18402: Esser: Violent opposition is leading an anti-democratic insurrection (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Memorandum to the Press
HAITI
Council on Hemispheric Affairs
Issued 10 February, 2004


The following 794-word COHA finding on the rapidly deteriorating
situation in Haiti is available as an op-ed submission (market
restrictions will be respected) or can be freely quoted, with
attribution.

COHA has been closely monitoring events in Haiti for many years. It
has issued scores of memoranda on the subject, which can be found on
our website. A COHA research fellow has recently returned from a
one-week trip to Haiti and is available to be interviewed. Please be
in touch with our office (202-216-9261) for additional material or
commentary on Haiti.



Memorandum to the Press

HAITI

What had been an increasingly disloyal and violent opposition is now
leading an openly anti-democratic insurrection, as anti-Aristide
forces turn Haiti into a hellish war zone, using sequestered weapons
to sack a number of cities.  An existing explosive political
stalemate has been worsening since December, when the rebels adopted
a violent street strategy along with an inflexible policy of
non-negotiation to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.  Yet for
the State Department, Haiti's desperate struggle to preserve its
hard-won democracy was given low priority.  Strangely, given the
likely crushing impact on U.S. domestic politics registered by tens
of thousands of desperate Haitians who predictably will soon
undertake the perilous voyage to Florida, Secretary of State Colin
Powell remains almost languorous in the face of daily fierce melées
in Port-au-Prince.  Meanwhile, the Haitian opposition organizes a
blatant power grab through belligerent demonstrations aimed at
unseating Aristide.  Now Haiti has entered into an endgame with
portentous consequences, as armed opposition mobs loot a number of
cities and scores of residents are killed.


In recent months, the opposition's strategy has become increasingly
clear.  Lacking the numerical strength to win an election, its
elitist leaders threatened to violently oust Aristide if he refused
to resign.  Haiti's conservative factions have despised Aristide for
his stridency and radical message ever since he was first elected in
1990 by a two-thirds majority.  His hordes of adoring followers
alienated the island's tiny mulatto-dominated elite and the country's
paramilitary.  But Aristide was unable to effectively establish
security either by reining in his own Lavalas militants or the
opposition's street fighters, nor could he entirely professionalize
his outnumbered police force.  The opposition's increasingly
bellicose anti-Aristide street marches became a coup in the making
that threatened to replicate the appalling repression suffered by
Haiti under military rule, 1991-94.

Secretary Powell and his controversial Latin American aide, Roger
Noriega, have at best used delphic prose in responding to Haitian
issues.  Rather than demanding that the opposition immediately choose
its representatives to the Provisional Electoral Council and end its
cat-and-mouse game aimed at sabotaging any prospect of parliamentary
elections (which the opposition almost certainly would lose),
Washington is unable to hide its pro-opposition bias, even though it
cannot be seen as backing the overthrow of a democratically-elected
president.


Given the rebels' ideological and financial ties to the U.S. - they
are generously funded by U.S. taxpayers through the International
Republican Institute -Washington's open denouncement of their
obstructionism could have an electrifying positive effect.  Yet, this
has not been forthcoming, partly because U.S. hemispheric policy is
guided by a small group of extremists with strong ideological ties to
former Senator Jesse Helms, who simplistically see Aristide as the
Caribbean's next Castro.

Aside from pro-forma language, Washington has shown little interest
in ensuring that Aristide serves out his constitutionally-mandated
term through 2006.  On the contrary, it repeatedly questions his bona
fides and unfairly holds him accountable for Haiti's economic woes -
which, in fact, the U.S. almost single-mindedly has helped to
achieve.  The White House carped at Aristide's admitted shortcomings,
while it led efforts to freeze $500 million in international pledges
to the island.  The U.S. has placed demands that Aristide could not
possibly fulfill without the resources it will not grant him, thereby
giving the opposition a veritable veto over Haiti's future.
Meanwhile, the political stalemate that produced a crippled economy
has now alienated large numbers of Haitians, who have lost faith in
democracy.  In the last few days the situation has markedly worsened,
as street demonstrations have become bloody riots and armed rebels
emerge intent on overthrowing a legal government which, with all of
its flaws, was neither cruel nor authoritarian.

Aside from its impermissible diktat mandating Aristide's departure,
what do the rebels demand?  Starting last December, its thugs took to
the streets and insisted that all schools and hospitals be closed
until Aristide leaves, and then underscored their demands by torching
their buildings and roughing up students.  In the last few days, the
coup unfolded, as rebel forces seized 9 cities and hunted down
government officials.  The preemptory demand for Aristide's
resignation without further dialogue or negotiation all along has
been an audacious bluff meant to mask the fact that the rebels lacked
sufficient votes to legitimately win an election, although they held
Washington's proxy.

With a Haiti policy long bankrupt and now unraveling, U.S.
policymakers have grossly misused the island's most valuable
political asset, a now tarnished Aristide.  The longer that
Washington equivocates, the country's disintegrating economy will
further sap Aristide's authority, while the rebels with their
gangster tactics certainly will help propel tens of thousands of
Haitian refugees to head for U.S. shores with a legitimate asylum
claim.  As Haiti enters its final destructive phase, the U.S. will
rue the day that it birthed such a spavined policy.

Larry Birns and Jessica Leight




Larry Birns is the director of the Washington-based Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, where Jessica Leight is a research fellow.


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