18514: This Week in Haiti 21:48 02/11/2004 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
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                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                      February 11 - 17, 2004
                         Vol. 21, No. 48

AS HAITI'S CONTRAS LAUNCH MAJOR OFFENSIVE:
WASHINGTON SUGGESTS ARISTIDE'S REMOVAL

Haiti's "armed opposition" launched its most lethal offensive yet
last week, creating the civil strife that many suspect Washington
seeks to justify foreign military intervention in the country. On
Feb. 10, State Department officials gave their first public hints
that they would favor President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's
resignation.

CARICOM representatives are flying to Washington this week to
meet with Bush administration officials about the crisis in
Haiti. A State Department official contacted by Haïti Progrès
Feb. 10 would not comment on whether Aristide's removal was on
the meeting's agenda. He would only repeat that "President
Aristide is the democratically elected leader of his country."

Meanwhile, in one of the largest mobilizations in recent years,
hundreds of thousands of Haitians marched and rallied in Port-au-
Prince on Feb. 7, the anniversary of the 1986 fall of the
Duvalier dictatorship,  to demand that Aristide fulfill his five-
year term, which ends Feb. 6, 2006. Thousands more held similar
anti-coup demonstrations in provincial cities. Pro-government
popular organizations have begun setting up barricades and taking
up arms in the capital and other cities like Jacmel, Cayes and
Cap Haïtien to prevent the spread of the armed opposition's
attacks.

The offensive began on the morning of Feb. 5 when the newly
constituted Front of Revolutionary Resistance of Gonaïves (FRRG)
attacked that city's police headquarters with automatic weapons
fire and grenades. Many civilians and several policemen were
killed in the five-hour gun battle that ensued, although it is
not clear how many from numerous conflicting reports. Eventually
the police withdrew. The attackers overran the station and freed
all the prisoners in jail, "among them lots of criminals whom
courts had convicted," said a Feb. 7 police communiqué. "They
looted, burned vehicles, burned the homes of several citizens...
and then burned down the police headquarters."  The rebels also
burned down the hotel and home of former Gonaïves mayor Stephen
Topa Moïse as well as the offices of the Artibonite Department's
government representatives, called delegates.

Leaders of the FRRG include Jean "Tatoune" Pierre, who was
convicted and jailed for his role as a leader of the FRAPH death-
squad in the April 1994 Raboteau massacre but freed in an Aug.
2002 prison break (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 21, Aug. 7,
2002 ); Butteur Métayer, who alighted in Gonaïves from Miami last
September after the mysterious murder of his brother, a pro-
Aristide popular organization leader (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 21,
No. 29, Oct. 1, 2003 ); and Winter Etienne, the former
government-appointed director of the Gonaïves hospital and a
member of the Open Gate Party (PLB).

The next day, armed men from the opposition-aligned organization
RAMICOS attacked the police station 25 miles south of Gonaïves in
the town of St. Marc, which also straddles the strategic main
artery to Haiti's north. They also looted and burned the customs
house and some containers. The police rapidly retreated,
apparently in cahoots with the attackers, for whom they left
behind all the station's weapons and ammunition. One of the
station's commanders, a former Haitian army soldier, is known to
be close to fellow former soldier and rising opposition leader,
Dany Toussaint, who recently defected from Aristide's Lavalas
Family party (FL).

Police complicity appears to have been involved in at least a few
of the other town takeovers by the opposition. While reports are
conflicting, the armed opposition appears to have, at least
briefly, controlled about ten smaller towns, among them Trou du
Nord, Saint-Raphaël, Dondon, Marchand-Dessalines, Ennery, Gros-
Morne, L'Estère, Anse-Rouge, Petite Rivière de l'Artibonite, as
well as Grand Goâve in the south. In many cases, public buildings
and the homes of government officials or supporters were burned
or looted. Reports of these takeovers, however real or brief,
provided fuel for the panic which opposition controlled radio
stations, and consequently their corporate media information
dependents, have sought to spread.

Both the Haitian bourgeoisie's and foreign corporate media
reports have sought to project the image that the Haitian
government is tottering, part of the psychological preparation
which usually has preceded engineered interventions or coups in
past decades throughout Latin America.

However, the watchword heard around Haiti this past week was "Nou
pap mawòn ankò," meaning we won't go into hiding again, a
reference to the bloody 1991-1994 coup which killed over 5000
Haitians. "There is a big difference between the political
opposition, which we respect, and the terrorist opposition, which
we must overpower so that they don't spill blood and sow sorrow
again in the country," Aristide declared Feb. 7 to the multitudes
which greeted him in the capital's seaside slum of Cité Soleil,
in just one of the speeches he made that day. "The dew dances
until the sun rises," he said, using a Creole proverb to declare
that the Haitian people were now waking up to the danger of a
coup.

