18320: (Hermantin)Sun-Sentinel-Haitian chaos suggests grim future (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Haitian chaos suggests grim future



By Tim Collie
Staff Writer

February 7, 2004

The violent takeover of Haiti's fourth-largest city by a slum gang offers a
frightening glimpse of one possible future for the impoverished nation:
chaos.

Many Haiti watchers now fear a prolonged collapse similar to failed states
such as Somalia or Liberia -- especially if the United States and the
international community do not take a greater role in resolving Haiti's many
problems.

Wracked by worsening poverty and political violence, the government may be
losing control over key areas of the country. Gonaives has been the scene of
periodic violence since September, when a major figure, Amiot "Cubain"
Metayer, was murdered. In the Central Plateau, another group known as the
Motherless Army, composed of former army members, has carried out
assassinations of government officials and sacked villages.

Meanwhile, Port-au-Prince, the capital, has been the scene of frequent large
protests by coalitions of students, civic groups, business leaders and other
members of the urban elite. They have been pushed together by the continuing
economic decay, as well as attacks on their ranks by gangs linked to the
government.

Though Aristide's government labels them all as one opposition movement,
there seem to be few links between these groups, and that's what makes the
situation so dangerous, some experts say.

There is no figure of Aristide's stature to counter Aristide, Haiti's first
democratically elected leader. There is no rival who commands anywhere near
the following that the former priest still has among the poor.

If Aristide was overthrown, the various groupings of gang leaders,
politicos, urban elites and intellectuals could easily turn on each other.

"That's why this is a very dangerous moment in Haiti, dangerous both for the
government and the peaceful opposition," said Robert Fatton, a leading
authority on Haiti at the University of Virginia. "If what is happening in
Gonaives is the opposition's vision for Haiti, then the future is pretty
grim indeed.

"I don't think these various groups are linked, but what happens in Gonaives
encourages the forces in Port-au-Prince, which then holds marches and
rallies and inspires the army in Gonaives to go that much further," said
Fatton, author of Haiti's Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to
Democracy. "But the only thing that unites these groups is their hatred of
Aristide. If he left tomorrow, you'd have all kinds of struggles among the
opposition. The whole country could easily fall apart."

The resulting fragments would run the gamut from dedicated democratic
activists on one end of the political spectrum, to a dark force of drug
traffickers and armed thugs whose alliances continually shift based on power
and money.

With only a national police force under his control -- the army was
disbanded under international supervision in the 1990s -- Aristide has
maintained power over Haiti's streets with armed gangs known as chimere.
These young toughs knock skulls and run drug and kidnap rings in exchange
for political patronage -- many can be found working as luggage handlers at
the international airport.

That formula has worked for Aristide, diplomats and other observers say, but
it's unclear whether he or his political party still have control over these
gangs. Their clout swelled by drug money, many chimere now may be a power
unto themselves. A similar situation exists in Jamaica, where political
parties lost control of their street wings, which became the notorious drug
posses.

"If the United States does give more support to the peaceful opposition, the
Group of 184 and other groups, then this is what they're going to end up
with -- groups like the Cannibal Army,'' said James Morrell, a onetime
Aristide adviser who now heads the Washington-based Haiti Democracy Project.
The Group of 184 is a leading civic opposition group based in
Port-au-Prince.

Thursday's uprising was led by a group formally known as the Cannibal Army,
now renamed the Artibonite Resistance Front. Based in the shanty town of
Robateau, they are a hardcore mix of former Aristide supporters and elements
of the FRAPH, a paramilitary squad that menaced Haiti during the early
1990s, after Aristide was overthrown during his first administration.

"These are not democrats by any means -- they don't have a political
philosophy other than power and money,'' said Fatton.

When Aristide returned to power, he used them to menace his opponents. Led
by Metayer, the group controlled Gonaives as a stronghold for Aristide's
Lavalas Family Party for years. In 2002, under international pressure, the
government arrested Metayer. But using a bulldozer, his supporters broke
Metayer out of prison a month later. The jailbreak also freed a slew of
notorious prisoners, including Jean Tatoune, who was serving a life sentence
for a massacre of Aristide partisans in 1994, during a period when about
5,000 Aristide partisans were murdered.

Metayer and Tatoune joined forces. The militia leader seemed to have reached
some arrangement with the government. Despite a warrant for his arrest, he
openly held court in Gonaives while the police claimed to be searching for
him. But in September, after an alleged meeting with an Aristide emissary,
his mutilated corpse was found with both eyes shot out. Gonaives has been in
a tense state ever since.

A revolt in Gonaives touches a nerve in Haiti, which is enjoying only its
first decade of democratic government after a 200-year history of
instability and 30 military coups. It was there that Haiti's independence
was proclaimed Jan. 1, 1804. In 1985, the city also saw the first revolt
against Jean-Claude Duvalier, which ultimately led to that dictator's
downfall in February 1986.

"Right now I can't tell you where this is all going to go, but it doesn't
look good,'' said Alex Dupuy, a sociologist who has written extensively on
Haiti at Wesleyan University. "The opposition, in my view, is not acting in
the interests of the Haitian people. But Aristide isn't acting in their
interests either."
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

_________________________________________________________________
Click here for a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee.
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963