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| Memorandum to the Press 04.63 |
Thursday, 23September,
2004 |
Word Count: 3150
• Disbanded Haitian army seeks to be reconstituted
• Latortue government is more a cruel joke than a professional presence
• UN special representative and military force still too invisible
Six months
after the abrupt and violence-laced departure of constitutionally elected
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and over three months after the deployment
of U.N. peacekeeping units which were hailed as an instrument for order and
stability in this long-troubled Caribbean island, Haiti remains poised on
the edge of chaos. Just as nature in the form of a tropical storm that has
managed to kill perhaps 1,000 Haitians, thousands more have died over the
past decade, victims of right-wing military and paramilitary forces. Today,
ruled by a bumptious, ineffectual and illegitimate cabal whose only validity
is supplied by U.S. fiat, Haiti now faces the imminent de facto reconstitution
of its brutal Haitian Armed Forces (FADH), dissolved by Aristide in 1995.
Across the island, bands of former soldiers are seizing police stations and
establishing themselves as the de facto local power, at times displacing the
remnants of the national police and placing large swaths of the country under
what is effectively outlaw rebel jurisdiction. Meanwhile these soldiers demand
the restitution of unpaid wages over the past ten years.
These
soldiers of ill-fortune have met little, if any, resistance from the rump
Washington-imposed interim government of Washington-designated Prime Minister
Gerard Latortue, and at times they have received open encouragement from Latortue's
"cabinet members," most notably Interior Minister (and former general)
Herard Abraham and the island's sinister justice minister Bernard Gousse,
both of whom have suggested that former soldiers – some of the most prominent
among whom have already been convicted in absentia for human rights violations
committed during the military government of 1991-1994 – could simply be integrated
into the police force.
An
Army Reborn
In the face of these developments, FADH leaders are gathering strength in
a bid to retake political power and restore the repression for which the army
could always be counted to provide throughout most of Haiti's turbulent twentieth
century history, the U.N. stabilization force and the international community
alike have remained almost deafeningly silent. At the present time, the U.N.
presence in Haiti is more myth than fact, while a handful of renegades with
a military background, in conjunction with the opposition group of 184, have
the clearest access to the Latortue regime and its ability to impact on the
daily lives of the population. Within Haiti, international troops drawn principally
from the rogue armed forces of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, which are better
known for the repression of their own citizens during previous eras of military
rule than for their nation-building skills, are seemingly paralyzed by inaction.
These U.N. forces have made only the paltriest of efforts to preserve order
in the face of paramilitary power-grabs by ex-FADH figures like Louis-Jodel
Chamblain and Guy Philippe. They have been better at stalking pro-Aristide
Lavalas party's political forces than armed renegade former soldiers.
In Washington, a State Department preoccupied by Iraq and North Korea appears
to have all but overlooked the island's existence; and in New York, a craven
lack of political will is in evidence, accompanied by the kind of Machiavellian
plotting by the U.S. and French Security Council delegations that was witnessed
when that body refused to provide an international police force to defend
Arisitide earlier this year. Nor is U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan any
more sensitive to the plight of the Haitian populace than he was just before
Aristide’s downfall, when he provided cover for the U.S. insistence that the
former president deserved to be forced into exile because he was a failed
leader.
There has yet to be any kind of clear acknowledgment of the magnitude of the
threat that Haiti's already battered democratic institutions face from the
military resurgence on the island, much less the strategy which will be used
to disarm these illegal militias as well as clearly establish the authority
of a trained, professional police force, and bring to justice those former
soldiers accused of human rights abuses who are now making outrageous demands
for compensation. Quite to the contrary, as the exoneration of mass murderer
Louis Chamblain by Justice Minister Gousse and the island's tainted courts
graphically exemplifies, Haiti is still a very sick country.
Thus as the clock continues to tick on a peacekeeping mission originally authorized
for only six months, it seems increasingly likely that the United Nations
will exit Haiti much as the United States and Canada precipitously did in
1996: leaving behind a profoundly unstable political situation dominated by
heavily armed factions, as thousands of weapons remain in the possession of
right-wing vigilantes as well as some in the hands of pro-Aristide supporters.
