23265: Esser: Haiti: Smoldering on the Edge of Chaos (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. E s s e r <torx@joimail.com>

Council On Hemispheric Affairs - COHA
http://coha.org

Memorandum to the Press 04.63
September 23, 2004

Haiti: Smoldering on the Edge of Chaos

• Disbanded Haitian army seeks to be reconstituted
• Latortue government is more a cruel joke than a professional presence
• UN special representative and military force still too invisible

Six months after the abrupt and violence-laced departure of
constitutionally elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and over
three months after the deployment of U.N. peacekeeping units which
were hailed as an instrument for order and stability in this
long-troubled Caribbean island, Haiti remains poised on the edge of
chaos. Just as nature in the form of a tropical storm that has
managed to kill perhaps 1,000 Haitians, thousands more have died over
the past decade, victims of right-wing military and paramilitary
forces. Today, ruled by a bumptious, ineffectual and illegitimate
cabal whose only validity is supplied by U.S. fiat, Haiti now faces
the imminent de facto reconstitution of its brutal Haitian Armed
Forces (FADH), dissolved by Aristide in 1995. Across the island,
bands of former soldiers are seizing police stations and establishing
themselves as the de facto local power, at times displacing the
remnants of the national police and placing large swaths of the
country under what is effectively outlaw rebel jurisdiction.
Meanwhile these soldiers demand the restitution of unpaid wages over
the past ten years.

These soldiers of ill-fortune have met little, if any, resistance
from the rump Washington-imposed interim government of
Washington-designated Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, and at times
they have received open encouragement from Latortue's "cabinet
members," most notably Interior Minister (and former general) Herard
Abraham and the island's sinister justice minister Bernard Gousse,
both of whom have suggested that former soldiers – some of the most
prominent among whom have already been convicted in absentia for
human rights violations committed during the military government of
1991-1994 – could simply be integrated into the police force.


An Army Reborn

In the face of these developments, FADH leaders are gathering
strength in a bid to retake political power and restore the
repression for which the army could always be counted to provide
throughout most of Haiti's turbulent twentieth century history, the
U.N. stabilization force and the international community alike have
remained almost deafeningly silent. At the present time, the U.N.
presence in Haiti is more myth than fact, while a handful of
renegades with a military background, in conjunction with the
opposition group of 184, have the clearest access to the Latortue
regime and its ability to impact on the daily lives of the
population. Within Haiti, international troops drawn principally from
the rogue armed forces of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, which are
better known for the repression of their own citizens during previous
eras of military rule than for their nation-building skills, are
seemingly paralyzed by inaction. These U.N. forces have made only the
paltriest of efforts to preserve order in the face of paramilitary
power-grabs by ex-FADH figures like Louis-Jodel Chamblain and Guy
Philippe. They have been better at stalking pro-Aristide Lavalas
party's political forces than armed renegade former soldiers.

In Washington, a State Department preoccupied by Iraq and North Korea
appears to have all but overlooked the island's existence; and in New
York, a craven lack of political will is in evidence, accompanied by
the kind of Machiavellian plotting by the U.S. and French Security
Council delegations that was witnessed when that body refused to
provide an international police force to defend Arisitide earlier
this year. Nor is U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan any more
sensitive to the plight of the Haitian populace than he was just
before Aristide’s downfall, when he provided cover for the U.S.
insistence that the former president deserved to be forced into exile
because he was a failed leader.

There has yet to be any kind of clear acknowledgment of the magnitude
of the threat that Haiti's already battered democratic institutions
face from the military resurgence on the island, much less the
strategy which will be used to disarm these illegal militias as well
as clearly establish the authority of a trained, professional police
force, and bring to justice those former soldiers accused of human
rights abuses who are now making outrageous demands for compensation.
Quite to the contrary, as the exoneration of mass murderer Louis
Chamblain by Justice Minister Gousse and the island's tainted courts
graphically exemplifies, Haiti is still a very sick country.

