15023: Saint-Vil: Noteworthy Backgrounder on Foreign Control of Haiti's Destiny (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Jean Saint-Vil <jafrikayiti@hotmail.com>

US occupation force evacuates Haiti, leaving a country in ruins
By Jacques Richard
17 February 2000

Source: http://wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/hait-f17.shtml

In September 1994, a 20,000-strong US occupation force landed on the
Caribbean Island of Haiti and returned to power Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the
elected president who had been overthrown three years earlier in a bloody
military coup. Two weeks ago, "Operation Restore Democracy" came to an
inglorious end. The remaining 300 US troops stationed in Haiti have left for
home even as criminal gangs, largely comprised of personnel from the
disbanded Haitian army, terrorize the populace in broad daylight and
politically-motivated violence escalates in advance of next month's
parliamentary elections.

When the US marines arrived in Haiti, they were welcomed as quasi-liberators
by a population suffering from the combined effects of three years of
military dictatorship and a US-led international economic embargo. The last
US troops, by contrast, slipped away without fanfare in either Haiti or
Washington. US President Bill Clinton, who once proclaimed Haiti's
democratic development and economic revival one of his administration's main
foreign policy goals, now seldom mentions the country.

Why are the Clinton administration, the US security establishment and the
big business media so reluctant to provide a public balance sheet of what
the US has wrought in Haiti?


A social catastrophe

The few articles that have appeared in the North American press on Haiti
paint a devastating picture. "Sixty percent of the population in the Western
Hemisphere's poorest country is still illiterate and gets by on less than $1
a day,” reported the Washington Post last September. Entitled “A Nation in
Need: After 5-Year US Intervention, Democracy in Haiti Looks Bleak,” the
Washington Post report conceded that the US-led intervention in Haiti has
failed to lay the foundations for either Haiti's economic or democratic
development. “The historically corrupt and inefficient justice system
remains plagued by serious problems....

“As the international intervention mission winds down, it leaves behind a
weak and financially constrained state unable to meet the basic needs of its
people. Only a quarter of the population has access to safe drinking water,
and most Haitians have no electricity or phone service. About half the
children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition, and per capita annual
health spending is $21, compared with $38 in sub-Saharan Africa."

A more recent report from the Toronto Star provides the following assessment
of the fruits of “Operation Restore Democracy”: “The misery is just as deep,
the garbage piled as high, the people as sick and the political situation as
tenuous as it was, say, five years ago.... On the crucial issues, things
keep getting worse. There is no military junta, true, but there are
political repression, fear, the emergence of a new-style Tonton Macoutes—the
old killing machine of the Duvalier dictatorship—and relentless political
turmoil.” The article raised the pointed question: “Why haven't conditions
improved despite a high level of foreign assistance and involvement?”

Insofar as US, Canadian and other Western politicians and diplomats provide
any answer to this question, it is to blame the Haitian people themselves.
According to Michael Duval, Canada's permanent UN representative, “The
responsibility for rebuilding Haiti ... and maintaining a safe, stable
political environment lies chiefly with the people and government of Haiti.”

These cynical homilies are aimed at effacing the historical record. Over the
course of the twentieth century, the US used its military and economic might
to prevent radical socioeconomic change in Haiti. Repeatedly Washington gave
its support to dictatorships that preserved the privileges of a tiny
indigenous elite, while maintaining the mass of the Haitian people in
squalor.

The three-decades-long Duvalier family dictatorship was a key US Cold War
ally in the Caribbean and Central America. The Haitian army that was
disbanded during “Operation Restore Democracy” had been created by the US
during an earlier US military occupation that lasted from 1915 to 1934.


Washington's real motives

To make sense of the outcome of the most recent US intervention in Haiti, it
is first necessary to consider the real motives behind it. At the outset, it
must be recalled that much of the US political elite was opposed to removing
Haiti's military regime, preferring to exercise US domination over Haiti
through traditional means.

The Republicans denounced Aristide as a demented radical, and continued to
oppose his restoration to the presidency even after he had accepted a US
army of occupation and agreed to implement the dictates of the IMF. The
Republicans' vehement opposition to Aristide indicates that there is much to
the rumor that the CIA, if not the Bush administration itself, gave the
green light to his ouster in 1991.

