18985: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Haiti crisis: We should have seen it coming (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sun, Feb. 22, 2004

JUAN VASQUEZ

COMMENTARY


Haiti crisis: We should have seen it coming


We should have seen it coming

In early January, when the crisis engulfing Haiti was but a faint glow on
the distant horizon, a Herald editorial called for international aid and
diplomatic resolve to avoid a catastrophe. What happened next, insofar as
making a difference, was . . . nuthin'.

Not that anyone expected otherwise. It's the job of editorial writers to
view something or other with alarm every day, after all, except when we're
taking a dim view of something else. But now that violence is sweeping
across Haiti like flames over parched grassland, it's fair to note that the
crisis was fully predictable.

We should have seen it coming back on April 3, 2000 -- nearly four years ago
-- when 69-year-old Jean Dominique, Haiti's best-known journalist, was shot
down in a hail of bullets, and his killers danced away.

We should have seen it coming in June 2001 -- after Jean-Bertrand Aristide
had become president again -- when the judge assigned to the Dominique case
withdrew, complaining that the government was meddling with the inquiry and
not doing enough to protect him. He eventually fled the country and sought
asylum in the United States.

We should have seen it coming on Dec. 3, 2001, when another journalist,
Brignol Lindor, was ''stoned and hacked to death with a machete by a mob
near the town of Petit-Goave,'' according to The Herald's report. The week
before, Lindor, 31, had received death threats after inviting members of the
opposition Convergence alliance to speak on his radio show.

The headline on the Herald story: Violence eroding Aristide's rule.

Hoping to avoid chaos

At the time, even the widow of Jean Dominique, Michele Montas, was unwilling
to place the blame on Aristide for the worsening conditions. She
courageously remained in Haiti even after her husband and other colleagues
were cut down, and she apparently believed that Aristide could still make a
go of it.

''I don't believe the solution is chaos, and that is what we would have if
Aristide is forced to resign,'' she told The Herald's Jim DeFede in December
2002. The opposition, she said, was united only by its rabid hatred of
Aristide and his populist brand of politics.

A few days after the interview -- on Christmas Day, to be exact -- she
managed to escape an assassination attempt that took the life of her
bodyguard.

An onrushing disaster

But if all these dying canaries in the mine shaft weren't a clear enough
sign of the onrushing disaster, then surely we should have seen it coming
last March, when Michele Montas finally had enough. She took refuge in the
United States, still refusing to pin the blame squarely on Aristide but
lamenting that he had lost control.

Eventually, an indictment against six accused gunmen in the Dominique case
was presented, but there was no mention of motive nor of who actually
planned and ordered the killing -- or, to employ the delicate euphemism used
to describe the cowards who pay others to do their killing for them, ``the
intellectual author.''

The new judge -- the case's fourth -- didn't find enough evidence to charge
others, but prosecutor Josue Pierre-Louis said in a report that the murder
``appeared to everyone to have been carried out by those with powerful
economic, social or political interests.''

To everyone, he said, as if to pull the rug out from anyone who might later
seek to claim that they had no idea of what was happening: Don't blame me; I
didn't see it coming.

By last month, the chaos that Montas once feared had engulfed Haiti.
Aristide -- once considered by his foes to be out of control -- had plainly
lost control. He dashed off to another Caribbean island and promised leaders
of his neighboring countries that, Yes, he would be glad to meet with the
opposition and consider their demands.

But after years of broken promises, it was probably too late. Sensing
opportunity in the collapse of government authority in parts of Haiti,
opposition figures are willing to sit by and wait for power to be handed to
them once Aristide is overthrown or forced to resign. Apparently, they don't
mind seeing other Haitians die if it serves their political goals.

Indeed, it is all too predictable -- once again, the people of Haiti are
being punished for the shortcomings of their political leaders. Those
shortcomings cover an array of political sins, from the lust for power to
sheer, gross ineptitude.

The United States cannot be blamed for the failure of the political class in
Haiti. History suggests that, when assessing responsibility for the failure
of a former colony to become a viable nation, the best place to start is
with the colonial power -- in this case, France.

But the issue of punishment is something else, and here U.S. policy cannot
escape blame. While Aristide arrogantly refused to acknowledge criticism and
Haiti began its descent into the cauldron of political violence, U.S. policy
stubbornly refused to acknowledge that another crisis was plainly
inevitable, absent a U.S.-led effort to prevent it.

Now a last-ditch plan has been crafted to force Aristide into sharing power
with a three-member commission that would include a leader of the opposition
and an international representative.

For Aristide, this is a moment of supreme humiliation, being forced to
acknowledge that he has lost the authority to govern. Still, he should seize
the moment -- it is a step back from the abyss.

Given the bloody fate of other Haitian presidents, it is not the worst thing
that could happen to the former priest.

Besides, he should have seen it coming.

_________________________________________________________________
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