The situation is made even more volatile today by the former military leadership’s
aspirations to restore both the army and liven the same reign of terror it
applied during the decades-long Duvalier and post-Duvalier military dictatorships,
as well as under the brutal 1991-1994 military junta of the cunning General
Roaul Cedras.
The
Haitian Military: Rising from the Ashes?
Among the most alarming signs of military resurgence within the last sixty
days was the acquittal on August 17, in a show trial, of former army captain
and paramilitary leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain, previously convicted in absentia
for the 1993 murder of prominent Aristide supporter Antoine Izmery. This outrageous
verdict, achieved under the aegis of Latortue’s disreputable justice minister,
Bernard Gousse, was reached after a ludicrously brief overnight trial in which
the prosecution called only one witness who proved to be entirely irrelevant
to the case. This earned for the interim government stinging indictments on
the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post as well
as widespread denunciations from human rights organizations, and even from
the State Department, which bears much of the blame for the current dysfunctional
rule of the island. However, the subsequent rash of self-serving individual
power plays on the part of the ex-soldiers, and the government's utter unwillingness
to confront or even denounce such challenges to state authority, has received
virtually no attention outside of Haiti. This development has to be rightfully
considered part of the same dangerous phenomenon of the growing power of former
military figures like Chamblain, as well as sly ideologues like the smiling
Justice Minister Gousse, who was clearly complicit in orchestrating Chamblain's
acquittal.
For example, only six days after the conclusion of the Chamblain trial, the
Haitian Times reported on August 18 that the interim government had appointed
Winter Etienne – a leader of the bloody armed uprising in Gonaives that preceded
Aristide's exile, who is also the coordinator of the National Reconstruction
Front, a party headed by former army officers, including rebel leader Guy
Philippe – as director of the National Port Authority in Gonaives, the very
city he earlier had helped sack. At the Ministry of Interior, former ranking
military figure Minister Herard Abraham continues to add former high-ranking
military cronies to his staff; among the recent arrivals is former colonel
Williams Regala, a particularly sinister aide to former dictator General Henri
Namphy and undoubtedly a principal plotter of the massacre of voters during
Haiti’s aborted November 29, 1987 election. Regala joins another former colleague,
Colonel Henri-Robert Marc-Charles, a member of the Cedras-led military junta
that overthrew democratically-elected President Aristide 1991, and who is
currently the target of a (as yet un-enforced) judicial order requiring his
imprisonment prior to trial for involvement in a peasant massacre in Piatre
in March 1990.
Erosion
of Authority of the most pathetic Government in the Caribbean
Given these pro-military signals on the part of the Latortue government, which
consistently has demonstrated its sympathy for former military leaders at
the same time it officially rejects the idea of reconstituting the armed forces
on the grounds that such a momentous step should be taken only by the next
elected government, it is hardly surprising that bands of former soldiers
are making ever more far-fetched bids for power in cities across Haiti. On
August 17, five officers of the national police’s riot squad (CIMO) returned
to their Port-au-Prince headquarters asserting that a group wearing uniforms
of the disbanded military had attacked them and seized their weapons and uniforms.
Subsequently, Radio Kiskeya reported that other CIMO officers have accused
the government-appointed director of the National Police Administration and
former military figure, Destorel Germain, of organizing the attack along with
a number of demobilized soldiers seeking reinstatement, an accusation that
raises the specter of collaboration between some of the more predatory elements
of the police force and bands of ex-soldiers, in the latter's fight for legal
status.
Former soldiers have already begun to establish their control over a series
of small urban areas, particularly in the desperately poor Central Plateau
region. On September 1, a large force of 150 former soldiers took control
of Petit-Gove, southwest of the capital, and seized ten police officers as
hostages the following day in neighboring Grand-Gove, in retaliation for the
arrest of four soldiers by police officials. The two sides subsequently agreed
to an exchange of prisoners. Also on September 2, more than fifty heavily
armed ex-soldiers demonstrated in Gonaives, calling for the reconstitution
of the army and the restoration of their back pay. Once there, they were met
with open arms by the fiercely anti-Aristide rebel group, the Gonaives Resistance
Front – itself largely constituted by former soldiers – which expressed its
support for the immediate formation of a legally reorganized and retrained
army.