There were multiple reasons why Bush's successor, Bill Clinton, decided to
move against, or, more precisely, set aside, Haiti's military government.
However, the central issue running through all of them was how best to
maintain US economic and geopolitical domination in the post-Cold War world.

In the aftermath of the 1991 coup, Clinton's Democratic Party had criticized
the Bush administration for turning back Haitian refugees attempting to flee
to Florida. Upon coming to power, Clinton could not continue this ruthless
practice without damaging his credibility both at home and abroad. A change
in Haiti's political landscape was therefore needed, if not to stem the flow
of Haitian refugees into US waters, at least to provide the new US
administration with a pretext for sending them back.

The Clinton administration turned to Aristide, who by this time was living
in Washington and devoting his energies to convincing Congress and the White
House that he represented no threat to US interests. While the likes of
Republican Senator Jesse Helms continued to condemn the ex-Catholic priest
as a communist and apostate, the US State Department increasingly warmed to
the idea that Aristide and his advisors, who by now were largely drawn from
the Haitian exile community in the US, could better serve US ends than the
shaky military regime in Port-au-Prince.

In 1993 the US brought Aristide and the leaders of the military regime
together at Governor's Island for face-to-face negotiations. While junta
leader Cédras was willing to give vague assurances that the military would
ultimately relinquish power, he and the other generals rankled at any
suggestion that Aristide be restored to power. An agreement was purportedly
reached, but the military regime soon reneged on it. When a US naval vessel,
the USS Harlem County, docked at the Port-au-Prince Harbor, US personnel
were chased away by a mob organized by the military junta.

This turn of events resulted in a strengthening of the White House's resolve
to be rid of the generals. The Haitian junta's defiance threatened to
undercut the new administration's international credibility. This occurred
at a time when US attempts to take advantage of the collapse of the USSR and
use US military prowess to police a new world order had already suffered a
blow from the failure of the US intervention in Somalia. As in Somalia, a US
intervention in Haiti could be given a democratic facade, thus helping
legitimize the use of US military power among Americans and world public
opinion.

Two other factors undoubtedly played a major role in the Clinton
administration's decision, following the unraveling of the Governor's Island
agreement, to intensify the pressure on the junta and prepare a wholesale
occupation of Haiti.

First, there were the very real fears that the military was losing its grip
on Haiti and the country would soon be rocked by social unrest.

Second, there was the role of Aristide himself—his popularity among the
Haitian people, due to his outspoken opposition to the Duvalier dictatorship
and its successors, and his manifest subservience to Washington.

Aristide's transformation into a US pawn, who gave his blessing to Haiti's
occupation by the foreign power that had been the principal backer of the
Duvalier dictatorship, was the logical outcome of his previous policy. At
the time of the 1991 coup, Aristide had ordered his followers in Haiti,
above all in the working class neighborhoods, to abstain from “violence”, in
other words, to accept the military's seizure of power.

Instead, he advised them to place their faith in the United Nations and the
“international community,” above all Canada, France and the US, to press for
a return of democracy. Thus, from the beginning, Aristide's hopes of a
return to power were bound up with the intrigues of great power diplomacy.
This meant he had to prove to imperialism he could be a better guarantor of
social order than his military opponents.

During the negotiations and maneuvering that ultimately resulted in his
restoration to power, Aristide made still further concessions, agreeing to
serve as an instrument for breaking the control of the Haitian state—i.e.,
the military and the Cédras-led government—over much of the economy. This
would allow foreign investors to have greater access to Haitian markets and
resources.

In 1993, during the Governor's Island negotiations, Aristide accepted an
IMF-dictated program which called for maintaining low wages, privatization
of state enterprises, and the elimination of tariffs and other controls on
imports. A year later he was forced to give an even more detailed
undertaking. This quid pro quo was no secret. In April 1995, then-Prime
Minister Smarck Michel explained that his government's economic policies
were not defined by the cabinet, but rather by “two precise documents ...
that were part of all the negotiations that assured the return of the
president.”


