[News] Haiti’s Military Monster Makes a Creeping Comeback

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Haiti’s Military Monster Makes a Creeping Comeback

Written by Brian Fitzpatrick
Thursday, 05 July 2012 15:35
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/haiti-archives-51/3736-haitis-military-monster-makes-a-creeping-comeback


“I am in charge of Haiti!” one excited former 
soldier in his fifties exclaims. The others laugh 
on cue, one of them holding a handgun casually by 
his side. Swinging around to pose for the camera, 
an older man in fatigues carelessly waves the 
barrel of his machine gun past me at chest 
height. Two hours north of Port-au-Prince, in the 
town of Saint-Marc, we’ve received our first 
introduction to the 3,000-strong band of military 
enthusiasts dubbed Haiti’s “rogue” army.

Two-hundred yards past a police checkpoint, the 
illegal group has set up its own road stop in 
full view of passing UN vehicles; a green blur of 
ill-fitting helmets, mismatched uniforms and 
bullet belts. It is Bonne Fête Saint-Marc, the 
town’s annual celebration, and they’ve chosen the 
big day for a show of force. Remarkably, the 
nearby UN personnel and Haitian police (PNH) maintain only a watching brief.

Mobilizing most visibly in May 2011 after 
President Michel Martelly’s inauguration, the 
collection of former non-commissioned army 
officers and their younger tagalongs had long 
been in covert training, but ramped things up 
considerably once Martelly - who made the return 
of the long-disbanded Haitian Armed Forces 
(FAd’H) a core promise of his election campaign - took office.

In February they seized a number of former 
military bases and demanded that the president 
stick to his word. A government effort to diffuse 
the situation by repaying overdue military 
pensions was ignored by the rebels, most of whom 
didn’t qualify for the payments. Saying they’d 
accept nothing less than roles in the new force, 
they began provoking the UN and PNH, most notably 
when 50 uniformed “soldiers” showed up at 
parliament with hand grenades at the ready.

In the mountain town of Terre Rouge, we approach 
the gates of a one-time FAd’H base. A group of 
maybe 20 men stand around, one carrying a 
machete, another a shotgun. As in Saint-Marc, 
older army types are flanked by their younger 
followers, who look on vacantly. Here, though, 
they’re not so keen on photo ops.

“It was spies taking pictures in 1994 which 
caused the army to fall,” one of the commanders 
says. “We don’t know who you are.” Not a good 
start. “Why did you hide the car?” another blurts 
out angrily. “If you’ve nothing to hide, show us the car.”

We hadn’t spotted the base built into the 
mountainside until we were around a bend in the 
road, and had innocently left our car sitting out 
of view. Though our guides fearlessly argue our 
case, when one of the “soldiers” tells them that, 
“It’s Haitians like you who give the country a 
bad name,” we decide to cut our losses.

These encounters came in the weeks before May 18, 
Haitian Flag Day, when a large demonstration in 
Port-au-Prince ended in a brief firefight and the 
eventual disbandment of the paramilitary force by 
a joint PNH and UN operation which was met with 
little resistance. On the face of it that 
appeared to be the end of the saga, but in fact 
it may only be the end of the beginning.

For months President Martelly had done nothing to 
dampen the rogue army’s expectations, leading to 
speculation that he was quietly supporting their 
efforts after growing impatient with a commission 
he had installed to map out the military’s 
recreation. Saying they answered only to the 
president, the paramilitaries had put a lot of 
their weapons out of view after he ordered them 
to do so, but otherwise they had gone about their business undisturbed.

Others theorized that though this was a crisis 
Martelly created, it was later shifted beyond his 
control by other political opportunists and 
outside players. Just who funded the band’s 
uniforms and guns, provided their shiny new 
trucks and filled them with gas, and bought their 
generators is as of yet a mystery. By the time 
they were dissolved, however, the group had 
succeeded in gaining a good deal of sympathy from 
a Haitian people deeply cynical after eight years 
of thousands of UN troops, but zero progress.

Since arriving in 2004, the UN Stabilization 
Mission in Haiti (Minustah) has helped to train 
the 10,000-strong PNH, but it has also been 
dogged by controversy, which explains its 
reluctance to break up the rogue army using the 
force which its Chapter Seven mandate allows.

Seen as an occupation force sent to rubberstamp 
the 2004 coup against hugely popular president 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Minustah raids on the 
Cité Soleil slum over the course of 2005 and 2006 
made a bad start unredeemable.

