19351: radtimes: U.S. Backs Aristide's Opponents (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

U.S. Backs Aristide's Opponents

-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 4, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

HAITI: U.S. BACKS ARISTIDE'S OPPONENTS

By Pat Chin

As we go to press on Feb. 25, the crisis unleashed in Haiti remains
unresolved. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide continues to insist that he
will serve out the term to which he was elected by the Haitian people,
but he has accepted a U.S.-backed plan that would bring business-led
opposition political groups into the government. However, these groups
have rejected the plan, demanding that Aristide step down so that they,
self-styled "demo crats" who have not been elected to anything, can take
over and run the country.

Meanwhile, heavily armed gangs led by former soldiers and known death-
squad leaders have shot their way into towns and cities in the north,
including Cap Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. Popular
organizations in Port-au-Prince have erected barricades on the roads
leading into the city expecting that the coup forces may attempt to take
the capital. And the U.S. has sent in 50 Marines, supposedly to guard
the U.S. Embassy there.

Washington is embroiled in Haiti on many levels. Semi-official groups
like the National Endowment for Democracy and the International
Republican Institute have for some time been giving open financial and
political support to the opposition political groups led by Haitian
business owners. The U.S. media gave credibility to these groups'
charges that elections in 2000 were "fraudulent," even though Aristide
and his Lavalas party are acknowledged by all observers to have clearly
won the popular vote. These forces have been preventing new
parliamentary elections by boycotting the process. Haiti now has no
legislature because of this.

At the same time, secret U.S. agencies like the CIA have a history of
collaborating with the armed assassins and coup makers from former
dictatorships who have attacked and taken over the northern cities.
While claiming to respect the Aristide government, Washington has not
denounced the coup leaders as the terrorists they are, instead giving
them time to take more territory and put pressure on the popular forces
around Aristide. The coup leaders, in turn, have been urging the U.S. to
intervene, and some of the gunmen even wear shirts made of U.S. flags.

However, Washington has to be careful not to be seen as aiding a coup
against a popularly elected president. That would set off a firestorm of
protest in many parts of the world, something neither the Bush
administration nor the U.S. ruling class need at this time.

The Haitian opposition is clearly hoping that the upsurge in violence
will force Aristide to resign. Washington had even announced beforehand
that any international assistance to stop the armed onslaught was
contingent on an agreement between the two sides.

BUSH AND 'REGIME CHANGE'

The U.S. capitalist establishment started years ago laying the
groundwork for the bloody chaos now engulfing Haiti. It has long wanted
to replace the Aristide government with one more compliant to corporate
globalization interests. Even though its pressure forced Aristide to
implement IMF restructuring plans, Washington still wasn't satisfied.
But it did cause him to lose some popular support, which the U.S. is
also exploiting.

Bush might not have declared Haiti a part of his "axis of evil," but in
April of last year Attorney General John Ashcroft made a ruling that
Haitian refugees presented a "national security" threat to the United
States. This was part of the White House "regime change" strategy,
backed by the European Union, that has long put pressure on Aristide to
force his total capitulation to capitalist financial interests, or be
ousted.

For example, $500 million in loans promised in 1994 were indefinitely
frozen. The money, on which Haiti is still forced to pay interest, was
designed to stimulate the economy. An aid embargo, imposed in 2001,
froze humanitarian projects, undermining basic humanitarian services
relat ed to water, housing and medical care. This destabilization
campaign has been unleashed on the Western Hemisphere's poorest
country,
where many people must walk for miles to get water, family members sleep
in shifts because of the dire shortage of adequate housing, and the
infant mortality rate is over 100 per 1,000 live births, the highest in
the Western Hemisphere.

Washington also funded and backed the anti-Aristide "opposition" made up
of the big landowners, many media bosses, the business elite, their
armed gangs and others. U.S. media coverage greatly exaggerated the size
of opposition protests while ignoring larger demonstrations in support
of the government.

'U.S. IS PLAYING GAMES'

"The United States is playing games with Haiti," said Haitian-born
Robert Fatton, Jr., chair of the Government and Foreign Affairs
department at the University of Virginia. Referring to the National
Endowment for Democracy, he said, "Politically connected groups within
the country are openly funding Aristide's overthrow while the Bush
administration is saying publicly that Aristide should finish his
elected term." (www.bet.com, Feb. 20)

The Feb. 19 web edition of Black Com mentator said, "Washington had
expect ed to remove the former priest through massive demonstrations--a
counter-revolution by acclamation--hopefully before this year's
celebrations of Haiti's 200th anniversary. U.S. and European media tried
mightily to paint a picture of overwhelming popular disaffection with
Aristide. However, the Haitian people are intimately familiar with the
faces and history of the 'opposition,' gathered opportunistically under
the banner of Group 184. ..."

Sweatshop magnate Andrew Apaid is an opposition leader. After a trip to
Haiti, U.S. Congressperson Maxine Waters, who represents a largely
African American district in Los Angeles, roundly denounc ed Apaid at a
Feb. 11 press conference in Washington, D.C., in which she detailed a
long list of his shady dealings.

She said she was "deeply concerned about the growing violence organized
by the so-called opposition and what now appears to be gangs in the
northern part of the country being supported in their violent activities
by this so-called opposition."

She challenged the U.S. government to denounce Apaid and his Group of
184: "How can the State Department remain silent while Andre Apaid, who
allegedly holds an American passport, creates so much dissension,
disruption and violence in this small, impoverished country?"

Waters has also criticized Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega--
whom she labels "a Jesse Helms political appointee"--as the author of
"right-wing garbage" attacking Haiti. (www.bet.com, Feb. 20)

At first the White House feigned a hands-off policy towards the turmoil
it helped to create, giving the armed opposition a chance to advance. It
was only after France, Haiti's former colonial power, took a more active
role that the Bush White House "shifted" its policy by co-sponsoring the
power-sharing plan.

Aristide has lost some support among the masses because of Haiti's
disastrous economic decline, exacerbated by the aid and loan embargo and
his implementation of the IMF's structural adjustment program. But a
Feb. 20 poll of 600 Haitian Americans by the Pacific News Service found
that, although disillusioned over the worsening economic situation, 52
percent believed Aristide should remain in office. Only 6 percent
supported the armed wing of the opposition. "Over half of Haitian
Americans, 55 percent, believe that the opposition movements are just
interested in power; only 22 percent said those groups are fighting for
democracy," reported the news service.

Hundreds of Haitians and U.S. progressives demonstrated against a coup
on Feb. 13 in front of the UN. Another demonstration is planned for 11
a.m. on Feb. 28, gathering at Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway in
Brooklyn and marching to Grand Army Plaza.

.