23889: Slavin: (News) Violence, political feuds cloud Haiti's hopes (Boston Globe 121304) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JPS390@aol.com

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/13/violence_political_feuds_cloud_haitis_hopes/

Violence, political feuds cloud Haiti's hopes

By Indira A. R. Lakshmanan, Globe Staff  |  December 13, 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Nine months after a bloody uprising unseated Haiti's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, hopes for a peaceful road back to democracy have all but vanished.


The country remains violent and polarized, rife with political killings and reports of persecution and terror campaigns. With a presidential election scheduled for November 2005, rival parties have yet to propose credible candidates who could turn this country around after half a century of dictatorial, corrupt, interrupted, or ineffectual rule.


In a decaying villa with a sad, drained swimming pool -- one of many properties that once belonged to former dictators Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier -- the chief of the beleaguered Haitian National Police plots strategy against what authorities say is a campaign by Aristide supporters to destabilize the UN-backed interim government and reinstall him as president.


Leon Charles, who was tapped by the interim government to run Haiti's only legal security force, has 4,500 officers to protect 8 million people. Of those, he trusts one-third; the rest, he says, are extorting money or cooperating with gangs to foil police operations. (New York City has 39,110 police officers for a comparable population).


Charles says he is trying to purge his forces of ''bad apples," while rounding up the 30 alleged gang members on his Most Wanted poster and other pro-Aristide militiamen, whom he blames for ''Operation Baghdad," an apparent uprising that began Sept. 30 with the gruesome beheadings of police officers. The violence has claimed the lives of more than 100 people in the capital since.


At a palm-fringed hotel tucked away on a mountainside above Port-au-Prince, Yves Cristalin, the former president of the Chamber of Deputies from Aristide's Lavalas Family party, met furtively with a reporter over breakfast recently, glancing away frequently to see who might be watching. Cristalin is on Charles's list of politicians suspected of fomenting unrest, but he insists he is a moderate committed to peace.


''This has become a government of persecution," asserted Cristalin, noting that what was supposed to be a coalition interim administration did not include anyone from Aristide's party. Cristalin says more than 100 Lavalas members have been jailed -- a figure the government calls exaggerated -- and many others are in exile or hiding, like himself.


''We want the government to investigate, arrest, and bring to justice all criminals, bandits, and drug dealers, and bring peace to this country instead of accusing Lavalas," he said. ''The opposition is hunting Lavalas to destroy us."


The government counters that authorities last month saved the life of an imprisoned Lavalas member and former prime minister, Yvon Neptune, by foiling a cellblock assassination plot by four party extremists to spark outrage and bring down the interim government. Lavalas loyalists deny any such plot and allege that police massacred dozens of prisoners Dec. 1 in the same penitentiary.


In the emotionally charged, with-us-or-against-us atmosphere of Haitian politics, where both pro- and anti-Aristide forces claim to represent the majority, it is difficult for everyone from ordinary Haitians to international observers to know who -- whether anyone -- is telling the truth.


''You have a situation where politics are venomous and illegal . . . where no one is trustworthy," said Adam Minson, a Haiti researcher at the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington, D.C. ''When one side -- the chimeres, pro-Aristide militias -- is resorting to extralegal measures to accomplish their politics, and the other side -- the interim government -- uses that as a justification for extrajudicial measures it is taking against Lavalas partisans . . . both sides have shown their willingness to break the law."


The words most often heard in political circles in Haiti are marronage, a Creole term for confusing or obscuring reality, and caponnage, bluffing to have more power than one does.


Ordinary Haitians are the victims. Many say that aside from the rhetoric that may appeal to the poor or elites, they can hardly differentiate one government from the next in its failure to improve their lives. State institutions remain weak, roads and infrastructure have deteriorated, corruption is rampant, and the economy hasn't grown in 40 years.


Robert Maguire, director of the Haiti program at Trinity University in Washington, D.C., says the ''entire political class is guilty of putting itself before the well-being and needs of the country. Nobody's saying what their platform for the country is; it's just a struggle for power and the access and privilege it brings."


Despite the presence since June of a Brazilian-led UN force that now numbers 5,200 troops and 1,250 police, gangs terrorize a few poor neighborhoods in the capital, while former soldiers and the rebels who toppled Aristide have become de facto authorities in other communities.


