18487: Esser: Rival Militias May Determine Haiti's Future (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

The Washington Post
Rival Militias May Determine Haiti's Future
Aristide's Weak Police Force Has Ally In Armed Group; So Does Opposition

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 12, 2004; Page A21

ST. MARC, Haiti, Feb. 11 -- The Haitian police have returned to their
ruined outpost in this city, which days ago was in the hands of a
growing anti-government insurgency. Wearing body armor and carrying
assault rifles, the dozen or so members of a special anti-riot force
had the trappings of official power even as they lounged on a recent
afternoon, listening to music from a truck radio and drinking beer.

But their ability to bring Haiti's increasingly restive countryside
under government control depends on the help they receive from a
potent militia of armed and eager young men loyal to President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The group's graffiti are scrawled on
buildings across from the torched police station, and its militants
may determine whether the armed anti-government groups will gain the
upper hand in a surging civil conflict.

The situation in this crumbling port points the direction in which
Haiti's political crisis is heading. Two opposing militias, which
have been at odds for more than a decade, have emerged as the central
players in a confrontation that the weak Haitian government appears
unable to stop.

One of the main pro-Aristide groups is Bale Wouze, based here, whose
Creole name refers to a Haitian cleansing ritual and which boasts
tens of thousands of members. The group takes its cue from community
leaders in the ruling Lavalas party and from politicians trying to
ensure that the president completes his five-year term.

But the armed opposition is growing in parts of the country, swelling
into the north from central and southern Haiti where it began, under
the leadership of former military and paramilitary leaders who have
opposed Aristide for years. Among their shock troops, however, are
young men who once pledged allegiance to Aristide and his party,
which paid them for their loyalty.

Here in St. Marc, 50 miles north of the capital, Port-au-Prince, the
police, reportedly working alongside a pro-government militia, moved
Wednesday through an opposition stronghold. At least two opposition
members were killed in the ensuing confrontations, government
officials said.

"The opposition says it wants to mobilize peacefully, but they always
do so with guns and shooting," said Amanus Maedde, a Lavalas
congressman from St. Marc and a founder of Bale Wouze. "If they
attack the police and the population, then we will help them fight
back."

The main armed opposition group calls itself the Revolutionary
Artibonite Resistance Front and emerged from Raboteau, a squalid
seaside slum in Gonaives, the country's fourth-largest city. The
group, which takes its name from the central Artibonite Valley that
divides northern and southern Haiti, once supported the president and
served as the chief conduit for Lavalas patronage in the
neighborhood. Formerly known as the Cannibal Army, it extorted money
from occupants of passing vehicles. Aristide security officials now
say it also controlled drug shipments flowing through Raboteau's
docks.

The group's alliance with the government was tight enough, militants
said last November, that Lavalas gave its members hundreds of guns
before the 2000 presidential election to protect polling places in
Gonaives. Now those pistols and assault rifles have been turned
against the president, whose allies deny arming the group.

Since the insurrection began six days ago, officers of the Haitian
National Police have shown little capacity to check the spread of
violence that has killed at least 44 people. Nor has the U.S.-created
police force effectively intervened to keep the opposing militias
apart, worrying leaders on both sides of the political divide that
the outcome could be civil war.

"We believe we have a legitimate insurrectional situation in Haiti,
and we absolutely condemn the violence," said Andre Apaid Jr., leader
of an opposition coalition known as the Group of 184, who warned in
comments to reporters that "as we speak, gangs are being armed" by
the government. "It's a struggle for people trying to take a
nonviolent approach because it limits our options."

Aristide, a former priest who helped topple the Duvalier
dictatorship, became Haiti's first freely elected president in 1990,
only to be ousted seven months later by a military coup. Twenty-three
thousand U.S. troops invaded and returned Aristide to power in 1994,
and he was elected to a second term in November 2000. But opposition
to his government grew following disputed legislative elections that
year. Since then, a coalition of businessmen, university students and
others has challenged Aristide for failing to address rising poverty
and for not agreeing to schedule new parliamentary elections.
Aristide says he has not had enough time to achieve reforms, adding
that U.S. restrictions on aid payments have further hurt the economy.

The rival militias have their roots in the years surrounding
Aristide's return, in part as a result of his attempts to protect
himself from another coup. The Artibonite group, based in Gonaives,
is at the heart of the anti-Aristide insurrection. It is led, its
members say, by Jean Tatoune, a former paramilitary leader who had
been serving a life sentence for his role in the 1994 massacre of
Aristide supporters in Raboteau. Tatoune escaped in August 2002 when
allies drove a tractor through the wall of the Gonaives prison,
freeing him and 159 others.

Last week, the insurrection spread quickly from Gonaives to St. Marc,
20 miles to the south, when another opposition group, Ramicos,
perhaps only loosely affiliated with the rebels in Gonaives, attacked
two police stations and looted the port. The uprising has since moved
into the north, long a hotbed of resistance to virtually all of
Haiti's governments.

"It's not a matter of how many there are, but of how capable they are
of fighting," said the newly arrived commander of the anti-riot
police in St. Marc, who declined to give his name. He asserted that
ex-army officers were directing the anti-Aristide group. "And these
groups know exactly what they are doing."

The guns being used by both sides appear to be mostly vintage M-1 and
M-14 rifles, likely from military stockpiles left after Aristide
dissolved the 7,000-member army on his return in 1994. The United
States helped train and finance the Haitian National Police, which
replaced the military, but the police force has withered from 5,000
to roughly 3,000 officers in recent years.

The police force "is a young one, and they need more time to be
professionalized," Aristide told reporters Wednesday at the National
Palace. "They are doing their best to protect the people, and if they
are doing their best, the people must cooperate with them."

Apaid denied government claims that the rebel fighters are the armed
wing of the civic opposition movement, but acknowledged that he has
spoken with the group in Gonaives and said he encouraged its leaders
to refrain from violence.

He said he advocates demonstrations instead of violence and has
called for a coalition march on Thursday. "If we don't march, then
the nonviolent political movement we have chosen will lose legitimacy
and it must remain the only option," Apaid said.

In St. Marc, where opposing groups have squared off for months,
streets were littered with car chassis, tree trunks and other
material used in barricades.

Lavalas and police officials assert that Ramicos, the group that
attacked here, contains a number of former paramilitary members.
Townspeople say it has intensified its armed effort against Aristide
supporters in the past week.

At St. Nicolas Hospital, at least 10 gunshot victims have been
treated during the past four days, all of them young men except for
an 82-year-old women wounded while sitting inside her home, officials
said. One of them, a 22-year-old welder, died of his wounds.

In the courtyard of Congressman Maedde's house, a dozen young men
gathered earlier this week, foot soldiers of Bale Wouze. A few of
them tried unsuccessfully to hide machine pistols as visitors
arrived. A police officer chatting with the men quickly slipped away.

Maedde said fewer than 10 of the group's members are permitted to
carry weapons, although townspeople suggested that there were many
more who did.

"We are the party in power and we are demanding peace," Maedde said.
"The president will do his five years."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34686-2004Feb11.html

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