15681: (Ives) Regime change in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: K. M. Ives <kives@toast.net>

This is a recent piece in the Black Commentator, prefaced by some comments
by former Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff, who was stationed in
Ft. Liberté during the second U.S. occupation of Haiti and was drummed out
of the U.S. military for pursuing FAdH and FRAPH coup criminals too
zealously (see his book "Hideous Dream" at www.softskull.com). Sun Yatsen,
referred to at the end of Goff's comments, was the bourgeois nationalist
leader who united China's warring factions in an independence struggle in
the early 20th century.

Kim Ives

[There are a couple of things that are important to understand to give the
Haitian independence struggle - which is what is going on now - its
context.  Progressive people and organizations will make a terrible mistake
if they fall into the trap of 'personifying' Haiti's struggle.  That is,
assessing the words and deeds of Aristide in a way that implicitly makes
they synonymous with that struggle.  Aristide has made and will continue to
make very serious mistakes, perhaps motivated by less than altruistic
motives.  The problem is, those mistakes are not those lies cited by the US
government/press.  There was NEVER a single thing wrong with the way the
2000 election was conducted, though the press repeatedly refers to them as
somehow 'dubious', the same kind of innuendo that eventually led (as those
who have been reading Lou Proyect's posts on Johnstone know) to general
acceptance of the demonization of the Serbs in Yugoslavia and the
demonization of Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party.  There are two,
simultaneous, linked struggles going on in Haiti; the very complex inner
political struggle, and the struggle against American/OAS attempts to
re-impose US rule over the nation.  What the right does to distort the
question - that many on the left miss - is talk about Aristide as if the
whole question revolves around his 'fitness to rule.'  There is a huge
element of moral imperialism to this, and it serves the misdirection of the
US ruling class and its surrogates in Haiti.  Neither the US nor the
so-called opposition (which is composed of everything from Duvalierists to
former Communists - and we have to ask why) fear Aristide as an individual.
File that remark.  Haiti is still a largely peasant society (60-70 % by
best estimates).  Industrialization has been a series of hit-and-run
failures, with the meager exception of a few state run enterprises that
provided very basic infrastructure (sugar, flour, concrete, telephone,
etc), and these enterprises have been at the heart of much of the internal
struggle (along with LAND!!!) with popular resistance running incredibly
high against privatization.  The reason the strange bedfellows of the
'opposition' and the US ruling class hate Aristide is based on class.
There is a deep-seated terror among Haitian elites as well as American
elites (based on a kind o historical memory of the Southern  terror of
slave rebellions inflamed by the Haitian Revolution) not of Aristide, but
of the Haitian (peasant) masses - with good reason.  When they rise up they
are a formidable and combative force.  Aristide still profits to some
degree from his original and deep connection with the masses dating back to
his grassroots organizing through the ti eglis.  He has demonstrated on
more than one occasion that he can use his bully pulpit to mobilize those
masses (as he did during the dechoukages).  It is not Aristide's positions
on issues, or even his policies, that have made him anathema to the US and
its sycophants.  Aristide has made one shameful conciliation after another
to neoliberalism and to his domestic enemies.  Aristide's one unforgivable
sin (for the US and its allies) is that he has this ability to raise up
popular rebellions.  That is a sin for which he will NEVER be forgiven,
because it keeps the nightmare of popular rebellion alive in the
imaginations of the ruling class.  So the struggle goes on internally in
Haiti, often against Aristide's policies, especially from his left (and
sometimes between his left, where PPN, for example, will engage in
pragmatic critical support, against a more ideological stand by, say, Batay
Ouvrye).  But this is part of the process of self-determination working
itself out in Haiti.  The attacks on Aristide from the OUTSIDE, with the
assistance of the phony 'opposition' of Convergence Democratique or
whatever they are calling themselves these days, only APPEAR to be an
attack on Aristide, but they are in fact an attack on the masses and on the
popular sovereignty of Haiti.  It appears now that this external struggle
will begin to involve putschist 'guerrilla' war (for there is no popular
support for this macouto-bourgeois alliance, which is why they hide and
operate out of in the Dominican Republic where they can more easily receive
the 'cutout' support of their foreign masters).  This may force a radical
polarization that results in open armed struggle at some point, whereupon
the US - knowing from past experience how difficult it is to 'manage'
Haitians - will probably engineer some pretext for Dominican intervention
(drugs are a favorite fable).  BUT. armed intervention by the hated
Dominicans (whose bourgeois violently exploits Haitians in its cane fields)
will create the conditions for unifying Haitian resistance.  The parallels
to Sun Yatsen (Aristide the nationalist) and the struggle against the
Japanese in China are not perfect, but instructive.  -SG]

US plots regime change" in Haiti


Supporters of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government are convinced that the
U.S. has decided to do a "regime change" in Haiti before the world's first
Black Republic celebrates its 200th anniversary, in 2004. Frustrated that a
three-year, American-led aid embargo against Haiti has failed to topple the
popularly elected Aristide, the Bush men are escalating their proxy terror
campaign against Lavalas party activists and the island nation's fragile
infrastructure, all the while threatening to further strangle the economy.

Worldwide celebrations have already begun in honor of the slave
insurrection that defeated Napoleon's armies to establish Haitian
independence in 1804. The Bush administration, probably the most
symbol-obsessed regime in modern U.S. history, has deployed its diplomatic,
military and propaganda resources to prepare an alternative scenario.

