18627: (Chamberlain) Militias become the law (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(The Guardian, 14 Feb 04)


Haiti's militias claim to uphold the law - but now they have become the law


Gary Younge in St Marc finds both government and opposition enfeebled



The gatekeeper to the town of St Marc wears a black balaclava with full
military fatigues and carries his rifle as high as the Caribbean midday
sun. Every occupant of every tap-tap - local bus - and truck must meet his
approval. He orders them out with his rifle and his comrades frisk them.

Behind him is a town emptied by fear - a place where people whisper in the
darkness of their own homes with the curtains drawn against the crackle of
gunfire. The usually bustling market is still; those who brave the streets
are fidgety.

An anti-government gang, Ramicos, overran the police station and took over
St Marc, 55 miles north of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, last Saturday.
On Monday the government took it back.

But the gatekeeper, who holds the keys to the town in the barrel of his
gun, is not a policeman. He is a member of Bale Wouze, a gang which
supports President Jean Bertrand Aristide and is leading the charge to
regain control of the town. Its Creole name means "sweep them out and mop
them up". And that is what they have been doing these past few days;
searching for leaders of Ramicos, burning them out of their homes and
executing them.

"There is a formal connection between us and the government," says Bale
Wouze's founder, Amanous Mayette. "We are collaborating with the
authorities so that they can control the situation."

But the truth is that Bale Wouze are the authorities, and Mr Mayette is
their don. This is mob rule. Young men walk in and out of his compound
carrying guns and cartons of spaghetti. The police happily defer to them,
waving vehicles through the official checkpoint so that the gatekeeper can
do his job.

"People are afraid that the Bale Wouze are about to burn down their
houses," whispers a young car mechanic, before ushering me out of his back
door for fear of reprisals. "They do whatever they want."

Such is the nature of the political violence and civil decay that has
brought Haiti to the brink of civil war. The absence of political
leadership on both sides has left ample space for gangsters to roam freely.


With no military and only a few thousand police officers, Mr Aristide
relies on the muscle of groups like the Bale Wouze to stay in power. He is
too weak to rule effectively by force alone, and, after a litany of claims
of human rights abusesand election-rigging, he cannot rule by consent.

"We have 4,000 policemen who are ill-equipped and ill-trained," says the
minister for Haitians living abroad, Leslie Voltaire. "But what is
happening now could not happen in a dictatorship."

Yet with no viable strategy for getting rid of Mr Aristide and no clear
agenda beyond his departure, the opposition has cleared the path for an
armed insurrection which they are both unwilling and unable to lead.

"We have not proposed an alternative," says the student leader Guy
Leveille, an Aristide opponent. "We believe in democracy and the people."

The opposition's refusal to negotiate, even with the mediation of the
international community, ensures deadlock. Anti-government gangs such as
Ramicos and the Cannibal Army, which still control the country's fourth
largest city, Gonaive, present themselves as the only means of breaking
that deadlock.

The political culture is becoming increasingly militarised. With no
moderate or moderating voices the media, trade unions and professional
associations have all divided into pro- or anti-Aristide camps. And since
the gun alone is law, there is little prospect of order. Many, including
much of the international community, are far more afraid of the chaos that
might ensue if Mr Aristide resigned than of the chaos over which he is
presiding.

"We are extremely worried by the potential for a downward spiral into
increasingly widespread and acute political violence that would place
fundamental rights even further in jeopardy," said Amnesty International
last month, as it criticised both the government and the opposition. "The
threats to human rights in Haiti are the most serious we have seen since
the 1994 return to democratic order."

In a country where phones are unreliable, television signals outside the
capital are often unavailable, most people cannot read newspapers and radio
stations are partisan, rumour is the common currency.

In such situations geography takes on a particular significance. In
Montrouis, 15 minutes' drive from St Marc, the streets are full as people
go about their daily business as normal. The carnage in Gonaives - where
the mutilated bodies of dead policemen were paraded around the town - is
easier to imagine for those in the west, who can see it on television, than
it is in the slums of Port-au-Prince, where most cannot.

The answer to the question of whether Haiti is about to explode depends on
whom you speak to, where they are, what they have seen, and to whom they
have spoken. Fear travels faster than facts; news moves slowly, and when it
arrives it is heavily embellished and highly subjective. Ask about the
numbers on a demonstration and the estimates range from 10,000 to a
million.

The picture Mr Aristide would like us to see was portrayed on a huge poster
celebrating Haiti's 200th anniversary in Port-au-Prince's Canape Vert. On
one side was Toussaint L'Ouverture, the former slave who led the rebellion
to make Haiti the world's first black republic. On the other was Mr
Aristide. The slogan said: "Two men, two centuries, one vision."

In 1990, when Mr Aristide, then a young ascetic priest and liberation
theologian, became the country's first legitimately elected president, it
was the kind of comparison many Haitians fervently hoped would be proved
true.

Seven months later the dream died when he was ousted in a coup, only to be
born again four years later, when he returned to huge popular acclaim with
the assistance of the US military and conditions imposed by the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund.

Many of those who oppose Mr Aristide now were with him then. The picture
they now see lurked below the poster on Thursday, when pro-Aristide mobs
gathered at Canape Vert, burning tyres and throwing rocks to stop an
opposition demonstration.

Some critics believe that power has transformed Mr Aristide, from priest to
predator. Others feel they simply invested hope in the wrong man. "He
hasn't changed," says Jean-Claude Bajeux, the director of the ecumenical
centre for human rights. "We made the mistake of thinking that he was a
political leader. But he does not know or understand what a political party
is for."

Having fixed the vote in favour of his Lavalas party in 2000, the
opposition claims, Mr Aristide is devoid of democratic legitimacy. But he
still retains some popular support, with a strong base among the poor.

There are many of them. According to Christian Aid the average Haitian
earns £340 a year, with the poorest 10% bringing home less than £20. It has
the highest rates of HIV infection and adult illiteracy and the lowest life
expectancy - 53 - in the Americas.

It is here that Mr Aristide and his government are vulnerable. Undermining
the wealthy will not help the poor. Economic violence, caused in no small
part by unfair trade rules and an international embargo, plays a
considerable role in making political violence possible.

"Our weakness is economic," says Mr Voltaire. "A lot of people are not
happy with us because we have not delivered for them."