18714: (Chamberlain) Meeting Butteur Metayer (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(Atlanta Constitution, 16 Feb 04)


Haiti rebel chief fans flames of unrest, chaos in port city

By MIKE WILLIAMS



It is an angry man with soot spread on his cheeks like war paint, who
greets visitors to this embattled city with an automatic rifle in his
hands.

Behind him, a gang of animated youths block the entrance to town with
smoldering barricades made from jagged stones and the charred carcasses of
destroyed vehicles.

Gonaives is the center of the rebellion threatening to topple the Haitian
government, but if it offers a glimpse of what the rebels would bring to
their nation, the prospects are not encouraging.

Hungry people wander the streets, begging for food or money. Thousands have
fled, fearful of a looming bloodbath. The hospital is closed because
doctors are too afraid to come to work after rebels and police engaged in a
pitched gunbattle there that killed several bystanders.

Despite the apparent anarchy, there is a rough hierarchy of command, and
leading the parade of disorder is a young tough who has told some reporters
he will be Haiti's president. His name is Buteur Metayer, and his claim to
power apparently rests on the fact that his brother Amiot, once a
self-proclaimed enforcer for embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
was killed last fall after he broke away from Aristide, becoming a local
martyr.

It seems a dubious rationale for power, an impression reinforced by the
bedlam now plaguing Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city and normally home
to more than 200,000 people.

Most shops are shuttered and a main gas station — its tanks apparently
empty — is a scene of confusion.

"My baby is crying because I have no food," said Jeanette Pierre, 19,
leaning against the gatepost of the dirt-floored compound where she lives.
"There is food, but the prices are very high, and I have no money anyway."

To be fair, living conditions were never close to ideal in this
hardscrabble port city, but since the rebels drove police from town two
weeks ago, the hint of total breakdown hums in the air.

An audience with Metayer is a ticklish arrangement. He stays holed up in
one of the city's poorest districts, a slum of ramshackle shanties fronting
a beach littered with garbage and decrepit wooden boats.

A fighter proudly shows off the remains of a scorched pickup truck parked
on tireless rims by the water's edge.

"This was Amiot's," he said, waving his arm like a tour guide.

Nearby is the slain leader's grave, another instant shrine plopped down
right in the street, surrounded now by a small fence and topped with a
Haitian flag and a bronze bust of the hero.

Amiot Metayer, who reportedly ran Gonaives in the style of a Mafia don,
once called his group the "Cannibal Army." His brother, who now gives news
conferences to international media, has rechristened it the "Artibonite
Resistance Front," a name derived from the surrounding river valley.

When reporters arrive, the armed men scurry about in a rush. Curious
residents with nothing else to do swarm around. An old man climbs a small
balcony on a shack, dangles his legs over the edge and begins strumming a
guitar.

In the middle of the hubbub, a youth roars up on a motorcross bike, engine
screaming, sliding to a stop. He dismounts in a flourish, ample muscles
bulging around his black body armor.

Eventually, the journalists gather in front of a shack as the fighters, in
a haphazard array of gear ranging from military fatigues to basketball
jerseys and T-shirts advertising Florida tourist attractions, create an
alley in the crowd for their leader to pass through.

Metayer sweeps out of a walled compound, walking with an air of command,
flanked by toughs with rifles pointing skyward, butts on their hips.

The leader holds court in an open-air shed outfitted with torn couches and
dilapidated car seats apparently scoured from the wrecks dotting the
streets. He sits in front of a broken, upended Ping-Pong table that doubles
as a blackboard for rebel strategy sessions, its green surface covered with
chalked notes.

Metayer, 33, wears a black felt cavalry hat — like John Wayne wore in
movies — circled by a colorful lanyard. He sports aviator sunglasses, baggy
surfer shorts, tennis shoes with white ankle socks bearing the "Nike"
swoosh and a beige pullover that reads, "Hyatt Orlando."

Dangling over the impromptu, midday news conference is a dusty, framed
picture of Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper, tacked to a wooden
post, a set of prayer beads draped over its frame.

Metayer says his men will take town after town until they reach the
capital, Port-au-Prince, when they will send Aristide on his way into
exile. He refuses to say how many soldiers are in his ragged army.

"They all have guns, or if not guns, then machetes and rocks," he said,
sitting with his own machete at his side. The long blade's black handle is
festooned with a red-and-black lanyard that matches the one circling his
cavalry hat.

After international aid workers appealed for the rebels to open a corridor
through Gonaives and other towns to allow desperately needed food and
medicine to pass through, several aid groups were able to enter the city
Monday.

Rebels armed with machetes and rifles escorted a truckload of aid from the
Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, The Associated Press
reported. The convoy was carrying 1.6 tons of supplies, including blood and
surgical equipment.

In addition to the medical relief, the international nongovernmental
organization CARE, which has its U.S. headquarters in Atlanta, began
distributing food to people in Gonaives.

The road through the city is the main land route to Haiti's north and aid
groups had warned that thousands would face starvation if it could not be
safely traveled.

The rebel chief confirmed rumors that a couple of feared figures from the
nation's past — one exiled for allegedly plotting a coup, the other the
former head of a paramilitary squad during Haiti's last dictatorship — have
returned and are in league with his forces. The claim, confirmed by news
reports, means Metayer's rag-tag rebellion has been bolstered by ruthless
men hungry for power in a chaotic country they know well.

He insists the rebels already have plenty of money, sent in the form of
remittances from abroad. He denies reports his army has been funded in part
by proceeds from Haiti's flourishing drug-smuggling industry.

As for domestic politics, Metayer says he has no contact with a coalition
of opposition politicians and businessmen who have led protests in
Port-au-Prince, and he is vague about what role the rebels would play if
they succeed in removing Aristide from power.

Expanding on the foreign policy implications of his uprising, he ponders
the question of potential relations with the United States.

"For myself, I don't think Bush is my enemy, but he'll be more of my friend
when he takes Aristide away," Metayer said. American presidents have
disposed of Haitian leaders in the past with little more than telephone
calls, he said, adding, "Bush needs to pick up the phone."