19918: Esser: Did U.S. Push or Pull Aristide from Power? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Haiti: Did U.S. Push or Pull Aristide from Power?
03/05

by Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Mar 2 (IPS) - As rebel leader Guy Philippe declared himself
Haiti's ”military chief” Tuesday, speculation continued to fly over
the U.S. role in deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's flight
from power Sunday.

More than one observer suggested that now that the champion of the
poor in the western hemisphere's poorest nation was gone, it was time
to look ahead to rebuilding -- but first to disarming the various
armed factions in Haiti.

On Monday, Aristide told CNN (the Cable News Network) that U.S.
soldiers forced him to board a plane that landed in Africa 20 hours
later.

”I called this a coup d'etat the modern way, to have a modern
kidnapping,” said Aristide. ”We had to leave and spent 20 hours in an
American plane not knowing where they were going with us until they
told us 20 minutes before we landed in the Central African Republic”.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell denied that version of events.
Aristide ”was not kidnapped”, Powell said. ”We did not force him onto
the airplane. He went onto the airplane willingly. And that's the
truth,” he told reporters Monday.

Hours after Aristide's flight, the United Nations Security Council
authorised a multinational intervention force for the country.

On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he knew nothing
more about Aristide's departure, adding, ” I hope this time the
international community will go in for the long haul and not a quick
turn-around . it may take years and I hope we will have the patience
to do it”.

Tuesday morning a spokesman for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)
told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) he did not think the
anti-Aristide rebels joined with Washington to depose the embattled
leader.

”A lot of people are making the link from the rebels to the United
States and saying the United States had a role in him (Aristide)
being forced out. Do you make that link?” the CARICOM spokesman,
Jamaican Foreign Minister KD Knight, was asked.

”No, I haven't made that link. I've heard that link being made but I
haven't made it. We are just going on what's happened on the ground,
what's evident to all onlookers, the behaviour of the rebels, the
behaviour of the opposition,” answered Knight.

CARICOM criticised the world community last week for not sending a
military force to Haiti sooner, and Knight suggested Tuesday the
group might not recognise a governing authority in Haiti -- one of 15
CARICOM members -- that included the rebels.

The regional body was to meet Tuesday to discuss how to officially
react to the events in Haiti.

One non-governmental observer said the international community will
likely make no meaningful contribution to the island country, even
now that Philippe -- a former policeman and army cadet who fled the
country after a failed coup attempt against Aristide in 2001 -- and
other known human rights violators appear to have assumed some power.

”The international community, by which we mean in the case of Haiti
the United States, France and to a lesser extent Canada, have already
made it absolutely clear that they're not going to intervene in any
positive way in Haiti,” said Charles Arthur, director of the UK
organisation, Haiti Support Group.

Instead, the role of the international armed force ”will be to
protect whatever assets the international community believes it has,
which in short will be the main infrastructure of the capital, the
embassies, the big businesses, the areas where the rich people live .
the basic infrastructure of the country”, he added.

”The peacekeeping, the law and order, in a de facto fashion, will be
the preserve of whoever is in charge of the Haitian Army and the
Haitian police force, which it looks like is going to be Guy
Philippe,” said Arthur.

But Tuesday, U.S. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher rejected
Philippe's claim. ”The rebels have to lay down their arms and go
home,” said Boucher, according to Associated Press (AP).

Arthur argued the world should not mourn the departure of Aristide.
”Clearly the United States is the main player in getting him to
leave. Whether the left and progressive forces all over the world
should be focussing on the issue of the Aristide presidency, I don't
think so”.

”In my opinion, based on working with grassroots organisations in
Haiti over the last 12 years, Aristide hasn't been able to deliver
the demands and aspirations of the 85 percent of (the people who are
poor) in Haiti. And this is one of the reasons why it was possible
for the United States to remove him from power,” according to Arthur.

Haitian politics has been blocked since the opposition parties
refused to participate following 2000 elections that rights groups
and bodies like the Organisation of American States (OAS) declared
flawed.

But more than one week ago, and with Philippe and other heavily-armed
rebels advancing on the capital Port-au-Prince from the north,
Aristide agreed to a CARICOM action plan that would see him stay in
office until his term ended in 2006 as part of a power-sharing
government with the opposition.

But his opponents refused to accept the strategy.

”I think they (the United States) facilitated his leaving certainly,
but I don't think the United States was responsible for his leaving,”
said Carolyn Fick, a professor of history at Montreal's Concordia
University.

”There were negotiations and they put pressure on Aristide but so did
the internal situation in Haiti put pressure on him, in spite of his
declaration to the contrary,” added Fick, author of 'The Making of
Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution From Below'.

”He's gone but the point is now, where to go. I think that it has to
be a civil and political solution. The rebels have not put down their
arms. They promised to do so -- they haven't. I don't think they will
until they get guarantees. My feeling is that they're going to
negotiate for the restoration of the Haitian Army.”

According to another observer, ”I don't think anybody knows exactly
what occurred. It's clear that there was a tremendous amount of
international pressure put on Aristide and in the end I don't know
what finally convinced him to leave; whether in fact he had been
trapped or whether he was convinced simply to leave because his life
was at stake and the lives of so many thousands of other people might
have been at stake”.

Added Leslie G. Desmangles, a professor of international studies at
Trinity College in Hartford, ”(Aristide) left and the question as to
whether he was taken away or whether he left on his own I think at
this point is rather moot, because what's important at the moment is
that he's gone and that now we have to look forward to reshaping the
politics and the government of the country”.

That tremendous task will have to begin with basic services. For
example, aid group Oxfam said Tuesday ”at least 80,000 people in Port
de Paix and 60,000 people in Cap Haitien (both in the country's
north) have no access to clean water, many others are short of food
and the threat of disease due to poor sanitation is growing”.

Groups stopped delivering aid because of insecurity earlier this
month, and ”lack of access to sufficient quantities of clean water
combined with the general lack of adequate sanitation could soon lead
to disastrous outbreaks of water-related disease”, added the Oxfam
statement.
.