23397: radtimes: The Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

One Man's Democracy, Another Man's Chains
The Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti

http://www.counterpunch.org/pina10112004.html

By KEVIN PINA
October 11, 2004

A recounting of recent events in Haiti is reminiscent of a statement
written by an American Marine private during the first U.S. occupation of
Haiti that began in 1915 and lasted nineteen years. The homesick marine wrote:

     ''Dear Mother,

     All is well for me here. I have taken well to my duties in Haiti but I
still can't believe how they let the niggers have the run of the place.''

Haitians Running Haiti?

Now let's fast forward to last December 31, 2003 as Luigi Einaudi of the
Organization of American States (OAS) is ushered into the lobby of the
Hotel Montana for Haiti's bicentennial celebrations. While checking into
the luxury hotel he makes this comment in front of several witnesses: "The
real problem in Haiti is that the international community is so screwed up
and divided that they are letting Haitians run Haiti." When questioned
about his objectivity given his attendance at the opening of the Haiti
Democracy Project (HDP), a Washington think-tank funded and supported by
right-wing Haitians opposed to President John Bertrand-Aristide, he becomes
defensive and denies he had been there at all. After it is pointed out to
him that there are photos on the organization's website of him with HDP
Director James Morrell he quips, "Maybe I was there, I don't remember, but
I really think Morrell is a kook." The exchange turns to the question of
Otto Reich's role as "fixer" for the Bush Administration in Haiti, at which
time Einaudi grows red in the face and visibly angry, shouting, "You are
ignorant, you don't know what you are talking about," as he makes a mad
dash for the Hotel's elevator.

It is duly noted that Mr. Einaudi has since gotten his wish. Haitians no
longer run Haiti.

The Golden Rule of U.S. sponsored Democracy: He Who Owns the Gold Makes the
Rules

The forced ouster of Haiti's president on February 29, 2004 begins with the
economic and political isolation of Aristide's party, known as Lavalas,
following the national elections of May 21, 2000. Aristide's predecessor,
President Rene Preval, delays the elections several times. Preval's stated
purpose is to insure proper voter registration. The opposition accuses him
of delaying the national elections to coincide with the upcoming
presidential elections. The opposition and several "undisclosed diplomatic
sources" claim this is being done to give Lavalas candidates the advantage
of "riding on Aristide's coattails."

Preval finally relents despite his continuing concerns over inadequate time
for voter registration and security preparations for polling stations
throughout the country. The elections are finally held on May 21, 2000 and
initially praised as the "most free and fair election in Haitian history"
by the U.S. State Department and the Organization of American States (OAS).
When it becomes clear that the Lavalas party has won by a landslide,
despite the absence of Aristide's mythical coattails, these very same
forces discredit the results of the elections.

After initially praising the process of the elections, the OAS later claims
that Lavalas purposely miscalculated the vote to favor seven of their
senatorial candidates. It is interesting to note that the OAS, and several
non-governmental organizations contracted by the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID), are at the same time deeply involved in
overseeing and monitoring these elections. They are included and present
during discussions by Haiti's Provisional Election Council when it
determines the method to tabulate the final results. OAS representative
Orlande Marville, another apostle of the HDP and the "kook" James Morrell,
eventually leaks an internal memo criticizing the ballot counting methods
to the press rather then quietly negotiating a solution. The OAS shows its
hypocrisy when it turns a blind eye to President Alberto Fujimori's brazen
electoral fraud in Peru the same year. In Haiti, the OAS double standard
results in Lavalas ultimately forcing the seven contested senators to
resign and creating a timetable for new elections as a formula for compromise.

Why Should I Play if My Rich Uncle's Gonna Pay Anyway?

Any political compromise is categorically rejected by the Haitian
"political opposition" as it becomes more emboldened and entrenched due to
increasing funding and nurturing through programs sponsored by the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union
(EU). The opposition and their allies use the issue of the seven contested
senate seats to question the validity of the entire election of May 2000.
What is conveniently ignored, especially today, is that these elections
filled more then 7500 national, municipal and local positions of government
largely due to a huge investment of money and human resources by the United
States and the international community. They got the democratic process
they demanded of Haiti but when the results finally sink in, they do their
best to distance themselves and finally take to actively supporting a
minority "political opposition" to sully the results. This policy
trajectory justifies suspending all direct international assistance and
loans to the government of Haiti. As a result, it becomes increasingly
difficult for the majority political party, Lavalas, to implement
strategies to alleviate the conditions of extreme poverty among the
country's poor majority--the party's popular base.

