by
Jessica Leigh
On June 20, a UN
peacekeeping force will take over day-to-day command authority
in a battered Haiti, which continues to limp from crisis to
crisis four months after February’s abrupt and violent
“regime change.” Yet ever since the sudden replacement
of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the early
morning hours of February 29 and the simultaneous arrival of
a contingent of U.S. Marines in this war-torn country for the
second time in ten years, Western political leaders, veteran
journalists, and most members of Congress and opinion-makers
in Washington and across the hemisphere have demonstrated a
notable lack of curiosity about the real story behind how Aristide
lost his presidency, an event that there is good reason to believe
represented the thirty-third coup in Haiti’s bitter history.
While the U.S.-backed politicians now running Haiti—a mix
of unsuitable technocrats like Prime Minister Gerard Latortue
and lethal ideologues like Minister of Justice Bernard Gousse—promise
an era of disciplined, apolitical technocracy, they in fact
spend perhaps most of their time attempting to besmirch Aristide.
Moreover, they show few signs of being even remotely interested
in ascertaining exactly what the fate was of the last elected
government, much less the role of the U.S. in forcing the transfer
of power.
Yet the situation
changed on June 8, when the Organization of American States—a
normally rather moribund organization that under outgoing Secretary-General
Cesar Gaviria has become little better than a regional policy-making
appendage of the State Department—approved a resolution
calling for an investigation into the circumstances of former
President Aristide’s departure. This initiative was passed
despite the Bush administration’s incessant admonitions
that political recriminations should be avoided in order to
prioritize rebuilding Haiti’s democratic institutions,
a declaration that blatantly ignores the fact that it is exactly
those institutions that the recent coup had helped to destroy.
Thus it seems that the last word about this year’s events
in Haiti have yet to be written. On the contrary, Washington’s
overweening role in the uprising that ousted Aristide, as well
as its obvious bias in favour of the Haitian political opposition
movements Democratic Convergence and Group 184 (which had long
heatedly called for such an ouster) may yet emerge as one of
the more shocking examples of U.S. interference in the internal
politics of a hemispheric nation over the last half-century.
Rebels
With a Shady Past
Questions about
the deplorable human rights record of the rebels who helped
overthrow Aristide, many of whom have been enthusiastically
embraced by the current government as “freedom fighters,”
have been swept aside as unnecessary “dwelling on the past,”
and there has been shockingly little investigation of repeated
reports of political murders and massacres of mainly pro-Aristide
militants and members of his Lavalas party under the aegis of
the present U.S.-installed government led by business consultant
and Boca Raton resident Latortue. At the same time, it seemed
that no representative of the international community, save
the CARICOM nations (led by Jamaica) and several African nations
led by South Africa, dared to suggest that the transfer of power
to a prime minister essentially handpicked by the U.S. embassy
and the State Department is a demonstrably less than democratic
process.
Aristide
Cries Foul
Having found permanent
asylum in South Africa after brief sojourns in the Central African
Republic and Jamaica—a trip that engendered stern criticism
from the US and led to the new Haitian government suspending
relations with Kingston in a fit of pique—deposed president
Aristide continues to assert that U.S. military personnel and
embassy officials played an improper, if not overtly coercive,
role in his abrupt departure from Haiti in the early hours of
February 29. Aristide has claimed that on that morning he expected
to be escorted either to the National Palace or to the U.S.
Embassy to meet with journalists following discussions with
U.S. Ambassador James Foley, who had become notorious for his
manipulative tactics towards the Haitian president over the
months preceding his ouster. Instead, he was brought to the
airport and herded aboard a U.S.-chartered aircraft, allegedly
without his knowledge or consent. The plane was presumably reserved
by the embassy hours, if not days, before as part of the pre-planning
to get Aristide out of the country on the pretext that Washington
could not ensure his safety.
Upon arriving at
the airport, Aristide found himself surrounded by U.S. soldiers
and without his private security force, contracted from an American
company, which had been instructed to withdraw by U.S. officials
in no uncertain terms. Though the former president admits that
he did not physically resist boarding the plane, the destination
of which remained unknown to him until he landed in Bangui,
the capital of the Central African Republic, he maintains that
an overwhelming presence of armed U.S. personnel amounted to
a clear effort on the part of the Bush administration to intimidate
him into resignation and flight. Aristide continues to assert
that he would not have yielded his office without a struggle
had it not been for Washington’s plenary role in scripting
what was to happen in Haiti on an almost hourly basis. Most
recently, he has filed lawsuits against unnamed French and U.S.
officials for "threats, death threats, abduction and illegal
detention.”
