[News] COHA on Haiti - memorandum to the press

[News at freedomarchives.org]

1730 M Street NW, Suite 1010, Washington, 
D.C.  20036    Phone:  202-216-9261  Fax:  202-223-6035
Email: <mailto:coha at coha.org>coha at coha.org   Website: 
<http://www.coha.org>www.coha.org

Council On Hemispheric Affairs

Monitoring Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the Western 
Hemisphere

Memorandum to the Press 04.06

Tuesday, February 10, 2004


The following 794-word COHA finding on the rapidly deteriorating situation 
in Haiti is available as an op-ed submission (market restrictions will be 
respected) or can be freely quoted, with attribution.

  COHA has been closely monitoring events in Haiti for many years. It has 
issued scores of memoranda on the subject, which can be found on our 
website. A COHA research fellow has recently returned from a one-week trip 
to Haiti and is available to be interviewed. Please be in touch with our 
office (202-216-9261) for additional material or commentary on Haiti.

  Memorandum to the Press

HAITI

What had been an increasingly disloyal and violent opposition is now 
leading an openly anti-democratic insurrection, as anti-Aristide forces 
turn Haiti into a hellish war zone, using sequestered weapons to sack a 
number of cities.  An existing explosive political stalemate has been 
worsening since December, when the rebels adopted a violent street strategy 
along with an inflexible policy of non-negotiation to oust President 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.  Yet for the State Department, Haitis desperate 
struggle to preserve its hard-won democracy was given low 
priority.  Strangely, given the likely crushing impact on U.S. domestic 
politics registered by tens of thousands of desperate Haitians who 
predictably will soon undertake the perilous voyage to Florida, Secretary 
of State Colin Powell remains almost languorous in the face of daily fierce 
melées in Port-au-Prince.  Meanwhile, the Haitian opposition organizes a 
blatant power grab through belligerent demonstrations aimed at unseating 
Aristide.  Now Haiti has entered into an endgame with portentous 
consequences, as armed opposition mobs loot a number of cities and scores 
of residents are killed.



In recent months, the oppositions strategy has become increasingly 
clear.  Lacking the numerical strength to win an election, its elitist 
leaders threatened to violently oust Aristide if he refused to 
resign.  Haitis conservative factions have despised Aristide for his 
stridency and radical message ever since he was first elected in 1990 by a 
two-thirds majority.  His hordes of adoring followers alienated the islands 
tiny mulatto-dominated elite and the countrys paramilitary.  But Aristide 
was unable to effectively establish security either by reining in his own 
Lavalas militants or the oppositions street fighters, nor could he entirely 
professionalize his outnumbered police force.  The oppositions increasingly 
bellicose anti-Aristide street marches became a coup in the making that 
threatened to replicate the appalling repression suffered by Haiti under 
military rule, 1991-94.



Secretary Powell and his controversial Latin American aide, Roger Noriega, 
have at best used delphic prose in responding to Haitian issues.  Rather 
than demanding that the opposition immediately choose its representatives 
to the Provisional Electoral Council and end its cat-and-mouse game aimed 
at sabotaging any prospect of parliamentary elections (which the opposition 
almost certainly would lose), Washington is unable to hide its 
pro-opposition bias, even though it cannot be seen as backing the overthrow 
of a democratically-elected president.



Given the rebelsideological and financial ties to the U.S. they are 
generously funded by U.S. taxpayers through the International Republican 
Institute Washingtons open denouncement of their obstructionism could have 
an electrifying positive effect.  Yet, this has not been forthcoming, 
partly because U.S. hemispheric policy is guided by a small group of 
extremists with strong ideological ties to former Senator Jesse Helms, who 
simplistically see Aristide as the Caribbeans next Castro.



Aside from pro-forma language, Washington has shown little interest in 
ensuring that Aristide serves out his constitutionally-mandated term 
through 2006.  On the contrary, it repeatedly questions his bona fides and 
unfairly holds him accountable for Haitis economic woes which, in fact, the 
U.S. almost single-mindedly has helped to achieve.  The White House carped 
at Aristides admitted shortcomings, while it led efforts to freeze $500 
million in international pledges to the island.  The U.S. has placed 
demands that Aristide could not possibly fulfill without the resources it 
will not grant him, thereby giving the opposition a veritable veto over 
Haitis future. Meanwhile, the political stalemate that produced a crippled 
economy has now alienated large numbers of Haitians, who have lost faith in 
democracy.  In the last few days the situation has markedly worsened, as 
street demonstrations have become bloody riots and armed rebels emerge 
intent on overthrowing a legal government which, with all of its flaws, was 
neither cruel nor authoritarian.



Aside from its impermissible diktat mandating Aristides departure, what do 
the rebels demand?  Starting last December, its thugs took to the streets 
and insisted that all schools and hospitals be closed until Aristide 
leaves, and then underscored their demands by torching their buildings and 
roughing up students.  In the last few days, the coup unfolded, as rebel 
forces seized 9 cities and hunted down government officials.  The 
preemptory demand for Aristides resignation without further dialogue or 
negotiation all along has been an audacious bluff meant to mask the fact 
that the rebels lacked sufficient votes to legitimately win an election, 
although they held Washingtons proxy.



With a Haiti policy long bankrupt and now unraveling, U.S. policymakers 
have grossly misused the islands most valuable political asset, a now 
tarnished Aristide.  The longer that Washington equivocates, the countrys 
disintegrating economy will further sap Aristides authority, while the 
rebels with their gangster tactics certainly will help propel tens of 
thousands of Haitian refugees to head for U.S. shores with a legitimate 
asylum claim.  As Haiti enters its final destructive phase, the U.S. will 
rue the day that it birthed such a spavined policy.



Larry Birns and Jessica Leight

Larry Birns is the director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric 
Affairs, where Jessica Leight is a research fellow.




Issued 10 February, 2004

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, 
non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. 
It has been described on the Senate floor as being one of the nations most 
respected bodies of scholars and policy makers.For more information, please 
see our web page at www.coha.org; or contact our Washington offices by 
phone (202) 216-9261, fax (202) 223-6035, or email coha at coha.org.

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20040211/40351aab/attachment.htm>