It's a hard road ahead

The crisis in Haiti is worsening even as diplomatic efforts aimed at a settlement increase. As the Toronto Star reports

Port-au-Prince, Haiti - Scores of foreigners, including missionaries and aid workers, streamed out of Haiti yesterday to escape a two-week rebellion that has overwhelmed the impoverished country's north. Many police deserted their posts, and rebels threatened new attacks this weekend.

Later in the day, diplomats from Canada, the United States and other countries handed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide a plan that calls for an interim governing council to advise him, and for the appointment of a prime minister acceptable to the opposition.

There would appear to be a curious disconnect in these efforts in that while they treat the situation as if Aristide and his political opponents were the parties in control of events, that opposition insists it has neither a connection with nor influence over the armed thugs overrunning the northern half of the country.

However, it's likely the world community realizes that the thin denials of the opposition are hardly persuasive. Consider this quote from Saturday's New York Times:

"We are not allies," Mr. [Chavannes] Jean-Baptiste[, a leader the opposition,] said of the rebel soldiers. "We are on the same battlefield, we have the same opponent and the same objective but completely different methods."

Not exactly a ringing rejection of violent insurrection. Another clear clue, drawn from the same article, that the political opposition, even if it didn't originate the rebellion, is allying itself with it:

A burly former army captain known as Commander Ravix, who led the well-armed and apparently well-disciplined troops clad in camouflage into Hinche on Friday, said his troops were "not rebels, but representatives of the new Haitian army."

Jean-Baptiste echoed the term in defending the rebels, saying "at least the army doesn't fire on the people," thus according them a legitimacy that the term "rebel" does not.

That may also explain another aspect of the diplomatic efforts: Aristide is obviously not happy with the plan, which proposes to establish a multiparty cabinet with a prime minister agreeable to both him and the political opposition while allowing him to finish out his term as president. In fact, as the BBC reported on Friday,

at a ceremony to honour policemen who had died in the uprising, a combative President Aristide made it clear he did not intend to go quietly.

"I, too, am ready to die if that is what I must do to defend my country," said the president, who has survived three assassination attempts and a coup d'etat.

"If wars are expensive, peace can be even more expensive," he added.

Nonetheless, he has accepted it even after insisting he's defending democracy against "a band of terrorists." On the other hand, today's New York Times reports,

[d]espite hours of hard negotiating, the opposition refused to budge, insisting that Mr. Aristide must resign immediately. At one point during talks with a group of opposition leaders, one diplomat could be seen hammering the table with his fist. But the visiting diplomats evidently had few inducements to offer the opposition.

"The plan calls for us to build a government with Mr. Aristide, but that is not acceptable," said Rosemond Pradel, leader of one opposition group, who briefly left the talks in a luxury, hillside hotel.

Apparently, however, there were some second thoughts about seeming so rigid, as later Bahamas Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell told reporters

"While we did not get a yes, we did not get a no, and they (the opposition) have agreed to revert to us with an answer by the close of business on Monday,"

says the Toronto Star, quoting wire service reports. Perhaps they, too, will ultimately decide that even if they're unhappy with the deal, it's the best thing going right now.

But even if an agreement is reached, what will that mean? If, as the opposition claims, it has no influence over the armed rebels, what will that change? Those troops of thugs - composed largely, the Miami Herald reports on February 20, "of former soldiers seeking revenge against Aristide for dissolving the military in 1995" - are the 900-pound gorilla in this who are unlikely to be moved by any rapprochement between Aristide and his weekend negotiating partners. In fact, the media, having pigeonholed the rebellion as some kind of spontaneous uprising against an unpopular president, has failed to take a critical look at the leadership that has emerged.

Last Saturday, Guy Philippe and Louis-Jodel Chamblain arrived in Gonaives, announcing their support for the insurgents. In the time since, Philippe has emerged as first among equals, declaring, the Times reported, that the forces of the Central Plateau were allying as the Haitian Liberation Front, with himself in command.

The Miami Herald piece contains one of the very few critical examinations of Philippe's record. He is accused by both Haitian and US officials as being a drug trafficker both during his time as police commissioner in Cap Haitien and later during his exile in the Dominican Republic. He has also been accused of involvement in several plots to overthrow the government, the first one an attempt to overthrow then-President Rene Preval in October of 2000. Subsequently, he was linked to a July 2001 attack on the Police Academy in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville and an attack by more than two dozen gunmen on the National Palace in Port-au-Prince on December 17, 2001. Furthermore,

last year he was briefly detained in the Dominican Republic for questioning about alleged meetings with former Haitian military officers to hatch a coup plot.

Throughout the spring of 2003, there was a string of attacks by mysterious gunmen around the Central Plateau - the area now occupied by Philippe's forces - that the government blamed on Philippe.

It was after the 2001 attack that he fled into exile in the Dominican Republic. There he was supposedly "under the guard of the Dominican authorities," who claimed they were looking for a third country to take him since the Dominican Republic had no extradition treaty with Haiti. (The link is to a translation of the original page, which in in French.) Apparently, they weren't watching him that closely any more because he seems to have gotten back into Haiti rather easily.

Chamblain, who arrived in Gonaives with a 20-member commando team, is for his part labeled by Amnesty International "a notorious perpetrator of human rights violations" who was apparently involved along with Philippe in the attacks in the Central Plateau, including the July, 2003 ambush of four employees of the Ministry of the Interior. Like Philippe, he fled into exile to avoid prosecution, but in his case it was in 1995. He was convicted in absentia of murder. The Herald notes that he was a "notoriously brutal leader of FRAPH, a paramilitary group that supported Haiti's 1991-1994 military dictatorship."

AI also notes that a third leader of the armed opposition,

Jean Pierre Baptiste, alias "Jean Tatoune", is also a former paramilitary leader who was sentenced to forced labour for life for participation in the 1994 Raboteau massacre.

These people are not democrats and are not interested in political power-sharing. On Friday, the Times quoted Philippe as having

told reporters in Gonaives that he and his 300 men were planning an assault on Port-au-Prince.

"If Aristide doesn't leave, we will march on the capital," Mr. Philippe said on Radio Vision 2000.

The first part of any agreement reached in Port-au-Prince, assuming that the opposition is being even halfway truthful about its lack of support for the violence of the insurrection, would have to be a common stand denouncing it and demanding it stop. The second act would have to be a common stand by the international community that if those who are attempting to return to the days of dictatorship and bloodbath ignore that call, they will stand literally alone.

The third thing would be for that same international community, if by some miracle this gets pulled off, to stand with Haiti and commit real resources, real money, real time, to helping that shattered society rebuild not only its economy but its institutions.

Writing in the New York Times on February 19, James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND and Bill Clinton's special envoy for Haiti from 1994 to 1996, claims much for Clinton, saying he "strongly supported the ousted president, sending 20,000 troops in 1994 to restore him to power." Which is true. But, as I mentioned on February 9, that was "only after making so many promises to, and compromises with, the Clinton administration that it became impossible for him to fulfill any of the promises he'd made to the poor of Haiti to improve their lot." And afterwards, the US largely turned its back on Haiti, leaving it to fend for itself. And, as Dobbins says,

[t]he current administration ... cut off all American assistance to the Aristide government while giving advice and moral support to Mr. Aristide's opponents.

In that sort of vascillating among shows of force, indifference, and hostility, which has left Haiti a land of, if it's possible, deeper poverty and greater despair because of the fall from higher hopes, can be found by far the deepest and strongest roots of the current crisis. It must not be allowed to continue.

Other previous posts on Haiti were on February 12 and February 15.