18465: (Hermantin)Sun-Sentinel-Haiti uprisings spur worries about food shortages, civi (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Haiti uprisings spur worries about food shortages, civil war

By Tim Collie
Staff Writer

February 11, 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- With vital trade routes severed and several cities under
the control of anti-government militants in Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide's
government faces a major humanitarian crisis and potential civil war.

The takeover of Gonaives by anti-Aristide rebels has cut the country in
half, blocking its main north-south highway, which connects the capital of
Port-au-Prince in the south to Cap Haitien, the country's second-largest
city, in the north. Other important towns along crucial roads have fallen to
rebel forces or are scenes of pitched battles between Aristide supporters
and anti-government militants calling for him to resign.

On Tuesday, Cap Haitien was wracked by violent fighting, looting and the
destruction of at least two banks. Rebellion also was reported in the
northern town of Quanaminthe, a vital trading center for 150,000 people who
depend on food that crosses from the Dominican Republic, which has moved
troops into the area.

Violence was reported in at least nine other Haitian cities and towns
Tuesday. Dozens of Haitians have been killed since the uprising began last
Thursday in Haiti's fourth-largest city, Gonaives, marking a boiling point
in the nation's three-year political crisis. A similar revolt in 1985 also
started in Gonaives and led to the downfall of the 29-year Duvalier family
dictatorship.

Tensions have grown since Aristide's party won contested legislative
elections in 2000 and international donors -- including the U.S. government
-- blocked millions of dollars in aid. Since then, social and economic
conditions have worsened, with most of the nation's 8 million people
struggling to survive, despite Aristide's election promises to champion the
interests of the poor.

Aristide said he would hold legislative elections later this year. But
opposition leaders have refused to participate unless Aristide resigns.
Aristide insists that he will serve out his term, which ends in 2006.

The United States was "pushing very hard for an end to violence," State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday, The Associated Press
reported. He said the Bush administration was urging government leaders and
the opposition to accept help from the Caribbean community.

Even if the Aristide government can maintain its grip on the capital -- home
to about one-third of Haiti's population of 8 million -- the rest of the
mountainous country could be Balkanized into lawless regions, government
officials and private aid experts say. Goods could be moved around the
island by water, but the added costs would further strain the lives of
average Haitians, most of whom live on wages of less than $1 a day.

Fear of famine

None of Haiti's regions is agriculturally or economically self-sustaining.
The regions depend heavily on informal trade and international aid groups
for food and fuel to power electricity generators. The economic isolation
could trigger a famine in the northwestern part of the country and send
hundreds of thousands of people fleeing into Port-au-Prince slums or to
other Caribbean nations or the United States.

Gonaives is important because it is the major city of the Artibonite River
Valley, the rice basket of Haiti that produces such vital commodity crops as
rice and corn, which are bartered daily. Blocked roads and crippled bridges
also could hurt the charcoal trade, which produces 85 percent of Haiti's
energy needs. If charcoal cannot reach Port-au-Prince and other cities, the
poor would be without their chief source of cooking fuel. Oil is too
expensive..

"Food, medicine and supplies move over these roads every day. If they're
blocked then there's no food or goods coming into the capital, and there's
certainly nothing moving into places like Gonaives," said Alain Grimard,
chief of humanitarian relief for the United Nations Development Program in
Haiti. "We've cut back on some programs already and are moving to protect
our people as well as our equipment, things like trucks which are subject to
theft and looting. If we don't know whose control a town is under, we can't
risk moving into it."

Other international aid officials said they are assessing the situation
daily to see whether they can continue delivering food and fuel. Many fear
the rebellion could turn their attention to the millions of dollars worth of
vehicles and facilities that aid groups have built throughout the country.

"We are maintaining an especially low profile because we want to continue
our humanitarian work," explained Sandy Laumark, head of the Haiti office of
the international humanitarian organization CARE.

On Tuesday, government officials insisted that they will regain control of
Gonaives and other areas from the rebels, but they made dire warnings about
the threat facing the country.

"All of these arsons of public buildings are targeted actions and they have
the logic of starving the population," said Interior Minister Jorceleine
Privert. "By doing that, they want the people to turn against the
government."

Aristide spokesman Mario Dupuy said the government is facing opposition
"terrorists" who could trigger a civil war costing thousands of lives. He
compared that to a three-year period after a military coup in 1991 when
5,000 people were killed.

"If this coup takes place now, then we'll yearn for the coup period from
1991 to 1994," said Dupuy. "Because it won't be 5,000 dead, or 7,000 dead
but it will be 1 million people dead. What we saw in 1991-94 is nothing
compared to what will happen if this fighting continues."

Dupuy, like other government officials, linked the violent rebellions to
opposition groups that have staged major protest marches in the capital city
in recent weeks. But opposition leaders and civilians distanced themselves
from the revolt, denying government contentions they were uniting with the
rebels to stage a coup.

One opposition leader bristled at the notion that they were to blame for the
upheavals in towns around the country.

"These are people who were former Aristide supporters, who were handed their
guns by Aristide. If they have decided to turn against him that tells you
how desperate their lives have become," said Charles Baker, a businessman
and leader of the Group of 184, a coalition of business, civil and student
groups opposed to the Aristide government. "The solution is for Aristide to
leave the country, because if what happens in the countryside eventually
reaches Port-au-Prince, then it's going to be horrible."

Barricades erected in many towns and cities throughout Haiti -- some by
Aristide partisans, others by rebels -- were preventing food deliveries to
hundreds of thousands of desperate Haitians, the U.N. World Food Program
said Tuesday.

In the northwest, a dry, mountainous region hampered by severe erosion
caused by deforestation, the violence was hampering aid deliveries to the
270,000 Haitians who rely on handouts from the agency to stave off
malnutrition, said Grimard and others.

Police officers fleeing

The agency was unable to ship a month's supply of rice -- about 800 tons --
over regular routes. Northern towns were expected to run out of diesel to
power electricity generators by today. Some 25,000 residents in the region
were already left without food after floods in December washed away crops.

Haitian police officers have been fleeing their posts in many cities in
towns throughout Haiti, as the unrest has spread. Officials and workers in
hospitals, clinics and schools have also abandoned their workplaces as
tensions have intensified, said several aid officials.

"We're losing lots of people -- three or four at a time over the last few
weeks -- but now it's really serious," said Els Mathieu, a physician with
the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who is
overseeing an infectious disease-prevention program here.

Tim Collie can be reached at 954-356-4573 or tcollie@sun-sentinel.com.
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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