U.S. Denies Aristide’s Charges
The White House,
needless to say, has scoffed at these accusations, with an unnamed
senior administration official telling the press that “In
his letter of resignation, Mr. Aristide noted that his departure
was based on a desire to avoid bloodshed in Haiti . . .Continuing
false claims about his resignation and departure embolden the
armed gangs that Aristide himself armed and unleashed in Haiti.”
Needless to say, the State Department has not commented on the
subsequent statement by the renowned Creole linguist that translated
Aristide’s statement, suggesting that he did not in fact
officially resign, and the question still remains whether the
former president’s “resignation” was drafted
by the U.S. embassy or the State Department or if it was his
own words.
It is clear that
the administration has attempted to avoid any damaging revelations
on its own role in Aristide’s demise by engaging in the
same campaign of “character assassination” that it
has waged against the domestic critics of its foreign policies.
But these diversionary tactics should not be allowed to obscure
the explosive nature of Aristide’s accusations: namely,
that the U.S. government joined with Haiti’s richest businessmen
in the Group 184 in an alliance to oust the elected government,
as well as silently watched several hundred unsavoury thugs
and former paramilitaries rampage through the Haitian countryside
as they headed for Port-au-Prince without attempting in any
way to prevent the ouster of the third democratically elected
president in Haiti’s history.
A few courageous
journalists and members of Congress—most notably the members
of the Congressional Black Caucus, especially Representative
Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY),
along with Senators Bob Graham and Bill Nelson from Florida—have
spoken out in criticism of the administration’s Haiti policy
and called for a more thorough investigation of the controversial
events of February. But like Haile Selassie’s scoffed-at
plea before the League of Nations in 1936, Aristide’s accusations
have otherwise received surprisingly little attention. While
the hearings held by the Senate Foreign Relations and House
International Relations Committees to investigate the administration’s
role in Aristide’s departure provided a valuable opportunity
for members of Congress to directly challenge Assistant Secretary
of State for Interamerican Affairs, Roger Noriega, for his repeated
and venomous endorsements of the violent overthrow of elected
leftist governments, first in Venezuela and then in Haiti, these
inquiries represent only a first step in hunting down the truth.
There remains a
pressing need for a comprehensive and aggressive investigation
into U.S. involvement in Haiti over the past four years, modelled
after the Iran-contra hearings in the late 1980s, which could
call for punitive action against State Department officials,
either in Washington or in Port-au-Prince, found to have played
an improper role in the forced removal of Aristide from office.
Congressional advocates of a less aggressive and more nuanced
U.S. policy towards Latin America and especially Haiti—which
has suffered under a lengthy stream of U.S.-backed dictators
and periodic occupations over the past two hundred years—
should step up the volume of their calls for a full accounting
of Aristide’s alleged kidnapping. In addition, presumed
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry would do well to
return to his earlier sharp criticisms of the Bush administration’s
Haiti policy (which was followed with a later dismissive attack
on Aristide) with a similar call for an investigation, both
in his capacity as the presumptive presidential candidate and
as a long-standing member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Such a stance could only enhance his efforts to portray himself
as an advocate of a more constructive foreign policy than the
bumbling and heavy-handed initiatives being implemented by the
incumbent administration.
In
League with Murderers
While Aristide
crosses the globe to his new home in South Africa, his supporters
remaining in Haiti—which likely would constitute a majority
in any fair election, especially among the poor, both rural
and urban—continue to be targets of widespread political
murders and arrests at the hands of the erstwhile rebels. Many
of the rebels are former members of the Haitian army and the
CIA-created paramilitary group FRAPH (Revolutionary Front for
the Advancement and Progress of Haiti) that terrorized Aristide’s
supporters in the slums in the aftermath of the first coup against
him, which then installed a military regime that ruled from
1991 to 1994. Other allegations regarding the victimization
of Aristide supporters—including arbitrary arrests and
political assassinations in the capital, and the reported imprisonment
of some 20 Aristide supporters in a container in Cap-Haitien
before they were allegedly dumped in the sea—cannot be
confirmed, due to the absence of an independent media, a functioning
justice system or international human rights observers in a
country now ruled by technocrats gone sour.
