19197: Esser: Don't let lethal squads prevail (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

The Miami Herald
http://www.miami.com

Wed, Feb. 25, 2004

Don't let lethal squads prevail

BY MICHAEL PUTNEY
mputney@local10.com

Why did the Bush administration wait so long to intervene in Haiti?
Clearly because it concluded that it's the basket case of the
Caribbean, with little strategic, political or economic value to the
United States. Besides, it simply doesn't like President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

But, hey, who does? I found Aristide to be smart but slippery when I
covered his first presidential campaign and election in 1990. Still,
he'd have to be an improvement on Baby Doc, wouldn't he? No, he
wasn't.

The Clinton administration, too, wasn't crazy about the left-leaning
Catholic priest (who subsequently turned in his cassock). But it
cared even less for the military coup that deposed him and sent more
than 20,000 Haitian refugees to the high seas and, eventually, camps
at Guantánanmo.

Haiti failed the Bush test

It took hundreds of millions of dollars and 21,000 U.S. troops to fix
that crisis in 1994. Putting Aristide back in office seemed then the
right thing to do. The Clinton White House believed that
democratically elected presidents, even ones with spotty records such
as Aristide, had a right to serve out their terms and that the United
States had a moral responsibility to ensure it, especially in our
hemisphere and when our national interests were at stake.

For the Bush administration, however, we can move preemptively and
unilaterally to take down regimes that are inimical to our national
interests. But Haiti failed that test, even though it's just a few
hundred miles away from us. Of course, that's 700 miles from South
Florida, not Washington, which is why we here may see it differently.
Then, too, South Florida has more than 230,000 Haitians, who have
learned how to get the local media's attention. While many are
becoming U.S. citizens and politically active, most aren't; they
can't vote and have little political clout. And did I mention that
they're black and mostly poor?

Come to think of it, so are most Cubans on the island. But Cuba still
has institutions -- however skewed by Castro's communism -- that
work. Haiti has no institutions that work, save for the Catholic
Church, which has been ineffectual in mediating the current crisis.

France and Canada last week invited the United States to join them by
sending in police reinforcements to quell the violence in Haiti until
a political solution could be brokered. Washington wanted the
political solution before sending in the officers. While the
diplomats dithered, the armed rebels got stronger, and Haiti's
beleaguered police got weaker. Many Haitian officers took off their
uniforms; others fled to the Dominican Republic. Now there are fewer
than 4,000 police officers.

It's Macoutes all over again

That left the field open to goons such as Butteur Metayer, once an
Aristide ally but now the self-styled leader of the anti-Aristide
Haitian Liberation Front. Did you see him in his white Versace suit
and dark shades strutting through Gonaives with his thugs? It's
Macoutes time all over again. The commander of the relatively small
but lethal squad that liberated Cap-Haitien was Louis Jodel
Chamblain, a leader of the death squads in Haiti in the '80s.

One of his buddies was Toto Constant. Together they created FRAPH, a
violent paramilitary gang that beat up or killed opponents of Gen.
Raoul Cedras, who succeeded Aristide. FRAPH was very good at
intimidating folks who had no weapons. Good at putting tires around
the necks of their opponents, real and perceived, then dousing them
with gas and setting them on fire. It's a horrific practice known
quaintly in Haiti as ''necklacing'' or Pierre LeBrun.

I ran into Constant and about 20 of his men on a Port-au-Prince dock
in October 1993, while waiting for the U.S. Navy ship USS Harlan
County to come in. We could see it standing several hundred yards off
shore. On board were Navy Seabees and other military workers who were
supposed to start building roads, repairing the power grid, etc.,
once Cedras stepped down.

The most humiliating experience

Waiting to welcome the U.S. troops, too, were the U.S. charge
d'affaires, Vicki Huddleston, her security contingent, my
photographer and I. Fueled by Barbancourt rum and the safe distance
from U.S. troops, Constant and his gang started rocking Huddleston's
car, screaming anti-American slogans, and waving machetes, clubs and
guns. Her security force whisked her away. That left my photographer
and me vs. Constant and his group. After some pushing and shoving, we
were able to get away.

Later that day, the Harlan County weighed anchor and left. It was my
most humiliating experience as an American: A bunch of street thugs
had scared off the most powerful nation in the world.

About a year later, I had the opportunity to describe the incident to
President Clinton. He explained that he hadn't wanted to put American
lives at risk. I told him that the moment that those U.S. troops had
started coming down the gangplank, the FRAPH goons would have turned
tail and headed for the hills. Instead, they prevailed.

Sadly, it looks as if we've let them prevail again.

© 2004 The Miami Herald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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