Even more alarming was the response of the official government authorities
to the Gonaives march. Rather than denouncing this clear threat to public
order on the part of a “gang of thugs” (as they had been earlier characterized
by Secretary of State Colin Powell), departmental delegate Elie Cantave declared
that the former soldiers had no aim other than to help the people of that
city and negotiated with the establishment of a headquarters in a state school
within the city. Further south in Jacmel and on the same day, yet another
contingent of former soldiers arrived to reinforce with arms and ammunition
a group of their colleagues occupying the office of Radio Ti Moun. And in
perhaps the most symbolically important incident, former soldiers occupied
the police station in Belladere on the Dominican border on September 5 and
immediately repainted the facility in yellow, the traditional color of FADH
barracks. Simultaneously, the band of ex-soldiers in control of Petit-Goave
was swelled by new arrivals, and coast guard installations in Les Cayes remained
under the control of ex-soldiers.
The first evidence of a response on the part of the government and the U.N.
peacekeeping force came on September 7, when Haitian police, backed by Argentine
troops, regained control of Saint-Marc a day after former soldiers took control
of the city sixty miles north of Port-au-Prince. In response, rebel leader
Sergeant Remissanthe Ravix declared on behalf of the ex-soldiers, "We'll
fight to the last man. We'd rather die in combat instead of dying on our knees.
They [government authorities] came to power thanks to our weapons they now
declare illegal. If they think they can deny us our rights, they will know
the same fate as Aristide. The fact that we left Saint-Marc does not mean
we gave up. We'll teach a lesson to those who want to destroy the military."
Ravix, once implicated in a brutal 2002 massacre committed by former FADH
personnel in Belladere, is now the most visible and rambunctious spokesman
for the ex-soldiers' movement, which is on the brink of maintaining de facto
control over large swaths of Haiti.
Escalating
Violence, Ineffective Response
The government's show of force in Saint-Marc on September 7 hardly deterred
the ex-soldiers in their attempts to establish themselves as a rival security
force. Also, on September 7 in Port-au-Prince, two ex-soldiers, reportedly
from Petit-Goave, were shot and killed by riot police near the Prime Minister's
office in Musseau after firing at a police station. According to Police Commissioner
Fritz Gerald Appolon, the two were riding in a seized police vehicle that
had been reconfigured as an army vehicle, and were fatally wounded after one
of them shot at a police officer who had called upon him to lay down his weapon.
Ravix denounced the incident as an "assassination" and called for
retaliation across the country. The following day, in response, a group of
ex-soldiers attacked the police station in Hinche and hundreds of former FADH
and their supporters from other anti-Aristide factions paraded in Cap-Haitien
demanding ten years of back-pay. These former soldiers already had begun arrogating
police functions inside of Cap-Haitien to themselves, including surveillance
patrols. In Petit-Goave, rebels took four police officers hostage and seized
their weapons, though they were released later that day.
In the face of this wave of new challenges, the government and U.N. peacekeepers
alike appear virtually helpless. Prime Minister Latortue and his self-caricaturing
government have made bold declarations that peacekeepers will "imminently"
retake control of all government buildings, but the prospect of any such action
occurring any time soon appears to be nothing more than a mixture of bluff
and fantasy. The government has set up a committee to negotiate with the soldiers
and offered as initial concessions the integration into the police force of
up to 1,000 former soldiers of a force that once numbered over 6,000 in strength.
However, Ravix refused to meet with the commission, declaring in Petit-Goave,
"The government doesn't need to reconstitute us. We are here. We have
always been here. The only thing the government has to do is pay us the 10
years, seven months they owe us and let us do our jobs." On September
12, the government did succeed in obtaining the commitment of a group of representatives
of former military personnel (of which Ravix was not a member) to a vaguely
worded declaration asserting that "The matter of the military will be
dealt with through dialogue; the authority of the Government must be respected;
[and] the voluntary and peaceful evacuation of public buildings actually under
the control of demobilized soldiers must be done… within the framework of
an agreement between the two parties."