It is obvious,
however, that the prevention of human rights abuses and the
prosecution of their perpetrators is far from being a priority
of the current government, a fact made abundantly clear on March
20, when newly installed Prime Minister Latortue made a visit
to Gonaives, his home town and the city where the recent anti-Aristide
rebellion began. There, he hailed the rebels (who had earlier
been described by Secretary of State Powell as a gang of thugs)
as “freedom fighters” and called for a moment of silence
for all those who “fell fighting against the dictatorship”—while
standing on the stage with two convicted criminals. The first
was Jean-Pierre Baptiste, also known as Jean Tatoune, who was
freed from prison in a jailbreak last year after being sentenced
to a life term for his participation in the 1994 Raboteau massacre,
in which a number of Aristide supporters in a Gonaives slum
were killed by FRAPH and military thugs.
The second was
Louis-Jodel Chamblain, who was convicted in absentia of the
1993 murder of a beloved pro-Aristide businessman and philanthropist,
Antoine Izmery. Izmery was attending a memorial service in a
Port-au-Prince church for his late brother, murdered by the
Haitian military for his opposition to the government, when
he was dragged out of the church by soldiers and shot execution-style
in the street outside the church. Chamblain subsequently went
into exile in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, from which
he returned early this year to help lead the rebellion against
the Aristide government.
On April 22, Chamblain
turned himself in to the police in Port-au-Prince in an elaborate
charade of heroism and sacrifice; before walking to the prison,
he stated at a press conference that he was sacrificing himself
“so that Haiti can have a chance for the real democracy
I have been fighting for,” and he was escorted by the omnipresent
Justice Minister Bernard Gousse, who bizarrely called the decision
“a good and noble one”—perhaps not the phrase
that would immediately spring to mind to describe a convicted
murderer who agreed to return to jail. It is virtually impossible
to imagine any U.S. parallel to such a script. However, Baptiste,
rebel leader Guy Philippe, who fled to the Dominican Republic
in 2000 after helping to plan an attack on the National Palace
in an attempted coup, and scores of other known human rights
violators or convicted criminals remain at large, having been
earlier freed by their rebel confederates, who resorted to massive
jailbreaks to spring them.
Gousse:
Haiti’s John Ashcroft
Gousse’s deplorable
behaviour in the case of Chamblain’s elaborate self-confession
is but one of many attacks on habeas corpus and the rule of
law that reveal him to be more of a John Ashcroft-type justice
minister than a prudent figure of public rectitude. Gousse has
long been known as a nasty far-right ideologue, and his selection
to his post as an anti-Aristide gunslinger by Latortue reflects
poorly on the reckless and amateur nature of the prime minister’s
rule. While he has asserted that, “There is a plan to bring
to justice everyone who has broken the law,” there has
as yet been no evidence of the existence of any such plan, at
least as it regards rebel leaders and other visceral opponents
of the Aristide government. On the contrary, he has indicated
in other interviews with the international press that his office
does not intend to pursue criminal prosecutions against rebel
leaders, a rather alarming assertion that he immediately attempted
to soften by offering as an afterthought the assurance that
all human rights charges lodged by citizens would be investigated.
(As a side note, he noted that since no complaints had been
filed against Philippe, there could be no criminal charges brought
against him.)
Yet despite his
sympathetic treatment of known criminals, Gousse is happy to
trumpet his personal vendetta against those who were allied
with the democratically-elected president of Haiti and his relentless
diligence in pursuing charges against the former president on
grounds of the latter’s alleged embezzlement, corruption
and misuse of power. He has asserted more than once that, “It’s
too early to say that tomorrow I will ask for his extradition,
but we will build a case.” Accusations have circulated
widely among Haitian governmental officials that the former
Aristide government looted Haiti’s already meagre public
treasury. The interim finance minister, prominent Haitian economist
Henri Bazin, stated that upon assuming his position, he found
less than a month’s foreign reserves in the Central Bank
and an immediate government deficit of $100 million. In fact,
this figure was more than the U.S.-coddled military junta left
in the treasury when it was forced to out by a belated U.S.
intervention in 1994. Other officials of the Aristide government
have been prevented from leaving the country as the current
administration pursues criminal cases against them, and former
interior minister Jocelerme Privert already has been jailed
on accusations of corruption and political violence, on the
basis of questionable supporting evidence.
