HAITI:
How Washington Set
The Stage For Uprising
By Lee Sustar
The
Green Left Weekly
24 February, 2004
The
media have a standard story line to explain the uprising in Haiti
one-time populist leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide has become a corrupt
authoritarian who is relying on armed gangs to crush a popular uprising.
In reality, the anti-Aristide opposition that is behind the uprising
shaking Haiti today is a Washington-connected collection of Haitian
businessmen and a scattering of former leftists.
If they succeed
in ousting Aristide, theyll try to turn back the clock to the
days when military officers and paramilitary gangs ruled Haiti through
sheer terror. Any doubts as to the nature of the rebellion in the city
of Gonaieves, which was siezed by rebel gangs on February 5, should
be put to rest by the role played by leaders of the military dictatorship
of the 1980s.
While the media
has described the rebellion as led by former Aristide supporters, a
key player is Jean Tatoune Pierre, who backed the 1991 coup
that overthrew Aristide. Others involved include members of the Front
for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), a paramilitary organization
that terrorised and assassinated Aristide supporters during the military
regime that lasted until US troops restored Aristide into office in
1994.
Louis-Jodel Chamblain,
a former FRAPH leader, is centrally involved in Gonaieves, as is Guy
Philippe, a former police chief in the city of Cap-Haitien who was accused
of plotting a coup in 2000. By seizing Gonaieves, theyve essentially
cut Haiti in two.
Washingtons
stated attitude to the uprising has been contradictory. On February
12, State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher declared that reaching
a political settlement will require some fairly thorough changes in
the way Haiti is governed, and how the security situation is maintained.
The New York Times interpreted this to mean that the Bush administration
has placed itself in the unusual position of saying it may accept the
ouster of a democratic government.
The following day,
US Secretary of State Colin Powell rounded up ministers from CARICOM,
the organisation linking the government of Caribbean countries, the
US and Canada, to declare, We will accept no outcome that in any
way illegally attempts to remove the elected president of Haiti.
But deeds matter more than words and theres no doubt that
Washington set the stage for the uprising.
The top FRAPH leader,
Emmanuel Constant, who claims he was a CIA employee, remains at large
in New York City. Major funding for Haitis umbrella opposition
group, Democratic Convergence, comes from the National Endowment for
Democracy, a US foundation notorious for funnelling US aid to counterrevolutionary
forces in Central America during the Cold War.
While the Haitian
oppositions high-sounding democratic rhetoric is repeated by Western
reporters, their right-wing supporters have carried out a systematic
campaign of violence against Haitian journalists and pro-Aristide activists.
If Aristides supporters are armed, its because they face
armed opponents.
If Powell backtracked
on supporting the opposition, it isnt because the US is reluctant
to intervene in Haiti. The US invaded and occupied Haiti in 1915 and
stayed for 19 years an early example of regime change. Washington
then bankrolled a succession of Haitian dictators, including the 30-year
rule of the Duvalier family until an uprising, led in part by Aristide,
drove it from power in 1988.
On January 31, the
US pressured Aristide into signing an accord with the opposition, mediated
by CARICOM, in which Aristide agreed to disarm his supporters, reform
the police force, appoint a new prime minister acceptable to the opposition
and call new elections to replace the legislature, whose term expired
January 13. This deal was in keeping with a pattern established when
20,000 US troops invaded Haiti to return Aristide to office nearly a
decade ago.
Aristide, who as
a Catholic priest became a mass leader of Haitis poor in the overthrow
of the military dictatorship in the 1980s, became a collaborator with
free-market, neoliberal reforms dictated by Washington.
This included opening up a big free-trade zone on the border with the
Dominican Republic, funded by a World Bank loan that will benefit sweatshop
owners and paying back debts to the International Monetary Fund
that date from the dictatorship.
All this has meant
that Aristide has been unable to deliver promised reforms to the poor
and his popular support has eroded as a result. Aristide increasingly
relies on a small network tied to his party.
The uprising was
likely initiated by far-right paramilitaries who are unwilling to settle
for the negotiated solution. They gambled that Aristides popular
support had been so weakened that they could grab power quickly
and that the more respectable right-wing front men would go along.
Instead, the poor
rallied behind Aristide once more, with a mass turnout forcing the cancellation
of an opposition protest in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on
February 15. While Aristide no longer commands the following he once
did, much of Haitis poor seem to recognise that the oppositions
uprising would bring the return of the right-wing butchers.
Its difficult
to predict how the crisis in Haiti will play out. But its already
clear that the popular forces who are resisting the opposition will
have to chart a path that rejects not only the old right wing, but the
free-market policies of Aristide, which have only added to Haitis
misery.
[Abridged from Socialist
Worker, weekly paper of the US International Socialist Organization.
Visit <http://www.socialistworker.org>.]
From Green Left
Weekly, February 25, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.