The
Division Of Labor Behind
The US-made Coup In Haiti
By Bill Van Auken
and Barry Grey
5 March 2004
World Socialist Website
The
US government is engaged in a cynical charade to distance itself from
the right-wing terrorists and thugs who marched into the Haitian capital
of Port-au-Prince over the weekend, leading to the forced resignation
and exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Bush administration
officials have adopted a public posture of repugnance toward the so-called
rebels and declared they can have no place in a new government
which the US, with the aid of the French and the sanction of the United
Nations, is seeking to impose on the impoverished Caribbean nation.
Washington, these
officials declare, will deal only with the so-called political opposition,
i.e., the Group of 184 and the Democratic Platformorganizations
entirely dominated by Haitis tiny wealthy eliteas well as
elements from Aristides Lavalas movement who are prepared to join
a US-sponsored coalition government.
The distinction
being drawn by the US between the right-wing political opposition and
the former Haitian army killers, police officials and death squad leaders
who dominate the rebels is largely fictitious. The Haitian
financial elite had supported the Duvalier dictatorship and subsequent
military regimes as a necessary means of defending its wealth and privilege
against the impoverished masses.
The anti-Aristide
political opposition worked in the closest collaboration
with the rebels to organize this weeks coup. They
formed a common front, and on Monday, after the US had spirited Aristide
out of the country, leaders of the Democratic Platform met with rebel
leaders in Port-au-Prince. Evans Paul, a former mayor of the capital
city and prominent opposition spokesman, praised the rebels,
particularly their principal commander, Guy Philippe.
The Bush administration
gave Philippes killers a free hand for several days to occupy
the city and terrorize the slum communities that form the main base
of support for the deposed president. An unknown number of Aristide
partisans were hunted down and killed by Philippes thugs, while
US Marines who had been sent into Port-au-Prince stood by.
The Haiti Press
Network reported Wednesday that foreign journalists who were allowed
access to the [Port-au-Prince] morgues chambers said there were
hundreds of bodies piled on top of each other. Many of the dead appeared
to be victims of the violent unrest that has rocked the nation...
Several US Marines
were deployed to guard the residence of the prime minister, Yvon Neptune,
but the rest of his cabinet was forced to either flee the country or
go underground.
One of the first
acts of the armed thugs upon entering Port-au-Prince under the protection
of the US Marines was to storm the penitentiary and free six other senior
officers of the disbanded Haitian army, including former military dictator
Prosper Avril, who seized power in a 1988 coup. Most of these individuals
were serving life sentences on charges of murder and torture, at least
three of them having been deported from the US to face their punishment.
American officials
have openly acknowledged that key rebel leaders are killers
and drug traffickers, who played bloody roles in the reign of terror
carried out by the Haitian Army under the military junta that ruled
for three years in the early 1990s. Yet, notwithstanding their so-called
war on terrorism, they have not even suggested that these
known criminals should be arrested and brought to justice.
A cynical division
of labor has been worked out, under the aegis of US imperialism, between
American military and diplomatic officials, the Haitian political
opposition and the rebels. The armed thugs are covertly
equipped and supported by Washington and allowed to do their bloody
work, and then relegated to the background while Washington assembles
a puppet regime dominated by the Haitian elite. Whatever role the rebel
leaders officially play in a new regime, or even if they play no role
at present, they are to be protected and held in reserve, to be called
on again whenever it becomes necessary to unleash a new round of terror
and murder on the masses.
On Wednesday, Philippe,
a former police chief and reputed drug trafficker, announced that his
forces would lay down their arms and abandon positions they had seized
in the center of Port-au-Prince.
US officials had
insisted that they were sending a message to Philippe and
other rebel leaders that they would not be allowed to seize
power. The fact of the matter is they pledged to lay down their
arms when President Aristide resigned, and so we are holding them to
their pledge, declared US Ambassador to Haiti James Foley.