Given increasing
evidence of serious misconduct and corruption at some levels
of the former government, it is essential that investigations
of possible criminal actions should be pursued and those responsible
prosecuted (though it is important to note that as of yet, the
Latortue government has not presented any evidence directly
implicating Aristide in any wrongdoing.) At the same time, the
blatant partisanship obvious in the skewed version of justice
being propounded by Latortue and Gousse, in which already convicted
criminals and other figures notorious for past human rights
abusers freely walk the streets while the Justice Ministry pours
its scarce funds and manpower into investigating supposed crimes
of officials of the Aristide administration, adds up to a serious
blow to the credibility and ostensible neutrality of the interim
government. The officials responsible appear to be more interested
in conducing a witch hunt, rather than acting in a deliberate
manner.
“Technocracy”
a Mask for Partisan Bias
Any reasonably
well-informed observer of Haitian affairs must by now have rejected
the claim often repeated by U.S. and UN officials that the Latortue
government is simply an assemblage of nonpartisan technocrats,
working to provide competent administration and good governance
in this period of transition until new elections are held. According
to UN Special Envoy Reginald Dumas, whose own bias against Aristide
is one of the real scandals of the Haitian intervention, this
period is likely to be at least eighteen months. While the appointment
of Alix Baptiste, who held an administrative post in the Foreign
Ministry under Aristide, as secretary of state for Haitians
living abroad, has been noted as an exception to Latortue’s
nonpartisanship, far less attention has been paid to several
other glaring violations of the government’s supposed neutrality:
Foreign Affairs Minister Yvon Simeon previously had served as
the Democratic Convergence representative in Europe and Minister
of Justice Bernard Gousse has been described by Radio Metropole
as an active member of Group 184. The obviously anti-Aristide
affiliations of these key government officials suggest that
far from being merely a caretaker government of administrators,
the Latortue administration is the dream team of the Haitian
opposition parties, endorsed (and virtually hand-picked) by
Washington to sweep away all vestiges of the Aristide-ism and
turn the country in a more conservative, and decidedly more
pro-U.S., direction—even though there is no constitutional
sanction whatsoever for this project. Washington has used the
expulsion of the Haitian president as an excuse to hijack the
country’s political system.
Citing these biases
and abuses, Lavalas, the party of Aristide now being led by
Leslie Voltaire, who served as minister of the diaspora in Aristide’s
cabinet, has refused to nominate a representative to the panel
organizing the new round of elections, raising the possibility
that a party retaining the support of at least a significant
plurality, if not a majority, of the population, will not soon
reenter the political process. Thus far, the blessings of the
Bush administration have thus far been sufficient to endow the
current government with a certain degree of legitimacy, at least
in Washington if not in Port-au-Prince. But the alarming and
chaotic human rights situation and the clear partisan bias of
Latortue and his key operatives—who appear to have entered
into what Jocelyn McCalla, executive director of the New York
National Coalition of Haitian Rights, called an “unholy
alliance” with the rabidly anti-Aristide gangs that still
control most of the country—can be expected to slowly but
steadily erode the credibility of this government over time,
both at home and abroad.
Humanitarian
Conditions Deteriorate
Not only is the
legitimacy of Haiti’s interim administration highly questionable,
it has presided over a significant decline in living standards
in this already desperately poor country—a development
that offers conclusive proof to those critics that had berated
Aristide for his supposed ineffectiveness that Haiti’s
deep-rooted economic, social and environmental problems are
beyond the capacity of any one five-year term executive to address.
Official unemployment, already at seventy-five percent, has
increased still further due to the widespread looting of businesses
and warehouses that provided low-wage, sweat-shop employment.
Food prices have risen nearly 30 percent, placing essential
staples beyond the means of Haitians already living on the brink
of starvation, and shortages are expected as a result of the
looting and destruction that occurred during the rebellion,
a condition that will only worsen the health of a population
where fifty percent already are malnourished.
