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[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Green Left Weekly [Australia]
http://www.greenleft.org.au

 From Green Left Weekly, March 10, 2004.

HAITI: Washington was behind `coup’ says Aristide
by Alison Dellit

“The Haitian constitution is working”, US President George Bush told
the media on March 1. It might seem an odd way to describe a country
overrun by armed thugs and, now, foreign troops, and whose elected
president has been kidnapped and spirited away. But what Bush meant
was that the Haitian constitution is now working to the benefit of
Washington's elite.

Haiti is the fourth poorest country in the world. Fifty per cent of
the country's wealth is owned by just 1% of the population. There is
70% unemployment and average life expectancy is comparable to that of
Indigenous Australians. Infant mortality is the highest in the
western hemisphere.

According to a March 1 Medialens report, US corporations control
Haiti’s sugar, bauxite, textiles, electronics and toy industries. US
mega-corporations pay Haitian workers as little as 11 cents an hour.

Haitians are not poor by accident: it is a direct result of US
exploitation of the country. Washington was willing to topple a
president to preserve their poverty.

US intervention

As the “gateway to the Caribbean”, Haiti is geo-politically important
to Washington. From the time the US invaded in 1915 to the 1990s, the
US has controlled Haiti.

 From the 1930s to 1985, Washington indirectly governed through the
dictators it sponsored: Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, followed by his
son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. They ensured Haiti continued to
provide cheap, disposable labour to US corporations. Trade unions
were smashed, the minium wage driven down and communists were
persecuted.

In the mid-1980s, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry headed a Senate
investigation that revealed extensive links between the Haiti
dictatorship and drug traffickers, but avoided directly indicting the
CIA, who many believed responsible.

In 1990, radical priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his Lavalas
Movement upset the apple cart, winning elections with a massive 67.5%
of the vote. The US-backed opposition candidate came second with just
14.2%. Aristide, a proponent of liberation theology, promised a new
Haiti that would put its people before the profits of US
corporations. Within seven months, he was overthrown in a US-backed
coup.

Mass murder followed the coup. At least 1000 people were killed in
the first two weeks alone, as the coup plotters were determined to
wipe out the Lavalas Movement and its supporters.

The leaders of the paramilitary Front for the Advancement of Haiti
(FRAPH), which carried out the killings, were former CIA employees.
One, Emmanuel Constant, admitted to The Nation in 1994 that they were
given explicit direction and funding from the CIA.

After the coup, the Organization of American States imposed an
embargo and sanctions on Haiti — the US immediately declared 800 of
its firms exempt. According to Noam Chomsky, US trade increased in
the embargo period.

In 1994, the US made a deal with Aristide. After agreeing to
implement neoliberal economic policies, he was allowed to return,
backed by 20,000 US troops. The US military showed little enthusiasm
for righting past wrongs. According to Human Rights Watch, they
impeded investigations into the slaughter of the previous three years
by removing vital documents.

Aristide's substantial concessions, including agreement to implement
International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs, certainly
cost him much of the loyalty of Haiti’s already impoverished people

Under the austerity programs, Haiti’s economic situation has
considerably worsened. Prices increased by 40% in 2001-2002, while
the minimum wage halved.

However, Aristide’s “reforms” were not enough to pacify the US
imperialist elite, which continued to fund and support many of the
leaders of the 1991 coup.

Their first excuse to attack Aristide came after the 2000 elections,
in which the parliamentary opposition disputed the results in a
number of seats. Although the alleged fraud would not have altered
Aristide’s landslide election victory, international condemnation was
quick and punitive. An aid embargo was imposed, costing the
desperately poor country $500 million in loans.

When, in early February, armed gangs began attacking the police and
taking control of cities, the stage was set for a US intervention.

`Opposition’

Although Washington and its tame media are trying to imply that there
is clear difference between the “armed rebels” that have rampaged
through Haiti for the last month and the parliamentary opposition,
there are clear connections between the two.