In November 2000, Aristide is re-elected president of Haiti after a terror
campaign of mysterious drive-by shootings and bombings rock the capital.
Despite the violence and the political opposition's decision to boycott the
election, independent international observers rescue their validity by
pronouncing the vote free and fair despite a low turnout. The press gives
ample attention to the detractors of this election but are conspicuously
silent on the three weeks of terror that preceded it.

Following this period, most international press attention focuses on the
negatives of the Aristide government. The Lavalas party's land reform for
the peasants and universal literacy programs are ignored and dismissed as
insignificant by the outside world. Financial and political isolation
begins to take its toll. This becomes a period in which anything positive
about Lavalas appears to be censored while anything that damages the
credibility of the Haitian government is magnified. In this political
climate, even former "leftist" allies of Lavalas, so-called Haitian human
rights organizations and members of Haiti's press, justify accepting tours
to the United States--paid for by the U.S. State Department. During these
tours they are encouraged to develop contacts with the alternative media
and the United States "Left" as they preach the evils of Aristide and
Lavalas to a largely uninformed American audience.

The political and financial isolation of Aristide and Lavalas following the
May 2000 elections also opened new and unprecedented levels of support for
the "political opposition" from the U.S. and their partners in the
international community. Although this "political opposition" was incapable
of winning at the polls, the U.S. and the international community provide
legitimacy to their Haitian surrogates by giving them the option to
paralyze the country with a veto over any political compromise that will
break the stalemate over the elections. The final attempt to force the
opposition to make a reasonable compromise with Aristide is a power sharing
solution brokered by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in early February
2004. The opposition, which clearly sees no advantage in negotiation as
long as the U.S. and the EU continue to support their intransigence, once
again rejects compromise.

The Death Insurance Policy

Two years prior to CARICOM's last ditch effort to save democracy in Haiti,
new and ominous reports emerge of killings by paramilitary forces comprised
of former death squads and disbanded military using the Dominican Republic
as a safe haven. At the same time, Haiti's small but powerful economic
elite is slowly rehabilitated as the legitimate leadership of the
opposition to Lavalas. Andre Apaid, a wealthy owner of many sweatshops in
Haiti, is suddenly touted as an indigenous Gandhi fighting the evil
dictatorship of Aristide while the press and much of the Haitian left
conveniently refrain from questioning the conditions he imposes upon his
own employees. With U.S. and EU support, Apaid is ultimately able to turn
out thousands of demonstrators demanding Aristide's resignation. The real
power behind these numbers soon becomes apparent. Apaid's "movement"
evaporates into next to nothing following Secretary of State Colin Powell's
disingenuous statement in mid-February 2004 that Washington will not accept
removing Aristide through unconstitutional means. In the blink of an eye,
what was touted in the press as tens of thousands, mobilized by Apaid to
demand Aristide's resignation, is reduced to a raucous and violent crowd of
several hundred. While Apaid organizes the opposition demonstrations on the
ground, it is always the U.S. State Department that holds the power of life
or death over Haiti's fledgling democracy and Aristide's presidency.
Powell's words soon turn hollow as those now infamous "undisclosed
officials" in Washington are heard from once again. This time they claim
that only a change in the way Haiti is run, and that includes the
possibility of Aristide stepping down, will solve Haiti's "political crisis."

