19801: (Chamberlain) Haiti after Aristide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(The Economist, 4 March 04)


Haiti after Aristide

Will America finish the job this time?



“Now we're partying. Then we'll go back to work,” declared a democratic
opposition leader as Jean-Bertrand Aristide flew off to the Central African
Republic on February 29th at the start of his uncertain exile. The party
did not last long: rebel action forced Haitians to face up to a future rosy
with promises but little else.

When the Americans last intervened in Haiti, to put Mr Aristide back into
the presidency in 1994, they had had the three years since his overthrow in
which to construct a blueprint. In the event, the blueprint was more or
less consigned, by events on the ground and by America's early withdrawal,
to the dustbin. This time, policy is having to be invented, on the run.

The intent, at least, is good. James Foley, America's ambassador, promised
Haitians that the international community would “fill the void” and that,
this time, outsiders would not “walk away from Haiti before the job was
completed.” He added, even more unconvincingly, that “the whole world is
united to help Haiti.”

It seems sadly unlikely, with the extra twist that the world is led by a
government bogged down in Iraq, with a beady eye on November's election,
and divided over Haiti. As with Iraq, America's Defence Department and
State Department do not always agree. On March 2nd Defence officials said
that the 1,500-2,000 marines in their 90-day stay in Haiti would of course
try to restore order, but would not, they stressed, act as the new cop on
the beat.

For a few hours after Mr Aristide's departure, the transfer of power
appeared to go smoothly under American and French tutelage. A new
president, Boniface Alexandre, the respected head of the Supreme Court, was
named. Mr Aristide's fiercely loyal prime minister, Yvon Neptune, agreed to
stay on to help the process along. A policy for national reconciliation,
based on the “action plan” brokered by the Caribbean Community (Caricom)
and agreed to last month by Mr Aristide, involved the setting up of a
commission which would select a council of notables—seven “wise men”—which,
in its turn, would select a new prime minister.

But early on March 1st, before people could really take in what was
happening, the National Resistance Front for the Liberation of Haiti, the
rebel army occupying the north of the country and led by Guy Philippe (seen
receiving tribute in the picture above), came rolling into the capital,
Port-au-Prince. At the airport, a rebel caravan of pick-ups and SUVs swept
past Colonel Dave Berger, the marine commander.

The colonel had been on the ground only a few hours, with his first
contingent of 150 marines. As soon as they had secured the perimeter of the
airport, he said, they would begin moving into the city “to secure key
government installations”. But, following the Defence Department line, he
stressed that he had no instructions for dealing with the rebels. “That's a
Haitian problem,” he said. “We are not a police force.” Looting continued
under the Americans' eyes, as did the rebels' progress.

For days before Mr Aristide's departure, American officials had been saying
privately that there was no way the capital would be allowed to fall into
rebel hands. Indeed, for a crucial 48 hours, the rebels had heeded
America's appeal to stay put in Cap-Haïtien, allowing America and France
time to put the squeeze on Mr Aristide. But, from the first rebel uprising
on February 5th in Gonaïves, America had misread the determination and
firepower of the rag-tag rebel army, headed by Mr Philippe, a one-time
police chief.

Mr Aristide's exit was cleverly, if cynically, finessed. Although some
critics are alleging that he was kidnapped by the Americans, and thrown on
a plane, his removal was more like slow death by strangulation. Despite the
pressure from American hawks to dispatch him post haste, Colin Powell, the
secretary of state was concerned to avoid direct American complicity in a
coup. He also had to take into account the Caribbean leaders who were
calling for swift international military intervention to protect Mr
Aristide and Haiti's democratic order.

American officials were reasonably confident that Mr Aristide could be
outmanoevred. And, indeed, he was, in the end, the author of his own
downfall. Last week, his dreaded enforcers, the street gangs of angry young
men and boys known as chimères, began a campaign of terror in the streets
of the capital. By the middle of the week, bodies of opposition activists
were lying about, some killed by “execution”. Opposition businesses and
radio stations were targeted for attacks.

But Mr Aristide's doom was sealed on February 27th when the chimères began
intimidating repatriated boat people. If there was anything the Bush
administration was not going to stand it was an interruption, especially in
the months before the election, of its policy of sending home intercepted
Haitian boat people.

That afternoon the American embassy demanded that the chimères be got off
the streets. Mr Aristide appeared on television, telling his supporters to
go home. Next morning all was still, seemingly providing damning proof that
the chimères took their orders from Mr Aristide, and that he, in effect,
was their commander.

At the weekend, Luis Moreno, the number two at the American embassy and a
veteran Haiti hand, visited the president to tell him that the rebels were
massing to attack the capital, and that America would not intervene to save
him. If he valued his life, and those of his fellow citizens, it was time
to go. In the early hours of February 29th Mr Aristide left his palace with
Mr Moreno, handing him a short resignation letter, that declared his wish
to avoid a bloodbath.

There has not been a bloodbath: fewer than 100 people have been killed
since the start of the violence. But Mr Aristide's summary departure
fuelled rumours of foul play, with many Haitians remaining sceptical of the
official version of events.

Bad public relations. But perhaps America's bigger mistake was to allow Mr
Aristide's untrammelled rule to last as long as it did. This has left a
country that is wretchedly poor, riddled with corruption and awash in
drugs. A sign of how out of touch Mr Aristide, a former priest, had become
with the poor is the $350,000 in rotting, unusable $100 bills that looters
found in a secret chamber under his house.

Haiti has long been a drugs transhipment point for Colombian cocaine
traffickers. By the mid-1990s, the drugs trade was out of control,
capitalising on Haiti's internal squabbles and the greed of the country's
police chiefs, especially those who, like Mr Philippe, served in the port
city of Cap-Haïtien. But drugs also infected the ruling Lavalas Family
party, corrupting it to the core. The suspension of international financial
aid starved Mr Aristide's government of cash, driving it ever further into
the arms of the drug dealers.

As the international force builds its presence in Haiti to the proposed
total of around 5,000, Mr Philippe's days could be numbered. On March 3rd,
the marines began to patrol in the capital, and Mr Neptune declared a state
of emergency. Mr Philippe said he would disarm his men. American officials
make no secret of their distaste for his past record; they say he has no
role to play in a future government. Their preferred candidate for prime
minister is retired-General Herard Abraham, one of Haiti's few genuine
military heroes, who has been living quietly in Miami. As commander of the
armed forces, General Abraham helped end military rule in 1990, and played
a major role in organising the country's 1990 democratic elections, which
Mr Aristide won by a landslide.

Mr Philippe denies harbouring political ambitions. But he is calling for
the army, disbanded in 1994, to be reinstated and has proclaimed himself to
be Haiti's military chief. He claims that 90% of the (crumbling and
corrupt) police force is behind him. The struggle for power in
post-Aristide Haiti is just beginning.