Haiti (and Guantanamo)

By James Cookson

As you may have heard in the news recently, there is trouble in Haiti. An armed rebellion which quickly took over 50 towns, leaving more than 50 dead in Gonaives alone during a first week of mayhem in the island's fourth city. Cap Haitien - the second city - was also taken, before president Jean Bertrand Aristide accepted an internationally mediated compromise, in which he was to lose some presidential powers. The rebels flatly rejected the compromise, however.

Bush, without explanation, put the blame for the crisis on Aristide and as the rebel force began to move into the Capital: Port au Prince, Aristide found himself on an aeroplane leaving the country. A recent news report described crowds of thousands of people “rapturously welcoming” rebel leader Guy Philippe to Port au Prince.

So is Haiti in revolution? The impression from reading many news reports and headlines has been that this is actually a ‘popular uprising’ against a corrupt regime. Mentioned in few reports is the alleged involvement of former death-squad and military-coup leaders in the rebel force, or that aid-agencies could not deliver desperately needed food aid (mainly rice) because of road-blockades.

Haiti was created the first black republic outside of Africa, two hundred years ago. Today it is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with high infant mortality, low life expectancy and massive debts. IMF and World Bank ‘advice’ was put into action in 1986 as Haiti liberalised trade and all but removed its rice import tariff: from 1990 there came a flood of cheap imported rice from the U.S - Haiti’s self-sufficient rice production was halved.

Aristide was elected in 1990 but when he actually took office in 1991 he was ousted by a military coup within weeks. A three-year U.S naval blockade and economic sanctions followed, this hit Haiti’s poor majority whereas the elite were unaffected. Intervention in late 1994 saw Aristide re-installed with the help of U.S troops.

The troops didn’t stay long and some officers interviewed by journalist Tom Reeves explained that they were under orders to leave untouched any large former military weapons caches which they came across and that the paramilitary group FRAPH, which was implicated in the 1991-94 coup, were ‘loyal opposition’, also to be left alone. A former FRAPH leader, Louis Jodel Chamblain was also the head of the Duvalier death-squad during the 1980s, but is now a ‘Convergence’ opposition member and rebel leader - along with Guy Phillipe, who was a military officer and Cap Haitien police chief.

Not only were the FRAPH paramilitary left alone by US troops, a close associate of Chamblain alledged that they were directed and backed by the CIA. The same M-1 and M-14 rifles from the former military weapons caches, crucially, were and are being usedby the rebel force, along with M-16s which came from the US - via the Dominican Republic.

Aristide’s post-1994 administration, under US pressure, appointed a new Prime Minister who then began to push for trade-liberalisation, as advocated by the IMF, World Bank, the US, and the European Union. Aristide’s political base - the Lavalas movement - overwhelmingly opposed the moves, which involved wholesale privatisation of public services. Aristide blocked this - ‘upsetting’ the US.

As aid supplies were blocked, schools and hospitals looted and burned, the US finally decided to send troops in again ‘to restore order’ but not before having made preparations for the internment of up to 50,000 fleeing Haitians in Guanatanamo, the US base in Cuba. US troops guarded their Embassy in Port au Prince as rebels took-over and Aristide went a small US-French force are arriving, perhaps soon to be followed by the UN.