20983: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald- A glimpse of the revolt's leaders: hardened, fanciful (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sun, Mar. 28, 2004


HAITI

A glimpse of the revolt's leaders: hardened, fanciful

While seeking to meet with gang leaders who led the revolt in Haiti's
fourth-largest city, a Herald reporter meets a who's who of Jean-Bertrand
Aristide's foes. Fantasy helped fuel the bloody revolt.

BY TRENTON DANIEL

tdaniel@herald.com


GONAIVES, Haiti - The lion's den was supposed to be menacing and ominous,
but it proved to be somewhat twisted and comical.

The streets were strewn with loose rubble, burned tires and the shells of
torched cars. The main drag was partially blocked by a school bus tipped on
its side, the tail bearing an oddly amusing inscription: Chouchou des
Gonaives. Darling of Gonaives.

Exactly 200 years ago, founding father Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared
Haiti's independence from France here in Gonaives, a crumbling city 70 miles
north of Port-au-Prince. And with history repeating itself at a dizzying
pace in Haiti, Gonaives was again at the center of a violent uprising.

But this time the object of protest wasn't foreign rule. It was domestic
rule -- slum priest turned president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

I was among a small group of journalists seeking to meet with gang leaders
who on Feb. 5 had ''cleansed'' Haiti's fourth-largest city, burning down a
police station and the homes to Aristide supporters . The dust had settled.
Navigating roadblocks, we drove to the oceanfront shantytown where one of
the leaders reportedly lived.

A few men volunteered to take us to the warlord whose brother's death
triggered the rebellion after government agents allegedly shot out his eyes.
But none did. They just recorded our names and media affiliation in a
notebook.

Then Winter Etienne, in a dark, untucked Izod shirt, peddled up to us on a
rusty bicycle.

Etienne briefed us on the revolt's history, including a Feb. 7 police
counterattack -- ''death was everywhere'' -- and said the police were
planning a second attempt to reclaim the city. ''[The police] are coming,
but we're waiting for them,'' said Etienne, the gang's spokesman. ``We wish
you could stay so that you could watch the police come here just to die.''

Take us to your leader, I thought. Take us to your leader.

We were escorted to a waterfront shack that looked freshly nailed together
for the occasion -- an impromptu news conference. A camouflage-clad man
inspected our press badges at a makeshift door, frisked us for weapons and
permitted us to enter.

Almost a dozen gunmen greeted us. Brandishing rickety WWII-era weapons, many
of them were veterans of the notoriously brutal army that Aristide had
dissolved almost 10 years ago.

In the center sat Butteur Métayer, the gang leader and assistant director at
the seaport, a well-known Caribbean cocaine destination.

The brother of slain Amiyot Métayer preferred a blue Nike T-shirt to the
camouflage fatigues worn by his troops, some with U.S. Marines emblems still
stitched above their shirt pockets.

This was the Artibonite Resistance Front, previously known as the Cannibal
Army. A who's who of Aristide's most feared foes was emerging from the
woodwork.

At Métayer's orders, each introduced himself: Daniel Marcel Moise,
Jean-Baptiste Joseph, Louis Jodel Chamblain, among others, suggesting that
the rebellion was no longer a one-man operation. While several names sounded
vaguely familiar, one immediately registered: Guy Philippe.

Slouched on Métayer's right, the former police chief and alleged drug
trafficker had been implicated in a mysterious 2001 attack on the National
Palace and until that day was believed to be hiding in the neighboring
Dominican Republic.

To Métayer's left sat Chamblain. The convicted killer had served as a leader
of FRAPH, a paramilitary group that tortured and killed scores of Aristide
supporters after a military coup toppled the democratically elected leader
in 1991, during his first presidential term.

Wearing a floppy hat and hiding behind a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses,
Chamblain said little other than his name and a murmured rallying cry. An
automatic weapon lay across his lap, the gun's barrel pointing at my crotch.

The news conference was a clumsy affair, the gunmen interrupting one another
with a cry that Dessalines once used: ``Liberty or death!''

Philippe exited the shack, and I asked him in Creole about his relationship
to Métayer, what was his rank or title in the rebellion.

''I'm whatever you want me to be,'' he answered in English, flashing a
Cheshire cat smile that would soon land on the cover of international
newsmagazines.

Delusions of grandeur run rampant in Haiti. Perhaps the phenomenon stems
from the country's legacy of being a former slave colony and serves as an
attempt to elevate one's status. Titles and rank carry significance. If you
do not have a title, you can make one up. Ambassadors are not simply
ambassadors. They are Ambassadors Extraordinaire.

And so the rebels created the independent region of Artibonite. Métayer was
president, Etienne Gonaives mayor, Ferdinand Wilfort was police chief.
Philippe later appointed himself Haiti's military chief.

The twisted fantasy gained momentum.

The Artibonite gunmen torched police stations in central and northern Haiti,
and policemen fled. Cap Hatien, the country's second-largest city with
500,000 people, fell on Feb. 22 to no more than 30 rebels.

Philippe, meanwhile, tried to cultivate sympathies abroad. He dined with the
foreign press. He took reporters' phone calls. And even as the government
claimed the rebellion's funding came from nothing but the spoils of drug
trafficking, food and backing, he said, came from a liberated population.

I asked Philippe if the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had a role in all
this. ''I have no problem with the CIA,'' he said with a smile. ``If we have
to, why not? We're all working for security.''

With no more than a couple hundred fighters , Philippe moved forward. On
March 1, one day after Aristide left the country, he arrived in
Port-au-Prince. His SUV caravan sped through the capital's main streets, and
hundreds greeted him with open arms.

Even the former death squad commander Chamblain got his hero's welcome.
Jubilant supporters paraded him around on their shoulders. He said little
and just grinned.

U.S. officials told Philippe and his men to lay down their weapons. He
promptly shed his military uniform and took a low profile.

Philippe says he's taking a tour of Haiti -- to hear what his countrymen
want.

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