18815: Esser: How Washington set the stage for Haiti's uprising (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Socialist Worker
http://www.socialistworker.org

U.S.-connected businessmen and military thugs behind the opposition
How Washington set the stage for Haiti’s uprising

By Lee Sustar | February 20, 2004 | Page 8

THE MEDIA has a standard story line to explain the uprising in
Haiti--one-time populist leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide has become a
corrupt authoritarian who is relying on armed gangs to crush a
popular uprising. In reality, the anti-Aristide opposition that is
behind the uprising shaking Haiti today is a Washington-connected
collection of Haitian businessmen and a scattering of former leftists.

If they succeed in their aim of ousting Aristide, they’ll try to turn
back the clock to the days when military officers and paramilitary
gangs ruled Haiti through sheer terror. Any doubts as to the nature
of the rebellion in the city of Gonaïeves should be put to rest by
the role played by leaders of the military dictatorship of the 1980s.

While the media has described the rebellion as led by former Aristide
supporters, a key player is Jean "Tatoune" Pierre, who backed the
1991 coup that overthrew Aristide. Others involved include members of
the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), a
paramilitary organization that terrorized and assassinated Aristide
supporters during the military regime that lasted until U.S. troops
restored Aristide into office in 1994.

Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former FRAPH leader, is centrally involved
in Gonaïeves, as is Guy Philippe, a former police chief in the city
of Cap-Haitien who was accused of plotting a coup in 2000. Both men
had been based in the neighboring Dominican Republic, where they had
been given refuge. By seizing Gonaïves, they’ve essentially cut Haiti
in two.

Washington’s stated attitude to the uprising has been contradictory.
On February 12, State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher,
declared that "reaching a political settlement will require some
fairly thorough changes in the way Haiti is governed, and how the
security situation is maintained." The New York Times interpreted
this to mean that "the Bush administration has placed itself in the
unusual position of saying it may accept the ouster of a democratic
government."

The following day, Secretary of State Colin Powell rounded up
ministers from CARICOM, the organization linking the government of
Caribbean countries, the U.S. and Canada, to declare, "We will accept
no outcome that in any way illegally attempts to remove the elected
president of Haiti." But deeds matter more than words--and there’s no
doubt that Washington set the stage for uprising.

The top FRAPH leader, Emmanuel Constant, who claims he was a CIA
employee, remains at large in New York City. Major funding for
Haiti’s umbrella opposition group, Democratic Convergence, comes from
the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S. foundation notorious for
funneling U.S. aid to counterrevolutionary forces in Central America
during the Cold War.

While the Haitian opposition’s high-sounding democratic rhetoric is
repeated by Western reporters, their right-wing supporters have
carried out a systematic campaign of violence against Hatian
journalists and pro-Aristide activists. If Aristide’s supporters are
armed, it’s because they face armed opponents.

Moreover, the U.S. has helped wreck Haiti’s economy by withholding
$500 million in annual aid because of opposition complaints about
vote totals for seven Haitian senate seats in the country’s
parliamentary elections of 2000. This was an enormous blow to Haiti’s
economy, where 80 percent of people live below the poverty line--and
most subsisting on less than a dollar a day.

If Powell backtracked on supporting the opposition, it isn’t because
the U.S. is reluctant to intervene in Haiti. The U.S. invaded and
occupied Haiti in 1915 and stayed for 19 years--an early example of
"regime change." Washington then bankrolled a succession of Haitian
dictators, including the 30-year rule of the Duvalier family until an
uprising led in part by Aristide drove it from power in 1988.

This time around, Washington wants to avoid the refugee crisis that
followed a 1991 military coup months after Aristide was elected
president. Thus, the aim has been to use the opposition to weaken
Aristide until he’s forced to bow to the U.S. agenda.

On January 31, the U.S. pressured Aristide into signing an accord
with the opposition, mediated by CARICOM, in which Aristide agreed to
disarm his supporters, "reform" the police force, appoint a new prime
minister acceptable to the opposition and call new elections to
replace the legislature, whose term expired January 13. This deal was
in keeping with a pattern established when 20,000 U.S. troops invaded
Haiti to return Aristide to office nearly a decade ago.

Aristide, who as a Catholic priest became a mass leader of Haiti’s
poor in the overthrow of the military dictatorship in the 1980s,
became a collaborator with free-market, "neoliberal" reforms dictated
by Washington. This included opening up a big free-trade zone on the
border with the Dominican Republic, funded by a World Bank loan that
will benefit sweatshop owners--and paying back debts to the
International Monetary Fund that date from the dictatorship.

All this has meant that Aristide has been unable to deliver promised
reforms to the poor--and his popular support has eroded as a result.
Now a wealthy politician, Aristide increasingly relies on a small
network tied to his Lavalas Family party.

The tiny clique of Haitian capitalists, used to running the show
themselves, find this intolerable. So they’ve dressed themselves up
as a democratic opposition and demanded Aristide’s ouster.

The uprising was likely initiated by far-right paramilitaries who are
unwilling to settle for the negotiated solution. They gambled that
Aristide’s popular support had been so weakened that they could grab
power quickly--and that the more respectable right-wing front men
would go along.

Instead, the poor rallied behind Aristide once more, with a mass
turnout forcing the cancellation of an opposition protest in the
Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince February 15. While Aristide no
longer commands the following he once did, much of Haiti’s poor seem
to recognize that the opposition’s uprising would bring the return of
the right-wing butchers.

It’s difficult to predict how the crisis in Haiti will play out. But
it’s already clear that the popular forces who are resisting the
opposition will have to chart a path that rejects not only the old
right wing, but the free-market policies of Aristide, which have only
added to Haiti’s misery.

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