Officially described as incursions to break up 
kidnap gangs or “bandits,” operations such as the 
one which used 22,000 rounds of ammunition to 
take out Aristide’s most high-profile loyalist, 
Emmanuel “Dred” Wilme, also killed large numbers 
of civilians as bullets designed to pierce armor ripped through flimsy shacks.

As outlined in the important recent collection of 
essays Tectonic Shifts: Haiti Since the 
Earthquake, Haiti actually has a homicide rate 
much lower than many of its neighbors such as 
Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the US Virgin 
Islands. Brazil, Minustah’s main troop supplier, 
has a civilian violence rate some 300% higher.

Despite this, among 16 UN missions across the 
globe with a total of 119,215 personnel, 
Minustah, with 10,409 troops and police and 
12,552 in total on its books, ranks only behind 
Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lebanon in the numbers game.

The people’s resentment of this war zone approach 
to a country without a conflict has been topped 
up by cases such as the December 2007 deportation 
of 114 Sri Lankan Minustah soldiers over charges 
of sexual abuse against underage girls. As we 
pass the entrance to a huge UN base in 
Port-au-Prince, graffiti on the walls reads: “No 
trespassing. Risk to be [sic] molested and put in jail.”

The final straw came in October 2010, after a 
cholera outbreak near the town of Mirebalais. The 
disease spread like wildfire and has since killed 
over 7,000 people, but although independent 
studies point to the cholera being introduced to 
Haiti by Nepalese blue helmets stationed in the 
town, thus far the UN has not accepted responsibility.

Disasters like this are ideal fodder for the 
likes of former army sergeant Aubin Larose. At 
Camp Lamentin, a former FAd’H base in the 
Carrefour neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, the 
self-styled leader of the paramilitaries played 
the evildoing “foreigners” of Minustah off 
against his new, improved army in the days before the May 18 crackdown.

“When the army comes we will make sure that you 
have security,” he said. “Minustah came to bring 
peace into the country but peace is not there – 
it’s a war. They gave us cholera and a lot of our brothers and sisters died.”

“If we can’t have an army, we don’t want any 
other army,” another former sergeant, Yves Jeudy, 
said defiantly in front of around 150 “soldiers” 
the following day. “We’ve decided we’re not going 
back. They need to give us an answer quick. We’re running out of patience.”

That answer was seen on May 18 when, sticking to 
a deadline for action which they themselves had 
given to the government, Aubin, Jeudy and 
hundreds of other wannabe soldiers launched their 
demonstration in Port-au-Prince. The march soon 
turned ugly, with protestors throwing rocks at 
Minustah troops, followed by a brief shoot-out 
during which Camp Lamentin was cleared without loss of life.

Some fifty people were arrested; Aubin was 
detained for assaulting a police officer, with 
others charged with carrying illegal weapons. 
Intriguingly two Americans - Jason William Petrie 
(39) of Barberton, Ohio and Steven Parker Shaw 
(57) of Dighton, Massachusetts - were charged 
with conspiracy for their part in the rally, 
after allegedly acting as drivers for rogue army 
members. In the following days the other camps 
dotting the country were abandoned, and the 
“soldiers” melted back into the hills.

Contacted via email in recent days, US Navy Lt. 
Cmdr. Jim Hoeft at Minustah’s Military Public 
Information Office said things are quiet at the 
minute, but added that the UN remains vigilant.


“It appears...those paramilitary who expressed 
their wish to recreate a Haitian army have 
decided to go home and allow the government of 
Haiti to proceed on its process of studying and 
determining the feasibility of a new army,” Hoeft 
said. “Minustah continues to partner with PNH, 
conducting joint patrols, looking for all illegal activity.”

The Defend Haiti news service, however, quoted 
the group’s leaders as saying that theirs was “a 
tactical retreat in order to continue the 
struggle for [the] remobilization [of] FAd'H.” 
“Nobody knows where they’ve gone,” one source 
recently told me of the rebels’ disappearing act. 
“They’ve all gone very quiet.”

Ominously, Defend Haiti also reported that Guy 
Philippe - the rebel commander who led the 2004 
overthrow of the government and became an 
increasingly visible presence as the tension 
mounted in recent months - had bitterly 
criticized the PNH for doing the bidding of the 
UN, which had “humiliated” the Haitian people on Flag Day.