Indeed the population seems to have responded enthusiastically to
Prime Minister Yvon Neptune's call on Feb. 8 for the Haitian
people to assist the police in beating back "the armed branch of
the opposition." On Feb. 8, popular organizations militants, some
armed, threw up barricades in the capital's Canapé Vert and
Carrefour neighborhoods; shortly afterwards, the opposition
postponed its announced march until Feb. 12. Opposition marches
have often been provocative and violent.

The opposition also threatened to takeover the southern city of
Jacmel, prompting people to take to the streets there with
demonstrations and barricades.

The police attempted to take back control of Gonaïves on Feb. 7.
According to the opposition, they were ambushed and suffered some
14 dead. According to Neptune, a heavily-armed police unit took
back control of the town but then the insurgents attacked the
police station "using the people from the town's population as a
shield. To prevent a bloodbath, the police stopped the operation
and retreated." The police suffered several wounded and one
fatality from the SWAT unit, an officer named Douckens
Guistinvil, according to a "provisional" police report.

Associated Press photographs widely circulated on the Internet
show the body of an unidentified SWAT policeman being dragged
through the streets on Feb. 7. In another, a woman is cutting an
ear off the corpse.

With support from the local populations, police succeeded in
retaking St. Marc, Grand Goâve and Dondon on Feb. 9. Neptune flew
by helicopter to both St. Marc and Grand Goâve where he was
greeted by cheering throngs of government supporters.

On Feb. 10, popular organizations took up positions around the
northern city of Cap Haïtien to prevent rebel attacks there. On
Feb. 7, they burned down the local relay of Radio Vision 2000, a
powerful USAID-spawned opposition-aligned station. On Feb. 8,
barricades went up at the city's bottleneck entrance, and gunfire
crackled during the day and night in its outlying suburbs. The
armed opposition, in particular Dominican Republic-based former
police chief Guy Philippe, has made no secret of their plans to
capture Cap, Haiti's second-largest city. Presently cut off from
the capital at Gonaïves, the city, UN aid workers are warning,
faces a possible food crisis. Gas supplies have already dwindled.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher gave
the first inkling that the Bush administration is preparing the
ground for Aristide's unconstitutional removal. "[W]e recognize
that reaching a political settlement will require some fairly
thorough changes in the way Haiti is governed and how the
security situation is maintained," Boucher coyly responded when
asked if Washington thought the elected president should remain
in office until the end of his term.

Reuters also reported that a "senior State Department official
said proposals for a resolution were under discussion which could
involve Aristide's departure from office, although he did not
specify who was making the proposals."  The unnamed official then
told Reuters: "It's clear from the kind of proposals that have
been made and the discussions that are being held that when we
talk about undergoing change in the way Haiti is governed, I
think that could indeed involve changes in Aristide's position."

On Jan. 30, the State Department authorized the voluntary
departure of non-emergency personnel and their families from the
U.S. embassy in Haiti and issued a travel warning for U.S.
citizens to "defer travel to Haiti" and, those already in Haiti,
"to consider departing the country."

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) excoriated Washington
for its hypocrisy in a Feb. 10 press memorandum. "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," the note said. "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."

Given its broad, if grudging, popular support, the government is
unlikely to be overthrown by the rebels themselves. Foreign
muscle may be needed for that.

An opposition spokesman denied backing the armed opposition's
violence but called for foreign intervention to avert civil war,
according to the BBC. "For a long time, we have been warning the
government that this is where they wanted to bring the
situation," said Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the National
Popular Party (PPN), one of the government's leftist allies.
"Washington along with the traditional ruling classes have been
strangling and destabilizing Haiti to create the conditions so
they can cry 'anarchy' and justify yet another military
intervention. This was the excuse in 1915, and they want to use
it again today."

U.S. troops, however, are bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq,
Dupuy explained, so they might resort to a proxy force. "The
Dominican Army works closely with the Pentagon, by which it has
recently been rearmed," he said. "Or perhaps they'll try to
orchestrate a CARICOM force or some other combination."

In any such scenario, the armed opposition or foreign troops
would face a very hostile reception from an armed and angry
Haitian people. "With President Aristide, the people began a real
revolution," said Pierre Antoine Lovinsky, head of the September
30 Foundation which champions victims of the 1991 coup. "And that
revolution will not go backwards. The people will prove that."

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.

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