Most recently,
floods killed more than 1,400 people in Mapou and surrounding
towns and left tens of thousands more destitute in a region
now accessible only by helicopter. In the aftermath of the disaster,
humanitarian organizations publicly considered buying bulldozers
and building roads themselves, given the government’s inability
to perform even this most basic of functions. In the face of
these developments, Prime Minister Latortue and his cabinet
have appeared utterly helpless and pathetically ineffective;
many observers fear that worsening economic conditions will
engender new rounds of popular unrest if no appropriate action
is taken in the near future, further destabilizing the country
and jeopardizing the current administration.
Meanwhile, the degree of commitment from the international community
to the massive task of rebuilding Haiti remains highly tenuous,
and much-needed and long-promised aid has once again proved
slow to arrive.
On June 1, U.S.
commanders officially turned over control of Haiti to the UN
mission led by Brazil in the person of General Augusto Heleno
Ribeiro Pereira, with actual command authority to be vested
in the UN on June 20. However, at least for now, the UN presence
is more symbolic than anything else, encompassing only a handful
of soldiers who lack even a headquarters. Nonetheless, U.S.
troops have begun to withdraw—taking with them crucial
equipment, such as the helicopters that had been the only route
by which food and other supplies could be rushed to flood victims
in Mapou—though some of the Chilean, French and Canadian
troops now present will remain under the UN force, along with
a handful of U.S. soldiers. A larger contingent of American
troops may also rotate through Haiti during this year in military
exercises, according to General James Hill, chief of the United
States Southern Command.
Hopes that a meaningful
and effective peacekeeping force can be rapidly deployed are
dimming. Though the Security Council approved on May 1 a peacekeeping
force of 8,300 soldiers and police for Haiti, only half that
number (including troops from Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and
Argentina) have currently signed on, and no more than 2000 are
expected to arrive by the end of June. The shortage has been
exacerbated by the escalating demand for peacekeepers around
the globe, particularly in French-speaking countries. At the
same time, Secretary General Kofi Annan’s appeal for $35
million in emergency aid for Haiti has met with little enthusiasm
from international donors already repeatedly hit by demands
for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan; only $9 million has been collected
to date. In Washington, Republican Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio
has been courageously fighting for a $100 million increase in
U.S. aid to Haiti, above the $55 million commitment already
made, but the tight budget situation and the ever-mounting demands
of the Iraq war can be expected to present considerable obstacles
to such an allotment; further north, Foreign Affairs Minister
Bill Graham of Canada continues to assert Ottawa’s commitment
to Haiti but has refused to take any immediate action, stating
that a needs assessment and an international conference to coordinate
aid must occur first. Canada has graciously offered to host
such a gathering, expected to be held in June. It remains uncertain
how, and whether, the Latortue government will squeak by until
then.
Tepid
Response from the International Community Risks Another Conflagration
As the Bush administration,
preoccupied by the Middle East and its reelection campaign,
hurriedly departs from Port-au-Prince and dumps the Haitian
headache in the lap of the UN, there is a grave danger that
Haiti will be swept off the agenda of the international community,
which has not done well by Haiti in the past. The U.S. and its
partners seem to be committing once again the mistakes of earlier
“nation-building” missions in the 1990s: failing to
adequately establish security and fully disarm armed factions,
failing to invest significant time into institution-building,
and failing to provide the bare minimum of aid which is needed
to prop up Haiti’s fragile economy.
At the same time,
the interim administration’s toleration of rampant human
rights abuses and the UN's abject failure to identify fully
investigate accusations made regarding the fall of the Aristide
government can be expected to heighten political instability
and increase the chances of renewed violence—though the
recent decision by the Organization of American States to launch
an investigation into the circumstances of Aristide’s removal
may help in shedding some light on this enduring and ugly controversy.
The result of such neglect is predictable: namely, a new round
of political instability and violence, continued deprivation
for the Haitian people and prolonged anxiety in the Caribbean
about the consequences of state collapse in Haiti. It is time
for the UN, Washington, and Ottawa alike to refocus on Port-au-Prince—or
risk confronting a renewed Haitian crisis in the years and decades
to come.
This analysis was prepared Jessica Leight, Research Fellow
at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Washington, DC. The Council
on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent,
non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information
organization. For more information, go to www.coha.org