There is an
orderly and constitutional process underway in Haiti, said State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher. That process needs to be
respected by all Haitians, but were glad to see the violence is
decreasing. But the rebels have no role to play in this process, and
they need to lay down their arms and go home.
White House spokesman
Scott McClellan made the same point somewhat more forcefully on Wednesday:
Our message to the rebels, or the so-called rebels, has been very
clear: the rebels need to put their arms down and return home. There
is no place for thugs, criminals, and the so-called rebels in Haitis
political system.
Yet the commander
of the US forces in Haiti, Marine Col. Charles Gurganis, called Philippe
a man of honor after meeting with him at the US embassy.
Similarly, Interim President Boniface Alexandre, in his first address
to the nation since being installed in a ceremony organized by the US
embassy after Aristide was spirited out of the country, described Philippe
and his cohorts as patriotic men of honor.
Contrast this approach
to the US actions in Iraq, where the Bush administration repeatedly
cites human rights abuses by the former Baathist regime as a supposed
justification for its military intervention. There, US troops were provided
playing cards featuring photographs of former members of the regime
to be hunted down and imprisoned. Whatever crimes some of these officials
may have carried out, unlike their Haitian counterparts from the Duvalier
dictatorship and the military regimes of Generals Avril and Raoul Cedras,
none of them had ever been convicted.
US authorities have
no interest in pursuing Haitis convicted mass killers because
they have been working intimately with them and will continue to do
so.
From the moment
it came into office, the Bush administration has been committed to Aristides
overthrow. The Republican right has long hated the former Silesian priest
for his association with the mass movement that toppled the Duvalier
dictatorship and for his populist and anti-imperialist rhetoric. No
matter how much Aristide groveled before Washington and accepted the
dictates of the International Monetary Fund and other international
lenders to impose austerity policies upon the already desperately poor
Haitian people, it did not assuage this enmity.
Backed by Washington,
which provided it financial aid via the National Endowment for Democracy,
the right-wing political opposition in Haiti staged one provocation
after another, turning a procedural dispute over the 2000 legislative
election into an international scandal that was then used as a pretext
for denying Haiti international aid and deepening the countrys
economic and political crisis.
Despite this crisis
and dwindling popular support for Aristide, no amount of backing from
the Bush administration could create mass popular support for bringing
the wealthy sweatshop owners and businessmen gathered in the Group of
184 and the Democratic Platform to power. Other means were required.
This was why Philippe,
Louis-Jodel Chamberlain and the other convicted killers and torturers
of the so-called rebelsmen who had been trained by
US forces and worked on the CIA payrollwere unleashed upon the
Haitian people.
Throughout the three
weeks before Aristide was forced out, the Bush administration rejected
any military intervention to stop the killing. It went through the motions
of brokering an agreement between Aristide and the so-called political
opposition in order to give the rebels the time they needed
to march on the capital. When the US-backed democrats intransigently
rejected any compromise, Washington insisted that it was Aristide who
had to go.
Speaking before
a Congressional panel Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of State Roger
Noriegaa key architect of the coupcynically claimed that
the US failed to act before Aristides ouster because it had been
seen as too dangerous and would put American lives at risk.
This, he said, was because Aristidewho acceded to every US demandwas
erratic, irresponsible. Yet the moment the elected president
was removed from office, a waiting US Marine expeditionary force was
rushed to the island nation.
There is every reason
to believe that the division of labor between US military forces, the
so-called democrats and the rebels will continue, no matter
what the official pronouncements about Philippe and his associates disarming.
The former army officer and police chief only said that his gunmen had
been withdrawn to an undisclosed location, and no weapons have been
turned over.
Whether Philippe
and his henchmen will realize their dream of reconstituting the hated
Haitian army under their leadership remains to be seen. For now, the
rebels will be used to continue hunting down and killing
Aristide supporters and terrorizing the population so that a regime
acceptable to Washington can be installed without popular interference.