It is at this moment that the aforementioned paramilitary forces in the
Dominican Republic are suddenly "discovered" in Haiti by the corporate
media amid significant fanfare. While President Aristide and his spokesmen
were left to shout at the wind about deadly armed incursions by these same
forces for more than two years, corporate media organizations suddenly
cough up nice salaries, per diems and expense accounts in February 2004 to
provide the "rebels" with unprecedented media coverage. These well-armed
and trained forces in Haiti are led by a former Haitian military officer,
Guy Phillipe, accused of human rights abuses by organizations such as Human
Rights Watch and labeled a drug trafficker by the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) in the spring of 2001. Phillipe's fellow ringleader is
Jodel Chamblain, the infamous former second in command of the dreaded
paramilitary death squad, the Front for Advancement and Progress in Haiti
(FRAPH). FRAPH was trained by the CIA and unleashed upon the Haitian
population in the aftermath of the violent military coup against Aristide
in 1991. This band of former military and death squad killers now wreaks
havoc in the north of Haiti--the ultimate threat and justification for the
U.S. government to remove the country's democratically elected president.

Dressing the Stage to Orchestrate the Fall

The media's grand entrance and belated discovery of the paramilitary forces
from the Dominican Republic ushers in what is generously described by many
observers in Port au Prince as "superb theater." Foreign embassy after
foreign embassy publicly pleads with their citizens to flee Haiti as the
"rebels surround the capital." Suddenly, fifty U.S. marines fly into Haiti
dressed in full battle gear, ostensibly to check on security preparations
at the U.S. Embassy. Representatives of the U.S.- and EU-backed opposition
to Aristide take to the airwaves with daily pronouncements that an exit
strategy has already been prepared for the president and it is just a
matter of time before his eventual departure. Then there is the frightened
reaction of the masses of Lavalas partisans who erect elaborate and deadly
barricades at all entrances to Port au Prince and, finally, throughout the
main thoroughfares of the capital itself. It becomes clear to most
observers on the ground that the so-called rebels never stand a chance of
entering the capital despite U.S. claims to the contrary. Supplies of
diesel gasoline, which is needed to run the mighty turbine generators that
provide electricity to the capital, begin to dwindle as nightly blackouts
combine with the sporadic gunfire of determined Aristide partisans to
create an atmosphere of fear and tension. The drama reaches epic
proportions, as the U.S. demands all of its citizens to abandon Haiti and,
for some unknown reason, suspends all commercial airline flights to the
capital. All of this despite the fact that not a single foreign national
ever receives so much as a scratch during this period, nor is there ever
any threat whatsoever to the now seemingly sacred tarmac of the Toussaint
Louverture International Airport. The stage is now set to provide a
plausible pretext to remove Haiti's elected president. All that's needed is
one more turn of the screw to bring on the final act.

Friends in Struggle: Venezuela and South Africa Force Washington's Hand

The second week of February 2004 President Aristide made a public
pronouncement that he would never resign his elected authority, invoking
the image of the fallen democrat Salvador Allende of Chile by announcing he
was "willing to die in office." The following week it appeared Washington
had all the pieces in place to take him out including the final gambit of a
"rebel" paramilitary army surrounding Port au Prince. In Washington it was
thought this was more than enough to pressure Aristide into voluntarily
resigning his office and fleeing Haiti. More important was that all of
Washington's window dressing would give the impression of yet another
embattled dictator of Haiti falling upon his own sword. The State
Department needed just a little more time to close the noose around
Aristide's neck. The plan was to allow Phillipe and Chamblain's forces to
move closer to the capital and clash with defending Lavalas partisans, thus
making the scenario complete for the gullible international press.
Unfortunately, this calculation depended upon a weakened and docile
president of Haiti, paralyzed and incapable of defending himself. Reality
caught U.S. planners by surprise and led to what history will recall as one
of the greatest scandals of U.S.-sponsored democracy in Latin America and
the Caribbean.

In the days preceding Aristide's overthrow a press report surfaces that
causes panic in the U.S. State Department. An undisclosed Venezuelan
diplomat is quoted as saying his government is prepared to provide
unilateral assistance to the Haitian government under the terms of the Rio
Treaty and the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States.
At about the same time a credible source working in the U.S. Embassy in
Port au Prince leaks word of intercepted phone calls of advisors close to
Aristide who are "actively procuring additional arms and ammunition to
re-supply the Haitian National Police. These same advisors discussed
releasing existing stockpiles of arms to local auxiliary forces aligned
with Lavalas."

Kevin Pina is an associate editor of the Black Commentator, where this
account originally appeared. He can be reached at: kevinpina@yahoo.com

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