At the core of the “rebel” gangs is an army that crossed the border
from the Dominican Republic in early February, led by FRAPH
commanders Guy Philippe, Jodel Chamblain and Constant. The army was
equipped with US-made M-16 rifles.

The so-called Democratic Convergence is a coalition of small parties,
that, together with the Group of 184 Civil Society Organisations
(G-184) has formed the Democratic Platform of Civil Society
Organisations and Opposition Political Parties.

At the head of G-184 is one of the biggest sweatshop owners in Haiti,
US-born Andre Apaid junior. His Alpha Industries supplies
corporations such as IBM and Remington. He has been embroiled in
scandals in the last two years for paying his 4000 workers around
half the minimum wage, which is US$1.50 a day.

Apaid has links to Philippe, and has funded his army. In a telling
incident in northeast Haiti, reported by
<http://www.labourstart.com>, on March 1, members of Philippe’s gang
attacked striking workers at the request of the employer.

Behind it all are the US National Endowment for Democracy, which has
been openly funding the parliamentary opposition for years, the CIA,
which appears to have been covertly training and funding the
paramilitary, and the US government. US Secretary of State Colin
Powell met with Apaid just days before Aristide “left”.

`I was kidnapped’

As the government began to lose control to Philippe’s army, the US
did nothing. An attempt in late February to stitch up a “compromise
deal” that would have forced new elections was initiated by the
Carribean Community (CARICOM), but rejected by the Haitian opposition
after the US and France distanced themselves from it.

The US State Department on February 29 suddenly announced that
Aristide had “resigned”, claiming that the US had “facilitated his
safe departure”.

By the next day, however, the story began to unravel. Two members of
the US Congress, Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters, and TransAfrica
founder Randall Robinson told the media that they had spoken with
Aristide. He told them that he had been kidnapped by US troops and
regarded the US military's actions as a ``coup”. The State Department
immediately denied the charge.

On March 5, Aristide gave a lengthy phone interview to a Haitian
journalist working at a radio station in California. Describing the
US government’s actions as “terrorism disguised as diplomacy”, he
said that US soldiers had come to him at 3am on February 29.

They had told him that expected reinforcements for his US guard had
been cancelled, and “foreigners and Haitians terrorists alike, loaded
with heavy weapons, were already in a position to open fire on
Port-au-Prince. And right then, the Americans precisely stated that
they will kill thousands of people and it will be a bloodbath.”

Aristide explained that he knew “this was no bluff” as palace was
surrounded by “white men armed to the teeth”.

“There was going to be a bloodbath”, he said, “because we were under
an illegal foreign occupation which was ready to drop bodies on the
ground”. He was then forced to sign a resignation letter and leave.

As soon as Aristide had been safely whisked away, US, French,
Canadian, Brazilian and Chilean troops arrived to “stabilise” the
country, attempting to declare the crisis over. They were “warmly
welcomed” by Philippe.

Although Haiti’s supreme court chief justice Boniface Alexandre was
sworn in as acting president, the real power in the country clearly
lies with the thousands of foreign troops.

The 15 governments that belong to CARICOM have called on the United
Nations to investigate Aristide’s overthrow, and declared that they
will not participate in the multinational task force, but would
provide humanitarian aid.

France, with extensive business interests of its own in Haiti,
appears to have played a key role in deciding when to move against
Aristide. The March 5 Washington Post reported the French newspaper
Le Monde’s claim that French “diplomatic suggestions” that Aristide
should resign convinced Washington.

Now that the armed thugs have done their job, Washington is trying to
distance itself from them. On March 2, State Department spokesperson
Richard Boucher told the media, “the rebels need to go home. And I
want to be quite clear that that’s our position.”

According to the March 3 New York Times, White House spokesperson
Scott McLellan backed this by saying that they would only deal with
“the business people, civic leaders and politicians who make up the
nonviolent opposition to Mr Aristide and the Lavalas party.”

The people of Haiti, of course, did not rate a mention.
.