19899: radtimes: The division of labor behind the US-made coup in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

The division of labor behind the US-made coup in Haiti

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/hait-m05.shtml

By Bill Van Auken and Barry Grey
5 March 2004

The US government is engaged in a cynical charade to distance itself from
the right-wing terrorists and thugs who marched into the Haitian capital of
Port-au-Prince over the weekend, leading to the forced resignation and
exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Bush administration officials have adopted a public posture of repugnance
toward the so-called "rebels" and declared they can have no place in a new
government which the US, with the aid of the French and the sanction of the
United Nations, is seeking to impose on the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Washington, these officials declare, will deal only with the so-called
political opposition, i.e., the Group of 184 and the Democratic
Platform—organizations entirely dominated by Haiti's tiny wealthy elite—as
well as elements from Aristide's Lavalas movement who are prepared to join
a US-sponsored coalition government.

The distinction being drawn by the US between the right-wing political
opposition and the former Haitian army killers, police officials and death
squad leaders who dominate the "rebels" is largely fictitious. The Haitian
financial elite had supported the Duvalier dictatorship and subsequent
military regimes as a necessary means of defending its wealth and privilege
against the impoverished masses.

The anti-Aristide "political opposition" worked in the closest
collaboration with the "rebels" to organize this week's coup. They formed a
common front, and on Monday, after the US had spirited Aristide out of the
country, leaders of the Democratic Platform met with "rebel" leaders in
Port-au-Prince. Evans Paul, a former mayor of the capital city and
prominent opposition spokesman, praised the "rebels," particularly their
principal commander, Guy Philippe.

The Bush administration gave Philippe's killers a free hand for several
days to occupy the city and terrorize the slum communities that form the
main base of support for the deposed president. An unknown number of
Aristide partisans were hunted down and killed by Philippe's thugs, while
US Marines who had been sent into Port-au-Prince stood by.

The Haiti Press Network reported Wednesday that "foreign journalists who
were allowed access to the [Port-au-Prince] morgue's chambers said there
were hundreds of bodies piled on top of each other. Many of the dead
appeared to be victims of the violent unrest that has rocked the nation..."

Several US Marines were deployed to guard the residence of the prime
minister, Yvon Neptune, but the rest of his cabinet was forced to either
flee the country or go underground.

One of the first acts of the armed thugs upon entering Port-au-Prince under
the protection of the US Marines was to storm the penitentiary and free six
other senior officers of the disbanded Haitian army, including former
military dictator Prosper Avril, who seized power in a 1988 coup. Most of
these individuals were serving life sentences on charges of murder and
torture, at least three of them having been deported from the US to face
their punishment.

American officials have openly acknowledged that key "rebel" leaders are
killers and drug traffickers, who played bloody roles in the reign of
terror carried out by the Haitian Army under the military junta that ruled
for three years in the early 1990s. Yet, notwithstanding their so-called
"war on terrorism," they have not even suggested that these known criminals
should be arrested and brought to justice.

A cynical division of labor has been worked out, under the aegis of US
imperialism, between American military and diplomatic officials, the
Haitian "political opposition" and the "rebels." The armed thugs are
covertly equipped and supported by Washington and allowed to do their
bloody work, and then relegated to the background while Washington
assembles a puppet regime dominated by the Haitian elite. Whatever role the
"rebel" leaders officially play in a new regime, or even if they play no
role at present, they are to be protected and held in reserve, to be called
on again whenever it becomes necessary to unleash a new round of terror and
murder on the masses.

On Wednesday, Philippe, a former police chief and reputed drug trafficker,
announced that his forces would lay down their arms and abandon positions
they had seized in the center of Port-au-Prince.

US officials had insisted that they were "sending a message" to Philippe
and other "rebel" leaders that they would not be allowed to seize power.
"The fact of the matter is they pledged to lay down their arms when
President Aristide resigned, and so we are holding them to their pledge,"
declared US Ambassador to Haiti James Foley.