Protecting US “assets” and suppressing evidence of US complicity

That “Operation Restore Democracy” had nothing to do with its moniker is
further demonstrated by the lengths to which the US went to protect the coup
leaders and appease their supporters in Haiti's elite. As a condition for
his return to power, Aristide had to agree that the three years of military
rule would count as part of his term of office. (He was already barred from
running for a second term by the country's constitution.)

Washington, meanwhile, did everything to placate the military leaders.
Before any US troops actually landed in Haiti, former US President Jimmy
Carter flew to Port-au-Prince to work out a deal to ensure that no
confrontation took place between US and Haitian soldiers. He also arranged
an orderly, and profitable, departure for coup leader General Cédras and his
accomplices. Not only was Cédras allowed to go unpunished into exile in
Panama, the US unfroze his bank accounts and even agreed to pay him
thousands of dollars a month to rent his Port-au-Prince mansions during the
occupation.

The very first operation conducted by the US occupation force was to capture
the headquarters of FRAPH, a paramilitary force established by the coup
leaders. The US military promptly seized more than 150,000 pages of
documents detailing FRAPH's operations.

These documents, which catalogue the terror committed by FRAPH in
collaboration with the military, were then transferred to the US embassy,
where they remain to this day. Washington has rejected all requests from
Haitian and UN authorities that they be handed over to the Haitian
government. Nevertheless, it has emerged that the head of FRAPH, Emmanuel
Constant, was an “asset” of the CIA.

For its part, the US State Department has conceded a US tie to FRAPH, saying
that it would be willing to turn over the FRAPH documents if it were allowed
to eliminate references to a “small number” of US citizens.

Much has been made by supporters of “Operation Restore Democracy” of the
dissolution of the Haitian army and its replacement by a new National
Police. But a significant section of the army has been incorporated into the
new force.

Just as importantly, the US occupation force proved unwilling to disarm the
decommissioned soldiers, and Aristide, as part of the deal that restored him
to power, was committed to opposing any attempt to mobilize the masses
against the armed supporters of reaction. According to the Agence Haïtienne
de Presse, “Many reproach the multinational force for not having taken
adequate measures to disarm members of the old army [and] the
paramilitaries.”

The Toronto Star article quoted above reports: “The 6,000-member Haitian
National Police, initially trained by [Canadian] Mounties under the auspices
of the US, has been problematic, involved in beatings, extra-judicial
killings, corruption and drug trafficking.... This past May, former police
chief Jean Coles Rameau was arrested after the police handcuffed 11 men,
lined them up against a wall in the outlying Carrefour-Feuilles area of the
capital and killed them with shots to the head. Three were suspected
gangsters, the others were bystanders.... A report by the National Coalition
for Haitian Rights describes endemic police arrogance. Officers strut around
the island like the Tonton Macoute militias of François Duvalier and his son
Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc,' or the storm troopers of coup leader Gen. Raoul
Cédras.”

Last month's coup in Ecuador has raised the specter of a return to military
dictatorship in Latin America. In this regard, a significant comment
appeared in one of the major Haitian weekly newspapers, Haiti en Marche:
“Five years after the abolition of the Haitian armed forces and under
conditions where one begins to hear from all directions the noise of [army]
boots, we can still say: ‘happily we don't have a military.' Yes, but
beware. It's not that we've plugged the hole. The ship of state is leaking
everywhere.”


The impact of the IMF's “structural adjustment”

The economic policies pursued by Aristide and his successor, René Préval, on
the orders of the IMF are antithetical to genuine democracy. Not only have
they perpetuated the control of the Haitian economy by a tiny elite, they
have increased poverty and social inequality, and this in a country already
marred by a vast chasm between the rich and poor.

A comprehensive 1997 review of Haiti's economy, written by Lisa McGowan and
entitled Structural Adjustment and the Aid Juggernaut in Haiti, documents
the ruinous impact of the IMF's dictates on the mass of the Haitian
populace. “The high level of compliance by the Aristide [and Preval]
Administration with IMF and donor demands," reports McGowan “has brought
almost no benefit to the Haitian people, while yielding little in the way of
private investment.”