Whether this vague rhetoric will produce any concessions in practice on the
part of the ex-soldiers remains to be seen, but subsequent demonstrations
in their support in St.-Marc and Petit-Goave, on September 13 and a march
of ex-soldiers wearing military uniforms in the capital on September 15 sent
a clear signal that the militant remnants of the FADH are far from ready to
lay down their arms to civil authority.
Stabilization
Mission is Too Weak to Stabilize
At the same time that the government has shown itself utterly incapable of
(or uninterested in) controlling the rebel bands, the U.N. Stabilization Mission
(MINUSTHAH) has disavowed itself of any responsibility in dealing with the
ex-soldiers. Spokesman Toussaint Kongo-Doudou declared, "We have no comment
on the subject because it is a government problem. It is not a problem of
the MINUSTHA. This is a Haitian affair." As astounding as this statement
appears, given that among the principal points of MINUSTAH'S mandate are the
disarmament of armed factions – of which the ex-soldiers are currently the
most powerful – and the establishment of a climate of security in advance
of national elections on the island is a must, the de facto acknowledgement
of a stalemate when it comes to security issues is an all too accurate description
of the current limitations of the undersized U.N. force now in Haiti. To date,
only 2,755 of an authorized 6,700 U.N. troops have arrived in Haiti, making
deployments in the north and east of the country impossible, and only a third
of the 1,622 civilian police officers authorized have been deployed. Thus
the U.N. is unable to maintain a security presence in many of the more remote
regions of the countryside, and has yet to launch the disarmament program
that is a fundamental prerequisite for the reestablishment of some measure
of political stability.
Moreover, the force's Brazilian commanders have openly warned that they do
not have enough troops to stop renewed conflict. Likewise, Argentine Defense
Minister Jos Pampuro highlighted the particularly troubling prospect that
renewed skirmishes could have taken place on September 18, the anniversary
of the dissolution of the army by Aristide. While additional troops from Sri
Lanka, Nepal, Spain and Morocco, among others, are expected to bring the total
MINUSTAH force to 5,000 members by the end of October, for the moment the
U.N. peacekeepers have been rendered completely incapable of fulfilling their
most basic function: preserving order and a measure of governmental authority.
The
Sound of Silence: Washington, New York Turn Their Eyes Away from Port-au-Prince
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the rapidly deteriorating security situation
in Haiti is the extraordinary indifference, aside from some storm-related
humanitarian aide in response to the natural catastrophe that just hit Haiti,
that has been exhibited by the international community in the face of this
creeping coup being executed by the former FADH. The Security Council issued
only an anemic statement on September 10 in which it stressed "the urgency
of disbanding and disarming all illegal armed groups," but offered not
even the whisper of a commitment to ensure that this task is in fact achieved.
The Organization of American States has remained silent, as has the State
Department, and much of the Caribbean Community, which over the past six months
had taken the most courageous stands on unfolding events in Haiti. CARICOM
is now riven by internal divisions over whether to readmit the Latortue government
into CARICOM.
Also strangely absent is the recently appointed U.N. Special Representative
to Haiti, Chilean diplomat Juan Gabriel Valdés, whose selection was
widely hailed as evidence of a new Latin American commitment to inter-hemispheric
cooperation, who has since all but disappeared from carrying out his admittedly
difficult mission. While his capacity for action may be constrained, Valdés
should at the very least be actively attempting to convey to the Security
Council, the Bush administration and the leaders of other hemispheric bodies
the gravity of the unfolding military takeover in Haiti. Unfortunately, up
to now, Haiti’s plight has been overshadowed by the persistent bloodshed in
Darfur, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or has been patronizingly dismissed as yet
another round of violence in a perennially unstable country.
Haiti has reached a point of crisis, and decisive intervention is required
if any shred of, or hope for, Haitian democracy is to be preserved. However
shorthanded and overburdened its staff may be, the task of convincing the
international community of the necessity of such intervention falls first
to the U.N. Stabilization Mission and to Valdés. Hopefully, in the
coming months they will decisively demonstrate their commitment to ensuring
that Haiti is not being abandoned by the international community yet again,
or that leading U.N. authorities, including Valdés, will at least have
the dignity of resigning from their assignment in protest of the cruel hoax
now being unleashed on the island and its population.
This analysis was prepared by Jessica Leight, COHA Research Fellow.
September
23, 2004
COHA
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