"There is an orderly and constitutional process underway in Haiti," said
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. "That process needs to be
respected by all Haitians, but we're glad to see the violence is
decreasing. But the rebels have no role to play in this process, and they
need to lay down their arms and go home."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan made the same point somewhat more
forcefully on Wednesday: "Our message to the rebels, or the so-called
rebels, has been very clear: the rebels need to put their arms down and
return home. There is no place for thugs, criminals, and the so-called
rebels in Haiti's political system."

Yet the commander of the US forces in Haiti, Marine Col. Charles Gurganis,
called Philippe "a man of honor" after meeting with him at the US embassy.
Similarly, Interim President Boniface Alexandre, in his first address to
the nation since being installed in a ceremony organized by the US embassy
after Aristide was spirited out of the country, described Philippe and his
cohorts as "patriotic men of honor."

Contrast this approach to the US actions in Iraq, where the Bush
administration repeatedly cites human rights abuses by the former Ba'athist
regime as a supposed justification for its military intervention. There, US
troops were provided playing cards featuring photographs of former members
of the regime to be hunted down and imprisoned. Whatever crimes some of
these officials may have carried out, unlike their Haitian counterparts
from the Duvalier dictatorship and the military regimes of Generals Avril
and Raoul Cedras, none of them had ever been convicted.

US authorities have no interest in pursuing Haiti's convicted mass killers
because they have been working intimately with them and will continue to do so.

 From the moment it came into office, the Bush administration has been
committed to Aristide's overthrow. The Republican right has long hated the
former Silesian priest for his association with the mass movement that
toppled the Duvalier dictatorship and for his populist and anti-imperialist
rhetoric. No matter how much Aristide groveled before Washington and
accepted the dictates of the International Monetary Fund and other
international lenders to impose austerity policies upon the already
desperately poor Haitian people, it did not assuage this enmity.

Backed by Washington, which provided it financial aid via the National
Endowment for Democracy, the right-wing political opposition in Haiti
staged one provocation after another, turning a procedural dispute over the
2000 legislative election into an international scandal that was then used
as a pretext for denying Haiti international aid and deepening the
country's economic and political crisis.

Despite this crisis and dwindling popular support for Aristide, no amount
of backing from the Bush administration could create mass popular support
for bringing the wealthy sweatshop owners and businessmen gathered in the
Group of 184 and the Democratic Platform to power. Other means were required.

This was why Philippe, Louis-Jodel Chamberlain and the other convicted
killers and torturers of the so-called "rebels"—men who had been trained by
US forces and worked on the CIA payroll—were unleashed upon the Haitian people.

Throughout the three weeks before Aristide was forced out, the Bush
administration rejected any military intervention to stop the killing. It
went through the motions of brokering an agreement between Aristide and the
so-called political opposition in order to give the "rebels" the time they
needed to march on the capital. When the US-backed "democrats"
intransigently rejected any compromise, Washington insisted that it was
Aristide who had to go.

Speaking before a Congressional panel Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of
State Roger Noriega—a key architect of the coup—cynically claimed that the
US failed to act before Aristide's ouster because it had been seen as too
dangerous and would "put American lives at risk." This, he said, was
because Aristide—who acceded to every US demand—was "erratic,
irresponsible." Yet the moment the elected president was removed from
office, a waiting US Marine expeditionary force was rushed to the island
nation.

There is every reason to believe that the division of labor between US
military forces, the so-called democrats and the "rebels" will continue, no
matter what the official pronouncements about Philippe and his associates
disarming. The former army officer and police chief only said that his
gunmen had been withdrawn to an undisclosed location, and no weapons have
been turned over.

Whether Philippe and his henchmen will realize their dream of
reconstituting the hated Haitian army under their leadership remains to be
seen. For now, the "rebels" will be used to continue hunting down and
killing Aristide supporters and terrorizing the population so that a regime
acceptable to Washington can be installed without popular interference.

.