27941: Severe:(pub) US Deployment of Troops Near Haitian Border (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Constantin Severe <csevere@hotmail.com>

From: World Socialist Web Siite

Warning of new Haiti intervention
US troop deployment sparks protests in Dominican Republic

By Bill Van Auken
16 February 2006


The landing of hundreds of US troops at a port city in the Dominican Republic, 
barely 80 miles from the Haitian border, sparked protests and warnings that 
Washington may be preparing another military intervention aimed at quelling the 
popular unrest that has erupted in Haiti over attempts to rig the presidential 
election.

Some 800 US troops have disembarked at the Dominican port of Barahona as part 
of the “New Horizons” military exercise that is to extend for several months 
and will reportedly involve as many as 14,000 military personnel. The city is 
the closest major port in the Dominican Republic to the Haitian capital of 
Port-au-Prince.

Hundreds of demonstrators marched on the US Embassy in Santo Domingo as well as 
on the US military camp in Barahona, approximately 120 miles southwest of the 
capital.

Demonstrators representing leftist, union and student groups presented a 
statement to a US Embassy official demanding the immediate withdrawal of the US 
troops.

“For Dominicans, the presence of foreign military troops on our soil is 
unacceptable ... even more so when these troops are from a nation that has 
invaded us militarily on two occasions on the pretext of ‘saving lives,’ with 
the result of thousands of deaths,” the statement read.

The Dominican Republic was invaded and occupied by US Marines in 1916, a year 
after they landed in Haiti. The Dominican occupation lasted for eight years, 
while the US forces stayed in Haiti until 1934.

Washington again invaded with some 23,000 troops in 1965 after fomenting a 
military coup to deny an election victory to left nationalist leader Juan 
Bosch. After killing, wounding and imprisoning thousands of Dominicans, the US 
forces turned power over to the right-wing dictatorship of Joaquín Balaguer, 
which carried out a reign of terror over the next decade.

The statement continued, “We cannot remain indifferent to the landing of 
heavily equipped troops at such a delicate moment in the Caribbean, Latin 
America and the world and while the western part of the island [Haiti] is under 
intervention by the US and its allies in an action legalized by the United 
Nations (MINUSTAH). Perhaps the landing of the North American military troops 
in the Dominican Republic has as its objective the preparation of actions 
against the Haitian people if their political plans suffer reverses...”

At the gate to the military camp outside Barahona, the protest was confronted 
by Dominican army troops who pointed their rifles at the demonstrators.

On the same day as the protests in the Dominican Republic, a Haitian television 
station broadcast images of thousands of election ballots that had been thrown 
away at a Port-au-Prince dump. The bulk of these ballots appeared to have been 
cast for the frontrunner in the election held February 7, Rene Preval.

News of the discarded ballots sparked fresh protests, with barricades going up 
in various parts of the Haitian capital. The streets of the city are reportedly 
controlled by groups of demonstrators, with neither the police nor UN troops in 
evidence. It is widely believed in Haiti that the election results have been 
manipulated—with the connivance of Washington—to deny Preval a victory in the 
first round of balloting.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a 180-mile border that bisects the 
island of Hispaniola. The political crisis in Haiti has prompted the Dominican 
armed forces to build up its troops on the border. “We are maintaining a more 
active vigilance to guard our border from the situation of confusion that 
exists in Haiti as a result of the elections,” an army intelligence officer 
told the Spanish news agency EFE.

The “New Horizons” exercise is billed as a humanitarian aid mission that 
includes the building of clinics and schools. Dominican opponents of the 
deployment, however, pointed out that the troops have come equipped with tanks, 
weapons and other combat gear. “If they want to build schools, let them do it 
in New Orleans,” the demonstrators chanted as they marched outside the camp in 
Barahona.

A statement posted on the web site of US SOUTHCOM, the military command 
covering Latin America and the Caribbean, noted that the Pentagon “uses these 
humanitarian exercises as a vehicle to train US forces.... These exercises also 
provide valuable mobilization and deployment experience. They require units to 
conduct the numerous training objectives that include logistical operations to 
support the deployments to remote regions.”

A precondition for this “humanitarian deployment” was the Dominican 
government’s signing of a waiver granting US troops immunity from prosecution 
for war crimes or other offenses before the International Criminal Court, a 
servile gesture that provoked widespread anger within the Dominican population.