Thus as the clock continues to tick on a peacekeeping mission
originally authorized for only six months, it seems increasingly
likely that the United Nations will exit Haiti much as the United
States and Canada precipitously did in 1996: leaving behind a
profoundly unstable political situation dominated by heavily armed
factions, as thousands of weapons remain in the possession of
right-wing vigilantes as well as some in the hands of pro-Aristide
supporters. The situation is made even more volatile today by the
former military leadership’s aspirations to restore both the army and
liven the same reign of terror it applied during the decades-long
Duvalier and post-Duvalier military dictatorships, as well as under
the brutal 1991-1994 military junta of the cunning General Roaul
Cedras.


The Haitian Military: Rising from the Ashes?

Among the most alarming signs of military resurgence within the last
sixty days was the acquittal on August 17, in a show trial, of former
army captain and paramilitary leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain,
previously convicted in absentia for the 1993 murder of prominent
Aristide supporter Antoine Izmery. This outrageous verdict, achieved
under the aegis of Latortue’s disreputable justice minister, Bernard
Gousse, was reached after a ludicrously brief overnight trial in
which the prosecution called only one witness who proved to be
entirely irrelevant to the case. This earned for the interim
government stinging indictments on the editorial pages of the New
York Times and the Washington Post as well as widespread
denunciations from human rights organizations, and even from the
State Department, which bears much of the blame for the current
dysfunctional rule of the island. However, the subsequent rash of
self-serving individual power plays on the part of the ex-soldiers,
and the government's utter unwillingness to confront or even denounce
such challenges to state authority, has received virtually no
attention outside of Haiti. This development has to be rightfully
considered part of the same dangerous phenomenon of the growing power
of former military figures like Chamblain, as well as sly ideologues
like the smiling Justice Minister Gousse, who was clearly complicit
in orchestrating Chamblain's acquittal.

For example, only six days after the conclusion of the Chamblain
trial, the Haitian Times reported on August 18 that the interim
government had appointed Winter Etienne – a leader of the bloody
armed uprising in Gonaives that preceded Aristide's exile, who is
also the coordinator of the National Reconstruction Front, a party
headed by former army officers, including rebel leader Guy Philippe –
as director of the National Port Authority in Gonaives, the very city
he earlier had helped sack. At the Ministry of Interior, former
ranking military figure Minister Herard Abraham continues to add
former high-ranking military cronies to his staff; among the recent
arrivals is former colonel Williams Regala, a particularly sinister
aide to former dictator General Henri Namphy and undoubtedly a
principal plotter of the massacre of voters during Haiti’s aborted
November 29, 1987 election. Regala joins another former colleague,
Colonel Henri-Robert Marc-Charles, a member of the Cedras-led
military junta that overthrew democratically-elected President
Aristide 1991, and who is currently the target of a (as yet
un-enforced) judicial order requiring his imprisonment prior to trial
for involvement in a peasant massacre in Piatre in March 1990.

Erosion of Authority of the most pathetic Government in the Caribbean
Given these pro-military signals on the part of the Latortue
government, which consistently has demonstrated its sympathy for
former military leaders at the same time it officially rejects the
idea of reconstituting the armed forces on the grounds that such a
momentous step should be taken only by the next elected government,
it is hardly surprising that bands of former soldiers are making ever
more far-fetched bids for power in cities across Haiti. On August 17,
five officers of the national police’s riot squad (CIMO) returned to
their Port-au-Prince headquarters asserting that a group wearing
uniforms of the disbanded military had attacked them and seized their
weapons and uniforms. Subsequently, Radio Kiskeya reported that other
CIMO officers have accused the government-appointed director of the
National Police Administration and former military figure, Destorel
Germain, of organizing the attack along with a number of demobilized
soldiers seeking reinstatement, an accusation that raises the specter
of collaboration between some of the more predatory elements of the
police force and bands of ex-soldiers, in the latter's fight for
legal status.

Former soldiers have already begun to establish their control over a
series of small urban areas, particularly in the desperately poor
Central Plateau region. On September 1, a large force of 150 former
soldiers took control of Petit-Gove, southwest of the capital, and
seized ten police officers as hostages the following day in
neighboring Grand-Gove, in retaliation for the arrest of four
soldiers by police officials. The two sides subsequently agreed to an
exchange of prisoners. Also on September 2, more than fifty heavily
armed ex-soldiers demonstrated in Gonaives, calling for the
reconstitution of the army and the restoration of their back pay.
Once there, they were met with open arms by the fiercely
anti-Aristide rebel group, the Gonaives Resistance Front – itself
largely constituted by former soldiers – which expressed its support
for the immediate formation of a legally reorganized and retrained
army.

