[Peace-discuss] Haiti

[Ricky Baldwin]

This is an excellent reading of the events, I think,
but I think there's more to be said.  There's a very
long history of this kind of thing between the US and
Haiti, and I recommend a book: The Uses of Haiti, and
a movie: Burn!  -not that I'd agree 100 percent with
either.

For now, though, I think it's worth noting that when
Aristide agreed to the compromise below, it was not
the first time.  Aristide, a former priest, was
popularly elected an a reform ticket, buoyed largely
by a mass movement among the poor called Lavalas.  US
officials never missed a chance to denounce him, as
eagerly as they had defended the dicators Duvaliers. 
The US, in fact, continued to support Duvalierist
forces, significantly FRAPH, which under a new name is
a leading group in the recent "rebellion".  They were
also at the head of the previous coup against
Aristide, with US help.

When Clinton - reluctantly - returned Aristide to
office, Aristide agreed - as a condition of his return
(a condition demanded by the Clinton Administration)-
to reverse course of most of the reforms that had made
him popular and got him elected.

Also, a significant part of the Duvaliers' reign of
terror was the infamous "Tontons Macoutes" - a kind of
bogeyman figure from Haitian fairy tales turned into a
real-life secret death-and-torture squad.  When Baby
Doc Duvalier was overthrown, the Tontons Macoutes
remained in Haiti, and in the Duvalierist reaction
that later overthrew Aristide, they resurfaced.

One of the reasons some good people voted for Clinton
the first time was his campaign promise to stop the
first Bush Administration's illegal and inhumane
policy of returning Haitian refugees fleeing certain
death.  (Haitian refuges had been accepted while
Aristide was in office.)  Clinton quickly reneged on
that promise, of course, and stepped up the returns. 
Then the US waited, while international and domestic
pressure built to return Aristide to Haiti, and while
the Tontons Macoutes engaged in a bloody campaign of
terror against Aristide's supporters.

The pattern should be familiar from East Timor.

So when Aristide finally returned, his supporters had
been slaughtered and terrorized and the very forces
that returned him had stripped him of his political
mission.  Nevertheless, he won again, much to the
chagrin of the US, as the article below points out. 
And the US, ever the clever negotiator, soon imposed
the very conditions that they now claim were the
reason Haitians wanted him out.

It just doesn't pay to compromise with the US
government, or take them at their word.

Ricky
--- "Morton K.Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com> wrote:
> FYI: The Haiti coup d'etat.
> 
> Don't Fall For Washington's Spin On Haiti
> 
>   by Jeffrey Sachs; Financial Times; March 01, 2004
> 
> The crisis in Haiti is another case of brazen US
> manipulation of a 
> small, impoverished country with the truth
> unexplored by journalists. 
> In the nearly universal media line on the Haitian
> revolt, President 
> Jean-Bertrand Aristide was portrayed as an
> undemocratic leader who 
> betrayed Haiti's democratic hopes and thereby lost
> the support of his 
> erstwhile backers. He "stole" elections and
> intransigently refused to 
> address opposition concerns. As a result he had to
> leave office, which 
> he did at the insistence of the US and France.
> Unfortunately, this is a 
> gravely distorted view.
> 
> President George Bush's foreign policy team came
> into office intent on 
> toppling Mr Aristide, long reviled by powerful US
> conservatives such as 
> former senator Jesse Helms who obsessively saw him
> as another Fidel 
> Castro in the Caribbean. Such critics fulminated
> when President Bill 
> Clinton restored Mr Aristide to power in 1994, and
> they succeeded in 
> getting US troops withdrawn soon afterwards, well
> before the country 
> could be stabilized. In terms of help to rebuild
> Haiti, the US Marines 
> left behind about eight miles of paved roads and
> essentially nothing 
> else. In the meantime, the so-called "opposition", a
> coterie of rich 
> Haitians linked to the preceding Duvalier regime and
> former (and 
> perhaps current) CIA operatives, worked Washington
> to lobby against Mr 
> Aristide.
> 
> In 2000, Haiti held parliamentary and then
> presidential elections, 
> unprecedented in their scope. Mr Aristide's party,
> Fanmi Lavalas, 
> clearly won the election, although candidates who
> won a plurality 
> rather than a majority, and who should have faced a
> second-round 
> election, also gained seats. Objective observers
> declared the elections 
> broadly successful, albeit flawed.
> 
> Mr Aristide won the presidential election later that
> year, in a contest 
> the US media now reports was "boycotted by the
> opposition" and hence, 
> not legitimate. This is a cruel joke to those who
> know Haiti, where Mr 
> Aristide was swept in with an overwhelming mandate
> and the opposition, 
> such as it was, ducked the elections. Duvalier thugs
> hardly constituted 
> a winning ticket and as such, did not even try. Nor
> did they have to. 
> Mr Aristide's foes in Haiti benefited from tight
> links with the 
> incoming Bush team, which told Mr Aristide it would
> freeze all aid 
> unless he agreed with the opposition over new
> elections for the 
> contested Senate seats, among other demands. The
> wrangling led to the 
> freezing of $500m in emergency humanitarian aid from
> the US, the World 
> Bank, the Inter- American Development Bank and the
> International 
> Monetary Fund.
> 
> The tragedy, or joke, is that Mr Aristide agreed to
> compromise, but the 
> opposition simply balked; it was never the right
> time to hold 
> elections, for example, because of "security"
> problems, they said. 
> Whatever the pretext, the US maintained its aid
> freeze and the 
> opposition maintained a veto over international aid.
> Cut off from 
> bilateral and multilateral financing, Haiti's
> economy went into a 
> tailspin.
> 
> All this is being replayed before our eyes. As Haiti
> slipped into 
> deeper turmoil last month, Caribbean leaders called
> for a power-sharing 
> compromise between Mr Aristide and the opposition.
> Once again, Mr 
> Aristide agreed but the opposition merely demanded
> the president step 
> down - reportedly rejecting even US Secretary of
> State Colin Powell's 
> requests to compromise. But rather than defending Mr
> Aristide and 
> dealing with opposition intransigence, the White
> House announced the 
> president should step down.
> 
> The ease with which the US thereby brought down
> another Latin American 
> democracy is stunning. What has been the CIA's role
> among the 
> anti-Aristide rebels? How much US money went from US
> institutions and 
> government agencies to help foment this uprising?
> Why did the White 
> House abandon the Caribbean compromise proposal it
> endorsed just days 
> before? These questions have not been asked. Then
> again, we live in an 
> age when entire wars can be launched on phony
> pretences with few 
> questions asked.
> 
> What should happen now is unlikely to pass. The
> United Nations should 
> help restore Mr Aristide to power for his remaining
> two years in 
> office, making clear that yesterday's events were an
> illegal power 
> grab. Second, the US should call on the opposition,
> which is largely a 
> US construct, to stop the violence immediately and
> unconditionally. 
> Third, after years of literally starving the people
> of Haiti, the 
> long-promised and long-frozen aid flows of $500m
> should start 
> immediately. These steps would rescue a dying
> democracy and avert a 
> possible bloodbath.
> 
> The writer is director of the Earth Institute at
> Columbia University
> 
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