Martelly has since moved to push the army issue 
to the background, saying that the recreation of 
the force is not one of his current priorities 
but insisting that it will be achieved by the 
time his term ends. It would appear that a 
combination of international donor concern at the 
army’s return to a country still reeling from the 
devastating 2010 earthquake, the embarrassment 
caused by the recent fiasco, and urgings from his 
own experts that he remain patient have for now 
convinced the president to let the matter cool.

Regular Haiti watchers know, however, that the 
nation is currently witnessing perhaps its most 
significant bout of political maneuvering since 
the build-up to the 2004 coup. As always, and 
despite the president’s recent backpedaling, the army is front and center.

Elected only after Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti’s most 
popular political party, was barred by the 
Electoral Council from running candidates, 
Martelly’s first year in office can most 
generously be described as organized chaos.

Starting with the dubious mandate that a 24% 
initial voter turnout and the Fanmi Lavalas 
expulsion ensured, he has been for the most part 
hamstrung by a non-functioning parliament. After 
prolonged bickering with lawmakers and the 
resignation of his first prime minister Garry 
Conille, his fourth choice for the job, Laurent 
Lamothe, was only installed in recent weeks.

Fanmi Lavalas, which sprung from the now divided 
Lavalas movement, is the support base of 
Aristide, who before his 2004 ouster had also 
been overthrown in 1991. Under the Lavalas and 
Fanmi Lavalas banners, Aristide had won landslide 
election victories in 1990 and 2000. Reinstated 
after US intervention in 1994, he disbanded the 
FAd’H the following year, establishing the PNH in its place.

The army had for decades terrorized the Haitian 
people, killing tens of thousands of innocents 
under the dictatorships of Francois Duvalier and 
his son Jean-Claude when supplemented by Tonton 
Macoutes death squads. Later, under General Raoul 
Cédras’s military junta (1991-1994), groups like 
the Front for the Advancement and Progress of 
Haiti (FRAPH) paramilitaries were used as the 
modern incarnation of the Tonton Macoutes, 
helping the army to wipe out over 3,000 civilians.

A vocal cheerleader against both Aristide 
administrations during his long career as a kompa 
singer, Martelly once ran a Pétionville nightclub 
called the Garage which was frequented by the 
military/Duvalierist clique. His friendship with 
the infamous former police chief Michel François, 
principal death squad organizer under Cédras, is well documented.

Since Aristide’s 2004 removal – which he has 
called a US-orchestrated kidnapping – there has 
been a consistent effort to undermine Fanmi 
Lavalas, mostly via outright repression but also 
by denying it access to the ballot box.

Aristide has now returned to Haiti after years in 
exile, but has said he will remain outside of 
politics to concentrate on education, despite 
speculation to the contrary. Though no longer 
credited with the squeaky clean image he once 
enjoyed, there can be no doubt that more than 
anyone he remains a symbol of hope for Haiti’s poorest.

In Carrefour, Ansyto Felix, communications 
officer for Fanmi Lavalas, would not be drawn on 
the matter of the former leader’s future role.

“I don’t speak for President Aristide but I know 
he loves his people a lot,” he said. “When there 
are problems in Haiti, he has problems. Every 
time blood drips, he feels like it’s his blood. 
He will talk to anyone; he has an open mind.”

Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier - who ruled Haiti 
from 1971 until being overthrown in 1986 and 
fleeing into exile – also returned to the country 
in January of last year, but a judge has decided 
that he will face only corruption and not human 
rights abuse charges. The impunity Duvalier 
enjoys – ignoring his “house arrest” status to 
attend various functions around Port-au-Prince – 
has done little to deflect accusations about 
Martelly’s coziness with the former dictator’s cronies.

The new army – which Martelly insists is 
necessary for tasks like border security and to 
combat drug smuggling - is projected to employ 
3,500 soldiers at a cost of around $95 million. 
It is also thought that a new municipal police 
force, dubbed a “secret” police, will be formed. 
In Haiti, of course, the term secret police 
instantly brings to mind the Tonton Macoutes. 
Contacted on the possibility of such a unit 
emerging, Minustah head of communications Eliane 
Nabaa would say only that the mission “does not comment on speculation.”

Mario Joseph, the renowned Haitian human rights 
lawyer who runs the Bureau des Avo­cats 
Inter­na­tionaux (BAI), is a busy man. His phone 
goes off non-stop as we sit down at his 
Port-au-Prince office, which has been peppered 
with bullets as he continues his long and often 
lone struggle for the rights of Haiti’s poorest.