Even more alarming was the response of the official government
authorities to the Gonaives march. Rather than denouncing this clear
threat to public order on the part of a “gang of thugs” (as they had
been earlier characterized by Secretary of State Colin Powell),
departmental delegate Elie Cantave declared that the former soldiers
had no aim other than to help the people of that city and negotiated
with the establishment of a headquarters in a state school within the
city. Further south in Jacmel and on the same day, yet another
contingent of former soldiers arrived to reinforce with arms and
ammunition a group of their colleagues occupying the office of Radio
Ti Moun. And in perhaps the most symbolically important incident,
former soldiers occupied the police station in Belladere on the
Dominican border on September 5 and immediately repainted the
facility in yellow, the traditional color of FADH barracks.
Simultaneously, the band of ex-soldiers in control of Petit-Goave was
swelled by new arrivals, and coast guard installations in Les Cayes
remained under the control of ex-soldiers.

The first evidence of a response on the part of the government and
the U.N. peacekeeping force came on September 7, when Haitian police,
backed by Argentine troops, regained control of Saint-Marc a day
after former soldiers took control of the city sixty miles north of
Port-au-Prince. In response, rebel leader Sergeant Remissanthe Ravix
declared on behalf of the ex-soldiers, "We'll fight to the last man.
We'd rather die in combat instead of dying on our knees. They
[government authorities] came to power thanks to our weapons they now
declare illegal. If they think they can deny us our rights, they will
know the same fate as Aristide. The fact that we left Saint-Marc does
not mean we gave up. We'll teach a lesson to those who want to
destroy the military." Ravix, once implicated in a brutal 2002
massacre committed by former FADH personnel in Belladere, is now the
most visible and rambunctious spokesman for the ex-soldiers'
movement, which is on the brink of maintaining de facto control over
large swaths of Haiti.


Escalating Violence, Ineffective Response

The government's show of force in Saint-Marc on September 7 hardly
deterred the ex-soldiers in their attempts to establish themselves as
a rival security force. Also, on September 7 in Port-au-Prince, two
ex-soldiers, reportedly from Petit-Goave, were shot and killed by
riot police near the Prime Minister's office in Musseau after firing
at a police station. According to Police Commissioner Fritz Gerald
Appolon, the two were riding in a seized police vehicle that had been
reconfigured as an army vehicle, and were fatally wounded after one
of them shot at a police officer who had called upon him to lay down
his weapon. Ravix denounced the incident as an "assassination" and
called for retaliation across the country. The following day, in
response, a group of ex-soldiers attacked the police station in
Hinche and hundreds of former FADH and their supporters from other
anti-Aristide factions paraded in Cap-Haitien demanding ten years of
back-pay. These former soldiers already had begun arrogating police
functions inside of Cap-Haitien to themselves, including surveillance
patrols. In Petit-Goave, rebels took four police officers hostage and
seized their weapons, though they were released later that day.

In the face of this wave of new challenges, the government and U.N.
peacekeepers alike appear virtually helpless. Prime Minister Latortue
and his self-caricaturing government have made bold declarations that
peacekeepers will "imminently" retake control of all government
buildings, but the prospect of any such action occurring any time
soon appears to be nothing more than a mixture of bluff and fantasy.
The government has set up a committee to negotiate with the soldiers
and offered as initial concessions the integration into the police
force of up to 1,000 former soldiers of a force that once numbered
over 6,000 in strength. However, Ravix refused to meet with the
commission, declaring in Petit-Goave, "The government doesn't need to
reconstitute us. We are here. We have always been here. The only
thing the government has to do is pay us the 10 years, seven months
they owe us and let us do our jobs." On September 12, the government
did succeed in obtaining the commitment of a group of representatives
of former military personnel (of which Ravix was not a member) to a
vaguely worded declaration asserting that "The matter of the military
will be dealt with through dialogue; the authority of the Government
must be respected; [and] the voluntary and peaceful evacuation of
public buildings actually under the control of demobilized soldiers
must be done≤ within the framework of an agreement between the two
parties."

