18850: radtimes: Haitians Resist Coup Attempt (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Haitians Resist Coup Attempt

-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 26, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

WHILE U.S. TRIES TO MASK ITS ROLE: HAITIANS RESIST COUP
ATTEMPT

By Deirdre Griswold

As heavily armed gangs led by paramilitary death-squad leaders from
former dictatorships take over a broad swath of Haiti, vowing to topple
the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and lynching scores
of his supporters, the question being asked in the popular movements of
the region is: What role is the U.S. imperialist government playing in
all this?

Washington is being careful not to take credit for the coup attempt,
which was launched on Feb. 5 in the northern port city of Gonaives.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Feb. 17 that there was no
"enthusiasm" in the Bush administration for intervention.

Not everyone in the State Department had gotten the word, however. An
Australian newspaper, The Age, reported on Feb. 17 that "U.S. Ambassador
James Foley today said Washington wants 'radical change,' even while
Powell has said the United States does not support Aristide's ouster."

At this point, any open U.S. intervention would have to at least
nominally be in support of the elected government against those whom
even Powell acknowledges are thugs and killers. Washington would
probably prefer to let the death squads do their work of weakening the
government and the popular resistance, and then come in posing as
saviors--while in fact forcing Aristide to defer to figures like Marc
Bazin, a former World Bank official whom Washington had picked to win
the 1990 election. Bazin was defeated by Aristide in a landslide vote,
to the imperialists' dismay.

The policy makers in Washington apparently believe they can force a
"regime change" to their liking without sending in their own troops at
this time. This could change, of course, especially if a rival
imperialist power like France, which has troops on nearby Caribbean
islands, makes a move.

NO END TO U.S. INTERVENTION

The truth is there has already been plenty of U.S. intervention, both
covert and overt, aimed at replacing the Aristide government with one
deemed more compliant by the big business interests that run U.S.
foreign policy.

The U.S. has led an international conspiracy to deprive Haiti, the
poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, of any aid money. Haiti has
been on the hit list of the major capitalist powers ever since its
successful revolutionary war of 1804, which simultaneously liberated the
country from French colonial rule and freed its population from chattel
slavery. Its deep poverty comes from a two-centuries-old economic
blockade.

This was reinforced after the election of 2000 when lending institutions
controlled by the U.S. held up a $500-million loan Haiti desperately
needed. The intent was clear: to put pressure on the Aristide government
to either capitulate to the capitalist globalizers' demands or be
ousted.

The stated U.S. diplomatic position has been to recognize the Aristide
government while giving aid and comfort--and a significant amount of
money--to groups Washington dubs the "democratic" opposition. There is
another, more sinister history of U.S. intervention in Haiti, however.

The Haitian people, who are highly conscious of what goes on behind the
scenes regarding their country, know that Washington has long had secret
deals with their tormentors, beginning with the bloody Duvalier dynasty
that ruled Haiti for 29 years.

They also know about the secret files that were spirited out of Haiti in
1994 by U.S. troops when they returned Aristide to office after he had
been overthrown in a military coup. Those files are believed to contain
information about the covert relations between the CIA and the Front for
the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), a nice-sounding name for
the death squads that operated during the 1991-94 military regime.

TOWNS 'LIBERATED' BY DEATH SQUADS

Members of FRAPH are now back in Haiti running the show in areas they
claim to have "liberated." The U.S. forces who landed in 1994 and
deposed the military dictatorship allowed them to safely leave Haiti,
despite their many crimes against the people. Many wound up in
comfortable exile in the United States and the Dominican Republic. Their
leader, Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, spent the next 10 years living in an
upscale community in Laurelton, Queens, in New York City. His house was
frequently the site of picketing by the Brooklyn-based Haitian
community.

To get back into the country, armed Haitian commandos recently shot
their way through the Dominican border, killing two Dominican soldiers.
(Associ ated Press, Feb. 14) With them were Guy Philippe, the former
police chief of the northern city of Cap Haitien and also a former army
officer, and Louis Jodel Chamblain, the head of the Duvalier death squad
in the 1980s.

According to an authoritative article by Tom Reeves posted on ZNet on
Feb. 17, Chamblain also was a leader of the FRAPH:

"A close associate of Chamblain, Emmanuel 'Toto' Constant, has admitted
its CIA funding and direction. Chamblain was revealed in documents
reviewed by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York as one of
those present during the planning, with a USA agent, of the
assassination of the pro-Aristide minister of justice, Guy Malary, in
1993.

"The USA refuses to release documents it seized from FRAPH during the
1994 USA invasion--presumably to cover up the CIA ties to FRAPH.
Philippe and Cham blain were among those from the Haitian opposition,
recognized by the USA--the Convergence--who organized conferences in the
Dominican Republic, funded and attended by USA operatives from the
International Republican Institute."

COLLUSION OF FRAPH, CONVERGENCE AND U.S.

Although Secretary of State Powell pretends the death squads and the
Convergence have nothing in common, the collusion between them has
become clear with this invasion. One leader of the political opposition,
sweatshop owner Andre Apaid, says he wants nothing to do with the armed
gangs, but what "respected" gangland boss ever acknowledges his bloody-
handed lieutenants?

A British observer, writing in The Independent of Feb. 17, reported that
"The rebels are being manipulated and apparently taken over by
disgruntled former army officers who, if left to their own devices,
would probably return Haiti to the dictatorship and military terror of
the Duvalier era. Although such a prospect is being publicly deplored,
diplomatic sources in Port-au-Prince say Western governments are
increasingly wondering if Haiti would be more stable--at least, from
their point of view--under a dictatorship rather than Mr. Aristide's
flawed version of democracy."

The Convergence, which includes many Haitian business leaders, has been
agitating for Aristide to step down and organized several street
protests, which received sympathetic coverage in the U.S. corporate
media. Much larger demonstrations in support of the government, like one
on Feb. 7 that drew hundreds of thousands in Port-au-Prince, are ignored
by these same media.

After Aristide was returned to office in 1994 by the U.S., he disbanded
the Haitian army. This move, which fit into his pacifist views, was
supposed to allay the continuing threat of a military coup. But he did
not set up any alternative system of defense, like a popular militia, so
the government lacks a strong force to defend itself against the former
militaries, who have now shown up with a surprising amount of
coordination and weapons.

These trained killers have taken over a number of cities north of the
capital, where they immediately attacked police stations and city halls,
killing police who were loyal to Aristide and seizing arms and
ammunition. There are reports that they dragged corpses through the
streets in order to terrorize the population.

According to the Miami Herald of Feb. 16, "Gonaives and St. Marc were
wrested from the government as the rebels shot, burned and looted their
way through cities and villages."

Haiti's entire police force--which now must do the work of an army--is
only 5,000. By contrast, New York City, which has about 1 million fewer
people than Haiti, has 32,000 cops, including heavily armed SWAT teams,
who at any time could be reinforced by the National Guard.

In this crisis situation, however, the masses are finally being asked to
intervene. According to the newspaper Haiti Progress of Feb. 11, "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 ... ."

This response, mostly by the workers and poor, has so far helped keep
the fighting out of the capital, Port-au-Prince. It is the organized
and, wherever possible, armed response of the people to the terrorism of
the bosses and their imperialist backers that is Haiti's best hope.

.