“He’s doing the same thing that Duvalier was 
doing,” Joseph says of Martelly. “They’re 
reporting back to him, giving him information. 
This is why he’s trying to restore the army. They 
put a few big guys in there so they could cover 
the pink army. They’ve recruited the young guys 
so they can make a militia.” The “pink army” 
Joseph refers to is Martelly’s following; pink 
was the chosen color of his election campaign.

“Some of them don’t want the army, but they put 
him in power illegally and now it’s backfired,” 
he says of the international community. “Now, 
Martelly is trying to gain control. The elite 
people, the army was good for them, but now they 
have to pay more money for security. We don’t 
need an army. There is no war here.”

Among those Joseph works with are the women at 
Favilek (Fanm Viktim Leve Kanpe: Women Victims 
Get Up, Stand Up), a support group formed in 1993 
to represent victims of military and paramilitary violence.

The 80-strong group campaigns for justice for the 
rapes, torture and loss of loved ones they 
suffered during military rule between 1991 and 
1994. At their offices in Port-au-Prince, three 
women tell stories almost beyond belief, 
outlining their fears of what a new army might mean.

“My husband used to travel to the countryside,” 
says Jean Maricia (52). “I lived in my house with 
five kids. When Aristide was removed, the 
military began going door to door. They asked you 
if you had ID cards, or whether there were any guns in the house.

“The last time they called there were three guys 
who came. They said ‘where are the men of the 
house?’ At that time, they were taking out a lot of boys and killing them.”

With no men to be found, Jean was blindfolded and 
brought to the infamous Fort Dimanche prison. 
Released eight days later, she returned home to 
find the soldiers had murdered one of her boys. 
Bringing food to his grandmother, he had been killed in the street.

“I was shot,” says Suzette Similien (47) 
abruptly, revealing a jagged scar below her 
waistline sustained in a shooting in the Canapé 
Vert area of the city. “They encircled the whole 
block with cars, and shot at everybody. After 
that, I went into hiding for five years.

“I was a witness so they wanted to get rid of me. 
Even by 1997, people were still menacing me. I 
met a few former soldiers who asked me ‘why are 
you still here?’ If the military do come back, 
I’m going to try and leave Haiti.”

The third woman, Marie Francoise St-Charles (48), 
tells how she herself was raped by a military 
“attache” - a loose term for paramilitary gunmen 
“attached” to the military - whilst seven months 
pregnant. She offers this up only as a footnote, 
after she has first told of the unspeakable 
horrors others suffered. That macabre catalogue 
includes mothers forced to have sex with their 
own sons, women having children after being raped 
by soldiers, and others dying of AIDS as a result of such rapes.

Historian Georges Michel, a member of President 
Martelly’s commission to organize the 
reconstruction of the army, says he understands 
the intense fear a great many Haitians have of 
the military, but insists that relying on at 
least some ex-FAd’H personnel to form a new force is unavoidable.

“If we don’t recruit old officers from the 
existing stock then we will have, in three years 
[for example] a 23-year-old lieutenant-general 
and that is not acceptable. It would be very dangerous,” he says.

“The decision has already been made. It’s not 
whether we need [an army] or not. We are an 
implementation commission. It is a farce to think 
that the police can do all kinds of security 
business, especially in a country like Haiti.

“Martelly has less than four years to remain in 
power, and four years is the bare minimum time 
for us to implement this [plan]. We were given 
six months and from the beginning we knew that it wouldn’t be enough.

“When Minustah leaves, if we don’t have a 
functional military then you will see private 
military erupt from every corner of the country. 
When they have overthrown the government, they 
will fight each other and then you will have Somalia: chaos.”

Is it possible that Haiti can have a new, 
improved army, one that will protect rather than prey on its own people?

“It will be small, efficient, well-trained and 
obedient, and it will be able to do its various 
duties,” Michel insists, but the women at Favilek aren’t convinced.

“It’s the same kind of people,” they say 
together. “The old guys will just sneak back in 
and do the same crazy things again.”

“I’m scared,” Jean Maricia says. “I’ve already 
been introduced to them. You don’t know their hearts.”

Brian Fitzpatrick is a freelance reporter. He can 
be contacted 
at<mailto:bfitz3 at hotmail.com>bfitz3 at hotmail.com. 
Additional reporting by Michael Norby.




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