The crisis in Haiti is another case of brazen US manipulation of a
small, impoverished country with the truth unexplored by journalists.
In the nearly universal media line on the Haitian revolt, President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was portrayed as an undemocratic leader who
betrayed Haiti's democratic hopes and thereby lost the support of his
erstwhile backers. He "stole" elections and intransigently refused to
address opposition concerns. As a result he had to leave office, which
he did at the insistence of the US and France. Unfortunately, this is
a gravely distorted view.
President George Bush's foreign policy team came into office intent on
toppling Mr Aristide, long reviled by powerful US conservatives such
as former senator Jesse Helms who obsessively saw him as another Fidel
Castro in the Caribbean. Such critics fulminated when President Bill
Clinton restored Mr Aristide to power in 1994, and they succeeded in
getting US troops withdrawn soon afterwards, well before the country
could be stabilised. In terms of help to rebuild Haiti, the US Marines
left behind about eight miles of paved roads and essentially nothing
else. In the meantime, the so-called "opposition", a coterie of rich
Haitians linked to the preceding Duvalier regime and former (and
perhaps current) CIA operatives, worked Washington to lobby against Mr
Aristide.
In 2000, Haiti held parliamentary and then presidential elections,
unprecedented in their scope. Mr Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas,
clearly won the election, although candidates who won a plurality
rather than a majority, and who should have faced a second-round
election, also gained seats. Objective observers declared the
elections broadly successful, albeit flawed.
Mr Aristide won the presidential election later that year, in a
contest the US media now reports was "boycotted by the opposition" and
hence, not legitimate. This is a cruel joke to those who know Haiti,
where Mr Aristide was swept in with an overwhelming mandate and the
opposition, such as it was, ducked the elections. Duvalier thugs
hardly constituted a winning ticket and as such, did not even try. Nor
did they have to. Mr Aristide's foes in Haiti benefited from tight
links with the incoming Bush team, which told Mr Aristide it would
freeze all aid unless he agreed with the opposition over new elections
for the contested Senate seats, among other demands. The wrangling led
to the freezing of $500m USD in emergency humanitarian aid from the
US, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the
International Monetary Fund.
The tragedy, or joke, is that Mr Aristide agreed to compromise, but
the opposition simply balked; it was never the right time to hold
elections, for example, because of "security" problems, they said.
Whatever the pretext, the US maintained its aid freeze and the
opposition maintained a veto over international aid. Cut off from
bilateral and multilateral financing, Haiti's economy went into a
tailspin.
All this is being replayed before our eyes. As Haiti slipped into
deeper turmoil last month, Caribbean leaders called for a
power-sharing compromise between Mr Aristide and the opposition. Once
again, Mr Aristide agreed but the opposition merely demanded the
president step down - reportedly rejecting even US Secretary of State
Colin Powell's requests to compromise. But rather than defending Mr
Aristide and dealing with opposition intransigence, the White House
announced the president should step down.
The ease with which the US thereby brought down another Latin American
democracy is stunning. What has been the CIA's role among the
anti-Aristide rebels? How much US money went from US institutions and
government agencies to help foment this uprising? