19233: sajousp: NYTimes.com Article: Aristide’s Foes: On the Same Side, but Denying Any Ties (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: sajousp@aol.com

Aristide’s Foes: On the Same Side, but Denying Any Ties

February 26, 2004
 By LYDIA POLGREEN

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 25 - When opposition leaders
formally announced Wednesday that they had rejected a peace
plan the United States had hoped would end the uprising
roiling the country, they took pains to emphasize that they
have no links whatsoever to the armed groups sweeping
through Haiti.

But it was clear that the success of the insurgents, who on
Sunday took Cap Haitien with little resistance from
supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has buoyed
their movement.

"This is all the more reason for Mr. Aristide to go," said
André Apaid, a leader of the Group of 184, a civil society
organization, in an interview on Wednesday. "This is all
the more reason to press harder for what we see is the only
way out, and it is only more clear that we need to do this
very, very quickly."

As Haiti's crisis lurches toward civil war, a tangled web
of alliances, some of them accidental, has emerged. It has
linked the interests of a political opposition movement
that has embraced nonviolence to a group of insurgents that
includes a former leader of death squads accused of killing
thousands, a former police chief accused of plotting a coup
and a ruthless gang once aligned with Mr. Aristide that has
now turned against him. Given their varied origins, those
arrayed against Mr. Aristide are hardly unified, though
they all share an ardent wish to see him removed from
power.

In Port-au-Prince, meanwhile, pro-Aristide forces were
trying on Wednesday to shore up control, erecting burning
barricades and blocking main traffic routes with concrete
tank traps and shipping containers.

Tensions were running high, with armed police officers,
some wearing ski masks, roaring through town in pickup
trucks, while sinister bands of teenagers wielding rifles
guarded makeshift roadblocks, searching cars and stealing
whatever they wanted from passengers.

In Belle, an earthy, staunchly pro-Aristide neighborhood
about five minutes walk from the Presidential Palace
downtown, a group of youths sat and played cards, waving
occasionally as groups of chimères, the president's
fearsome militiamen, sped by in trucks.

Groups of people chanted, "Five years, five years!" as the
militiamen passed, a rallying call referring to the
president's insistence he serve out his five-year term of
office, ending in February 2006.

"Let the rebels come, we are not afraid," said Jean
Toussaint, one of the youths. "They have guns, yes, but we
do, too."

"We'll attack them with knives and machetes," he
said."We'll slit their throats - they'll never make it to
the palace."

On one side of those lined up against Mr. Aristide and his
supporters are political and civic opposition groups, which
have led huge protests in the capital and elsewhere, and
have been subjected to violence by the police and
progovernment gangs. Born out of the disputed parliamentary
elections in 2000 and galvanized by political violence
aimed at protesters, the groups came together as the
Democratic Platform.

On the other side are the armed insurgents, many with
sinister pasts. The uprising began in Gonaïves with a
revolt by former Aristide loyalists, known as the Cannibal
Army, who turned against the president after their leader,
Amiot Métayer, was killed in September. The group, which is
now led by Mr. Métayer's brother Butteur, believes Mr.
Aristide ordered the killing.

They have been joined by members of the former Haitian
Army, which was dissolved after the United States returned
Mr. Aristide to power in 1994. The ranks of the insurgents
include men like Louis-Jodel Chamblain, who is accused of
killing thousands of people in the aftermath of the 1991
military coup that removed Mr. Aristide, and Remissainthe
Ravix, a former army corporal notorious for his brutal
methods.

The opposition groups with which the United States hoped to
broker a peace deal, the Democratic Platform and several
political parties, say they have no connection to the armed
groups that have taken control of much of the country. In a
statement released on Wednesday in response to the latest
peace proposal, the Democratic Platform wrote that it
"reaffirms that it has no ties whatsoever to armed groups
and that its quest for a democratic solution is based on a
strategy of nonviolence."

Those leading the armed uprising in turn affirm that they
have no formal links with the political opposition, but Guy
Philippe, who is leading the rebel army, hinted that the
groups do have an open line of communication.

"Officially, there is no contact," Mr. Philippe said
Tuesday in Cap Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. Asked
if there were unofficial links, Mr. Philippe smiled but
would not answer.

Mr. Aristide has repeatedly said that the two groups are
working in concert, though he has provided no concrete
evidence to back the allegation. The leaders of the armed
group said they had not been involved in negotiations for a
political settlement of the country's crisis.

But whether or not there are links between the groups, the
common goal of removing Mr. Aristide from power has led
each to speak carefully about the plans and goals of the
other. Asked about the armed insurgents, Mr. Apaid said he
deplored the violence but did not expect the men to put
down their weapons until Mr. Aristide left office.

"Otherwise they would be slaughtered," Mr. Apaid said.
Asked about the role they would seek in a future government
if Mr. Aristide was ousted, Mr. Philippe and other rebel
leaders have said they have no interest in imposing
military rule and that they support a plan put forward by
the Democratic Platform. That proposal calls on political
parties, businesspeople, intellectuals and civil society
groups to form a transition government of national unity.
His men, Mr. Philippe said, would become the nucleus of a
reconstituted Haitian army.

Such odd bedfellows are not uncommon in Haiti's troubled
history said Henry Carey, a professor at Georgia State
University who is an expert on Haitian politics. But they
seldom bring good fortune to the Haitian people.

"Haitians learned through history that the way to change
their government is intimidation and protest, not through
elections and democratic procedure," Professor Carey said.
Even if there are no formal links with militants, he said,
"the opposition groups have been too eager to make
alliances with anyone who wants to get rid of Aristide
without carefully examining their democratic credentials.
That means inevitably the most lethal elements are the ones
who will grab power when the time comes."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/international/americas/26PORT.html?ex=1078772264&ei=1&en=7ddad0d6ee64683b


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