17371: Benodin: FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT COUNTRY BRIEFING (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Robert Benodin <r.benodin@worldnet.att.net>

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT COUNTRY BRIEFING
November 2003

As Haiti approaches the 200th anniversary of its independence in January,
there are signs that the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide may
have difficulty controlling growing unrest much beyond that date. Daily
anti-government protests across this Caribbean nation of 8m, a violent
rupture between the government and its local paramilitary supporters, and
international exhaustion with the political crisis all point to difficult
days ahead for the world’s first black republic.

Elected for a five-year term in December 2000 following legislative
elections earlier that year that many observers regarded as fraudulent, Mr
Aristide has been locked in a three-year-long standoff with his domestic
political opposition. The two sides have repeatedly failed to come to
agreement over when, and how, to conduct new legislative elections. This has
stalled critical international financial aid as well as contributed to a
breakdown in law and order and an increase in misery in the country, the
poorest in the hemisphere.

Gang warfare?
One of the chief causes for the increasing shakiness of Mr Aristide’s
position is largely self-inflicted. The president courted criminal-political
street gangs to augment a thoroughly politicised Haitian National Police
(PNH) and defend him against the ever-present threat of overthrow. (Mr
Aristide was ousted previously in a violent coup during his first stint as
head of state a decade ago.) But he now faces the thorny problem of how to
distance himself from the gangs in order to regain desperately needed
international assistance.

In September, Amyot Métayer, the leader of a pro-Aristide street gang called
the Cannibal Army from the provincial city of Gonaïves, was found dead along
the roadside near that town, a bullet in each eye. His supporters have
virtually paralysed the region, accusing Mr Aristide of having orchestrated
the murder of Mr Métayer in order to rid himself of a troublesome ally who
knew too much. This month, the murder of another gang leader with links to
the government, this time in the capital’s sprawling Cite Soleil slum,
resulted in similar demonstrations and calls for the president’s ouster by
the same armed partisans who once defended him.

For its part, the government has always denied links to the gangs, claiming
that they were simply supporters acting out of “patriotism”. However, by the
summer of 2002, when gangs were used to brutally stamp out a growing protest
movement by university students, the links between the Aristide government
and the mobs had become embarrassingly obvious. Gang bosses could regularly
be seen leaving Haiti’s National Palace and Ministry of the Interior. On
several occasions (including a December 2002 attack on demonstrators in the
capital and harassment of church worshipers beforehand) Haitian National
Police officials could clearly be observed and overheard giving orders to
armed gang members on how to proceed via walkie-talkie and face to face.

No solid institutions
Virtually all of Haiti’s state institutions, weak as they are, have been put
to do the bidding of the executive branch. The PNH alternately suppresses
anti-government dissent and stands idly by as protestors are set upon by the
government-linked paramilitaries (as happened during an opposition rally in
the capital on November 14th). The judicial branch veers between issuing
summonses to the president’s opponents and deliberately obstructing
investigations into crimes committed against his enemies.

“There is no armed forces, there is no justice structure, the state is as
weak as can be,” says one former member of Haiti’s security establishment,
forced to flee into exile, he says, when he began engaging in
counter-narcotics operations that led towards the circles of government
power. “The most revolutionary thing you could do (in Haiti) is to
strengthen an institution.”

The situation for the independent press is also grim. Early this year the
country’s most prominent journalist, Michele Montas, was forced into exile
following the murder of her bodyguard. Ms Montas, the widow of renowned
radio commentator Jean Dominique, who himself was murdered in front of Radio
Haiti Inter, the radio station they co-owned in April 2000, had long been a
thorn in the side of the Aristide government. She had pressed for an
aggressive investigation into her husband’s murder and criticized the use of
armed pressure groups in domestic politics. Since Mr Aristide’s return to
power, human-rights groups say, 31 journalists in addition to Ms Montas have
fled the country. This month, Haiti’s state Telecommunications Council
truculently closed down a provincial radio station that had given a forum to
opposition spokesmen.

International concerns
 The Aristide government’s approach to addressing international concerns has
been largely cosmetic. According to US Department of Justice figures,
lavishly paid lobbyists for the Haitian government in the US include the
Miami firm of Kurzban, Kurzban, Weinger & Tetzeli, which received nearly
US$2millions between 2000 and 2002 (the last period for which figures are
available). Another is the political consulting firm of former congressional
black caucus member Ron Dellums, which received US$400,000 for the same
two-year period. Their success, beyond swaying a handful of US journalists
into visiting the country or garnering the odd sympathetic statement in
Congress, appears to have been negligible.

The Inter-American Development Bank announced this November the approval of
three loans to Haiti that total US$176.9millions (the first since the IDB
lending resumed in July). However, the loans largely sidestep direct contact
with the Aristide government, instead going to autonomous and
semi-autonomous state agencies and community groups. Foreign donor
governments and diplomatic missions, especially the US, have remained
largely unmoved.

Increasingly, Haitians fear that the Aristide government is heading for
disaster, and that it will take the country with it. Mr Aristide's
disorganised domestic opposition, including the Convergence Démocratique
alliance, has made only slight headway in gaining popular legitimacy even as
the regime has grown more brutal. The main threat to the president,
therefore, is that the various armed factions in what Ms Montas labelled a
“balkanised state” will make the country ungovernable.
Mr Aristide's ability to co-opt and play off the various perpetrators of
violence against one another and, consequently, to his side, appears to be
waning. His dexterity in continuing to be able to do so may well decide the
fate of his tenure as Haiti's president. For the last year, groups of armed
men claiming to be members of Haiti's disbanded military, allegedly lead by
a former major, have roamed the Plateau Central region, killing government
officials and policeman and vowing to topple the government. When added to
the increasing power of local strongmen like Mr Métayer, some of whom have
begun to agitate against the president, this raises the risk that the
Aristide government will come to a violent end before the next presidential
election, scheduled for November 2005, can take place.