"The symbolism of having a populist government in Haiti, that represents
the interests of the poor black majority, is intolerable to US foreign
policy, especially as all the parallels with the history of US slavery are
sure to be drawn," said a well-placed observer who must remain nameless due
to the atmosphere of terror in the country. "They want a subservient client
in power when the bicentennial comes down. They cannot control Aristide,
therefore they must do as they always have in these situations, destroy him
and his government by any means necessary."

Early this month, at least 20 commandos attacked a hydroelectric power
plant on Haiti's central plateau, killing two security guards and setting
the control room afire. It is common knowledge that incursions originate
across the border in the Dominican Republic where, according to a Dominican
priest known as Father J, members of the former Haitian military regime
exercise mafia-like control over a million of their destitute countrymen.
Father J has worked on behalf of Haitian human rights issues for the past
25 years. He reports that sectors of the Dominican military protect the
Haitian mafia's operations, which fund the paramilitary incursions.

A May 10 Associated Press report tends to confirm that Haiti's armed
opposition operates with near-impunity in the Dominican Republic. Under
pressure from the Haitian government, authorities on the Dominican side of
the border arrested and then released five men in connection with the
attack on the hydroelectric plant:

The man Haitian authorities have accused of plotting to overthrow
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government says he supports a coup but isn't
planning one.
Guy Philippe told The Associated Press that he wasn't plotting Aristide's
ouster but that the time for a peaceful solution has passed. He wouldn't
say, however, whether he would take up arms in the future. Dominican
authorities released Philippe, a 35-year-old former Haitian police chief
known for his flashy cars, expensive taste and strong-armed tactics to
battle crime in the impoverished Caribbean nation, Thursday after finding
no evidence he and four others were conspiring against the Haitian
government. Haitian authorities told their Dominican counterparts Philippe
and others were plotting against the Haitian government from neighboring
Dominican Republic.

"I would support a coup," Philippe said in Spanish during an interview in a
Santo Domingo hotel. "We have to get rid of the dictator." ...

Declining to say how he makes a living or what he does to spend his time in
the Dominican Republic, Philippe said the international community needed to
do more to push Aristide from power, but he said he would not support an
armed invasion.

On the day Philippe was detained on the Dominican side of the border,
police raided the house of Port-au-Prince mayoral candidate Judith Roy of
the Convergence opposition. They claimed to have "found assault weapons,
ammunitions, and plans to attack the National Palace and Aristide's
suburban residence," said the Associated Press. Haitian authorities say Roy
is close to Philippe, the former police chief of Cap Haitian.

There is evidence that the Republican Party is directly involved in
plotting Aristide's overthrow. Stanley Lucas, an International Republican
Institute operative based in the Dominican Republic, met with Philippe and
his gang on Dominican soil, three months ago. Inside Haiti, the Institute
functions as a political support group for the Convergence, a group of
small opposition parties on the island.


Open subversion at the OAS

Private aid organizations, many of them with close ties to the opposition
Convergence, have scaled back their work among the poor - suddenly, and
with few explanations either to Haitians or the largely American donor
public. At the Organization of American States, through which the U.S. has
attempted to legitimize its campaign against Aristide's government,
American diplomats cynically point to the suffering of the Haitian people
as an excuse for intensifying restrictions on aid. According to an April 28
Haitian Press Agency (AHP) report, demands for Aristide's ouster circulate
openly among the OAS diplomats. "One document's author suggested that it
would be best if the situation kept deteriorating, saying that any aid
should be blocked until 2005 in order to eliminate the party in power,
Fanmi Lavalas [Lavalas Family], which will be of no help to the population,
according to him," AHP reported.

Caribbean Community (Caricom) nations have so far blocked U.S. efforts to
gain OAS approval for even harsher sanctions against Haiti.

Aristide's government has been forced to choose between servicing its debt
or providing basic services to the people - a Catch-22 made in Washington.
In it's April 23 - 29 edition, the weekly Haiti Progres reported:

Finance Minister Gustave Faubert said this week that the Haitian government
no longer could continue to make payments on its debt arrears to
multilateral lending institutions because of Haiti's dwindling foreign
reserves.
"We have been paying out more money than we are receiving, which is not
something normal," he said in an interview with Radio Galaxie. "The level
of the country's net foreign cash reserves has become untenable, so the
government has taken the decision, particularly for the IDB [InterAmerican
Development Bank] and the World Bank, to use that money instead to carry
out projects which benefit the population, which is suffering a great deal
and is very hungry."

It appears the U.S. purpose is to create an environment of chaos and
government impotence in Haiti, allowing Washington to declare the nation a
"failed state," thus setting the stage for some form of American takeover.
By now, the pretexts should be familiar to all: U.S. national security,
with "humanitarian" concerns thrown in for good measure. Having starved
Haiti for three years through its influence among the world's donor
nations, and with the clock ticking towards the 2004 celebrations,
Washington steps up the "contra"-type offensive while designating Haiti a
"staging point" for terrorist infiltration of the U.S. (See "Ashcroft
Targets Haitians as Threat," , May 8.)

The Bush men imagine themselves at the podium in Port-au-Prince next year,
surrounded by dancing Haitians celebrating their "liberation" from the
elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These are the last people we
want to see grinning at the 200th anniversary of the world's first Black
Republic.


http://www.blackcommentator.com/42/42_issues.html