Whether this vague rhetoric will produce any concessions in practice
on the part of the ex-soldiers remains to be seen, but subsequent
demonstrations in their support in St.-Marc and Petit-Goave, on
September 13 and a march of ex-soldiers wearing military uniforms in
the capital on September 15 sent a clear signal that the militant
remnants of the FADH are far from ready to lay down their arms to
civil authority.


Stabilization Mission is Too Weak to Stabilize

At the same time that the government has shown itself utterly
incapable of (or uninterested in) controlling the rebel bands, the
U.N. Stabilization Mission (MINUSTHAH) has disavowed itself of any
responsibility in dealing with the ex-soldiers. Spokesman Toussaint
Kongo-Doudou declared, "We have no comment on the subject because it
is a government problem. It is not a problem of the MINUSTHA. This is
a Haitian affair." As astounding as this statement appears, given
that among the principal points of MINUSTAH'S mandate are the
disarmament of armed factions – of which the ex-soldiers are
currently the most powerful – and the establishment of a climate of
security in advance of national elections on the island is a must,
the de facto acknowledgement of a stalemate when it comes to security
issues is an all too accurate description of the current limitations
of the undersized U.N. force now in Haiti. To date, only 2,755 of an
authorized 6,700 U.N. troops have arrived in Haiti, making
deployments in the north and east of the country impossible, and only
a third of the 1,622 civilian police officers authorized have been
deployed. Thus the U.N. is unable to maintain a security presence in
many of the more remote regions of the countryside, and has yet to
launch the disarmament program that is a fundamental prerequisite for
the reestablishment of some measure of political stability.

Moreover, the force's Brazilian commanders have openly warned that
they do not have enough troops to stop renewed conflict. Likewise,
Argentine Defense Minister Jos Pampuro highlighted the particularly
troubling prospect that renewed skirmishes could have taken place on
September 18, the anniversary of the dissolution of the army by
Aristide. While additional troops from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Spain and
Morocco, among others, are expected to bring the total MINUSTAH force
to 5,000 members by the end of October, for the moment the U.N.
peacekeepers have been rendered completely incapable of fulfilling
their most basic function: preserving order and a measure of
governmental authority.


The Sound of Silence: Washington, New York Turn Their Eyes Away from
Port-au-Prince

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the rapidly deteriorating
security situation in Haiti is the extraordinary indifference, aside
from some storm-related humanitarian aid in response to the natural
catastrophe that just hit Haiti, that has been exhibited by the
international community in the face of this creeping coup being
executed by the former FADH. The Security Council issued only an
anemic statement on September 10 in which it stressed "the urgency of
disbanding and disarming all illegal armed groups," but offered not
even the whisper of a commitment to ensure that this task is in fact
achieved. The Organization of American States has remained silent, as
has the State Department, and much of the Caribbean Community, which
over the past six months had taken the most courageous stands on
unfolding events in Haiti. CARICOM is now riven by internal divisions
over whether to readmit the Latortue government into CARICOM.

Also strangely absent is the recently appointed U.N. Special
Representative to Haiti, Chilean diplomat Juan Gabriel Valdés, whose
selection was widely hailed as evidence of a new Latin American
commitment to inter-hemispheric cooperation, who has since all but
disappeared from carrying out his admittedly difficult mission. While
his capacity for action may be constrained, Valdés should at the very
least be actively attempting to convey to the Security Council, the
Bush administration and the leaders of other hemispheric bodies the
gravity of the unfolding military takeover in Haiti. Unfortunately,
up to now, Haiti’s plight has been overshadowed by the persistent
bloodshed in Darfur, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or has been patronizingly
dismissed as yet another round of violence in a perennially unstable
country.

Haiti has reached a point of crisis, and decisive intervention is
required if any shred of, or hope for, Haitian democracy is to be
preserved. However shorthanded and overburdened its staff may be, the
task of convincing the international community of the necessity of
such intervention falls first to the U.N. Stabilization Mission and
to Valdés. Hopefully, in the coming months they will decisively
demonstrate their commitment to ensuring that Haiti is not being
abandoned by the international community yet again, or that leading
U.N. authorities, including Valdés, will at least have the dignity of
resigning from their assignment in protest of the cruel hoax now
being unleashed on the island and its population.

This analysis was prepared by Jessica Leight, COHA Research Fellow.
.