''It's not better, it's not worse" than under Aristide, said Toussaint Meres, 43, a taxi driver in the capital, echoing a common view among working-class Haitians. ''We still have insecurity. We still don't have peace. We need elections."


But what kind of leader would emerge in elections is unclear. Some Haitians look to the rebels who forced out Aristide, but many have lengthy records of human rights abuses as soldiers or paramilitary fighters in the 1990s. Others name the businessmen who emerged as opponents to Aristide, but acknowledge the democratic credentials of some are tarnished by their implicit support of the armed rebellion.


Still others look to Aristide, but even some in his party acknowledge he has become such a lightning rod that it is difficult to imagine him unifying the nation.


Most Haitians saw Aristide, a former firebrand priest and charismatic champion of the poor, as a savior when they elected him in a landslide in 1990. But many members of his government later turned against him, alleging he used violence as a political tool and governed undemocratically.


In his first term, Aristide hardly had a chance. He was ousted in a military coup six months after taking office and was returned to power by US Marines in 1994 with just a year left in his term. In 2000, he was reelected in a poll boycotted by an opposition furious over apparent fraud in earlier legislative elections swept by Lavalas.


Aristide's opponents created gridlock, and the US government suspended aid to Haiti. Human rights groups accused his administration of summary arrests and persecution of critics. An armed rebellion in February 2004 forced Aristide into exile two years before the end of his term.


In Bel Air, a downtown slum where the rusted carcasses of abandoned vehicles and knee-high heaps of garbage litter the postcard view of the gleaming white presidential palace down the street, residents say it is unfair to characterize them all as Aristide loyalists simply because they are poor. Here, many ordinary people say they are prisoners in their homes, fearful to go to school or work because of a string of murders and rapes allegedly perpetrated by pro-Aristide chimeres.


Halfway up the mountain in a leafy, middle-class neighborhood, Fulcher Pierre-Louis, a 41-year-old architect, was carjacked in his $35,000 Mitsubishi Montero outside a pastry shop on a recent Sunday morning by four armed men. His 16-year-old daughter grabbed her toddler sister and leapt out of the car, but Pierre-Louis was forced to ride for 40 minutes while his assailants argued about whether to kill him.


''One of the guys said to me, 'This is Lavalas!' " Pierre-Louis recounted with a shudder, saying he believes Aristide supporters have organized to take vigilante action against perceived elites.


Others say there's no connection between the former priest and the current violence. Johny Joseph, 40, a Bel Air sugarcane vendor, doesn't trust the interim government's assertion that the gangs are funded by Aristide or his operatives. ''If they were pro-Aristide, they wouldn't do that," he insisted. ''If Aristide comes back, everyone would be happy."


But a senior Western diplomat in Haiti who spoke on the condition he not be identified said intelligence indicates ''there is a serious, concerted, well-armed, and well-financed campaign to spread terror and destabilize the interim government, led by Aristide supporters." He cited the arrest of a Haitian-Canadian who authorities said arrived at Port-au-Prince airport with $800,000 in a suitcase they believe was destined to fund pro-Aristide gangs.


Interim authorities have set up two commissions to gather evidence of alleged corruption and atrocities by the former regime. But human rights monitors, including Amnesty International, say the government is summarily arresting Lavalas loyalists without due process of law.


In late October, at least 11 young men said to be Aristide supporters were killed by attackers in black uniforms who witnesses thought were police. Police have denied involvement.


Prime Minister Gerard Latortue dismisses accusations of favoritism to rebels or a campaign to destroy Lavalas.


''Our government is inclusive -- we want everyone to participate, we want [Aristide's] supporters to participate," he said in an interview, noting that Lavalas refused a seat on the council organizing next year's election. Lavalas says it boycotted the council after being denied a voice in the interim government.


With debate so focused on Aristide as saint or devil, politicians are missing an opportunity to build a leadership that will govern through democratic norms and institutions, not personal charisma, fear, or class divisions, say grass-roots activists and analysts.


''There is still time to . . . have political dtente," said Claude Roumain, a founder of Generation 2004, a youth political movement. Unfortunately, with scores of new parties, ''there is no new leadership accepted by the people." 


© Copyright  2004 The New York Times Company
 

------------
J.P. Slavin
New York
------------