19012: (Ives) While U.S. Tries to Mask its Role, Haitians Resist Coup Attempt (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: K. M. Ives <kives@toast.net>

WHILE U.S. TRIES TO MASK ITS ROLE
HAITIANS RESIST COUP ATTEMPT
By Deirdre Griswold

Feb. 26, 2004, issue of Workers World newspaper

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 assassins 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.


Reprinted from the Feb. 26, 2004, issue of Workers World newspaper