18696: radtimes: US-Financed Insurrectionists Wreaking Havoc in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

US-Financed Insurrectionists Wreaking Havoc in Haiti

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb04/Birns-Leight02-12-1.htm

by Larry Birns and Jessica Leight
February 12, 2004

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 is the director of the Washington DC-based Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, where Jessica Leight is a research fellow
(www.coha.com). They can be reached at 1730 M Street NW, Suite 1010,
Washington, D.C. 20036. Phone: 202-216-9261, Fax: 202-223-6035, email:
coha@coha.org