminded people:

that the Haitian people, together with the popular organizations, are
principal victims of the September 30 coup d'etat, because the coup is the
endeavor of the pillaging class that is totally opposed to the Haitian
masses' will to change. The Haitian people have to be crystal clear that if
they want to terminate the coup and bury the Macoute system forever, they
will have to count first on their own forces and their own arms.(58)
And in its monthly bulletin, an outspoken human rights organization wrote:


A military occupation will always be a military occupation no matter how it
is made with brutal force like in 1915 or sweetly like today. It is always a
violation of the rights. A full-grown country has to live and operate as it
wants, however it wants. ... We see clearly that the fight for another kind
of justice will not be possible with a military occupation. It is a fight
against the occupant, a fight for liberty. Remember these words: They never
give you liberty as a gift. You have to take it. Liberty is for a people
that struggles.(59)

Jane Regan is a freelandce writer who reports frequently from
Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She recently collaborated with James Ridgeway on The
Haiti Files: Deciding the Crisis (Washington, DC: Essential Books, 1994).



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