On privatization, she writes: “Before President Aristide even returned to
Haiti, donor aid was explicitly conditioned on his agreement to privatize
nine entities out of a list of over 40 state assets. The priority list
included the telephone and electricity companies, a cement plant and flour
mill, the nation's airport and sea ports, a cooking oil plant and two state
banks.”

“Many Haitian citizens,” continues McGowan, “see ... state-owned enterprises
... as a key source of actual (in the case of the phone company and the
ports) or potential income generation for their resource-strapped
country.... This belief clashed with donor timetables and priorities.”

In September 1995 popular and parliamentary resistance to privatization was
such that the Cabinet balked at signing a letter of intent with the World
Bank which committed Haiti to putting still more state assets up for sale.
This caused the government of Prime Minister Smarck Michel to fall.

But in September 1996, following a visit to Haiti by Michel Camdessus, the
managing director of the IMF, a privatization law was passed by Parliament.
Aristide's successor as president, his former prime minister and so-called
political " twin ," René Préval, has carried out the fire sale of the cement
plant and the flour mill, at the cost of hundreds of jobs. The telephone
company, the airport and Haiti's seaports, which between them employ over
7,500 workers, are next in line. The Préval government has also cut
thousands of government jobs through early retirement—although the real
unemployment rate in Haiti is well over 50 percent.

To appease the IMF, the state electricity company slashed its staff and
raised tariffs by 21 percent in November 1994. Then, two months later, the
Aristide government announced a package of special incentives to attract
foreign investment to Haiti, which included a reduction in corporate
telephone and electricity rates and customs fees.

But Haiti's biggest drawing card in attracting foreign investment is low
wages. Explains McGowan, “At US$2.40 a day, the real minimum wage is worth
40 percent less today than it was in 1980 and is the lowest in the
hemisphere.”

But for the IMF even this pittance was too high. It had Article 137 of the
Haitian Labor Code, which required that the minimum wage be raised every
time inflation reaches more than 10 percent annually, repealed. “The
wage-freeze bill mandated by the IMF means that, in order to increase the
wages of its employees, the government would first have to fire other
staff," writes McGowan.

Despite these measures, investors continue to shun Haiti, because of its
lack of infrastructure, uneducated workforce and fears of political unrest.
At the same time, the IMF reforms have had a devastating impact on the
peasantry, which make up two-thirds of Haiti's population. According to
McGowan, the removal of tariffs on food crops has placed Haitian peasants
“in direct competition with subsidized, mechanized farmers from other
countries, a battle that they simply cannot win.”

“Ten years ago,” continues McGowan, “rice farmers produced virtually all of
the rice consumed in Haiti. Over the past decade, however, they have been
dealt blow after blow by trade, currency-exchange and fiscal policies under
structural adjustment frameworks.... The result is that Haiti now produces
only about 50 percent of its rice needs."

Summing up the impact of IMF “structural adjustment”, McGowan states:
“Rather than helping to straighten out Haiti's distorted economy, the
combined effect of IMF and other adjustment policies has been to put a
financial straitjacket around it that constrains overall economic activity.
These policies continue to serve the interests of a few creditors, some
foreign investors and consumers, and a small class of Haitian elites at the
expense of the Haitian people. " (The full text of her report can be found
at www.igc.org/dgap/haiti97.html.)

If the conditions of the Haitian masses only further deteriorated during the
US-led Operation Restore Democracy, it is because the aims of this
enterprise—preventing a popular insurgency aimed at radically restructuring
economic life, revamping and bolstering a state apparatus that upholds the
domination of a tiny indigenous elite, and opening Haiti's economy to the
unfettered domination of international capital—are incompatible with genuine
democracy and economic development.

Real democracy will only be established from below, through a movement that
articulates the masses' need for sweeping democratic and socioeconomic
change and, under the leadership of the Haitian working class, conceives and
organizes its struggle as part of an international offensive of the working
class against global capital.
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__________________
Jafrikayiti

"Depi nan Ginen bon nèg ap ede nèg!"



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