Haiti:
Washington Gives
Greenlight To Right-wing Coup
By Richard Dufour
World
Socialist Web
23 February 2004
Former
military and death-squad leaders are attempting an armed overthrow of
the elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, with the connivance
of an elite-controlled political opposition and under the complacent
eyes of Western governments. This is the bitter truth revealed by last
weekends events in the impoverished Caribbean island-nation. The
poorest country in the Western hemisphere, Haiti is on the verge of
civil war and a possible humanitarian catastrophe.
Yesterday, Cap-Haïtien,
the countrys second largest city, reportedly fell to a rebel army
that is led by former officers of the disbanded Haitian army and leaders
of FRAPH, a death squad responsible for innumerable atrocities during
the three-year military dictatorship that deposed Aristide in 1991.The
heavily-armed rebels seized control of Cap-Haïtiens airport
and main police stations, quickly overwhelming Aristide loyalists who
had erected flaming barricades on the city outskirts.
Earlier last week,
the rebels, whose initial base was in the north-western city of Gonaïves,
overran Hinche, the most important city in the north-eastern plains.
With the fall of Cap-Haïtien, much, if not most, of the north of
the country is now beyond the control of the government. Buoyed by the
lack of resistance from the national police, the rebels are now boasting
about a possible march on Port-au-Prince.
The rebel advance
into Cap-Haitïen came the day after the apparent collapse of an
attempt by the US, France and Canada to broker a power-sharing agreement
between Aristide and leaders of the political opposition. Led by the
top American diplomat for the Western Hemisphere, Roger F. Noriega,
a high-level international delegation met separately Saturday with Aristide
and leaders of the political opposition, the Convergence Démocratique
and Group 184. Aristide quickly agreed to the demands of the regions
major powers and the Caribbean inter-state organization, CARICOM, that
he cede many of his executive powers, including control over the national
police force and the electoral commission, to a new a prime minister
to be appointed in consultation with the opposition.
But the opposition
flatly refused to accept any agreement that would leave Aristide, whose
mandate as president runs until February 2006, with a measure of power.
If we accept this plan without the departure of Aristide, we will
disappear as an opposition, said Rosemond Pradel of the opposition
group Konakom.
The deadline for
the opposition to give its final answer to the international mediation
effort has been extended to late Monday afternoon Haitian time, but
it is generally conceded that there is next to no chance the opposition
will reverse its stand. We expect the international community
to understand our position ... which will not change, maintained
Gérard Pierre-Charles, a leading opposition member. Meanwhile
the oppositions main spokesman, sweatshop owner André Apaid,
insisted that the population must continue its mobilization
against the current Haitian government
The oppositionwhich
is comprised of the political representatives of Haitis traditional
business and political elite, including prominent supporters of the
former Duvalier and Cédras dictatorships, and former supporters
of Aristideclaim not to support, nor have any connection, with
the armed rebellion. Yet many initially justified it. And clearly the
opposition is banking on the rebellion to ultimately cause Aristide
to bow to their demands and resign. How else to explain their refusal
to accept a power-sharing agreement that was not only proposed by their
long-time patrons in Washington, but which would have given the US a
key role in policing, through the deployment of a so-called international
security force?
A second no less
pivotal opposition calculation was that the Republican rightwhich
supported Aristides ouster in 1991, opposed his being restored
to power through the deployment of the US military in 1994, and continue
to view him as a dangerous socialist, although he has applied the policy
prescriptions of the IMFwould, when push came to shove, not take
Aristides side against them.
Indeed, Washington
effectively-handed the opposition a trump card announcing before hand
that any positive response to the Aristide governments request
for international assistance to put down the rebellion was dependent
on it first obtaining an agreement with the opposition. That the US
envoy to Port-au-Prince was Noriega, a rabid anti-communist associated
with the far-right of the Republican Party, could not but have given
further comfort to the opposition.
Throughout the current
crisis the US has assumed an ambivalent and ambiguous attitude toward
Aristide, whom it nonetheless has had to acknowledge is the legitimately
elected president of Haiti.
Preoccupied with
its neo-colonial wars of plunder against Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush
administration said virtually nothing and did even less about Haiti
as the oppositionsensing Aristides growing unpopularity
because of his right-wing economic policies and increasingly autocratic
methods of rulewent beyond the role Washington had hitherto prescribed
for itto serve as a check on Aristideand began pressing
for his immediate ouster.
Then, when the armed
rebellion erupted on February 5, State Department officials deplored
the violence, but indicated they would not be unhappy to see Aristide
forced from power. Ultimately, Secretary of State Colin Powell was forced
to issue what constituted a correction, saying the US was not seeking
regime change in Haiti. But US officials have repeatedly
said that if a formula could be found to make Aristides exit constitutional
they would not object. Said Powell, after affirming Washingtons
support for Aristide serving out his presidential term, You know,
if an agreement is reached that moves that in another direction, thats
fine.
Only after Haitis
former colonial power France floated the possibility of sending troops
to Haiti to end the spreading violence, did Washington begin to take
a more active role in Haitian affairs. The Bush administration was not
going to allow any incursion by a rival imperialist power into Americas
traditional backyard.
Another factor that
has spurred Washington into a more direct involvement is pressure from
leading political figures in Florida, a state which could see a mass
influx of Haitian refugees if the situation in the impoverished island
to the south takes a turn for the worst. If we can send military
forces to Liberia3,000 miles awaywe certainly can act to
protect our interests in our own backyard, said Sen. Bob Graham,
D-Florida. Inaction can no longer be our policy.
It is unclear at
this point whether the Bush administration will continue to sit by as
the forces of reaction plunge Haiti into civil war. A military intervention
cannot be excluded. But if it were to take place, it would be no progressive
solution to the tragic plight of the Haitian peopleno more than
the previous 1994 US intervention that restored Aristide to power under
orders to impose socially incendiary, IMF-dictated economic policies,
thus setting the stage for the current crisis.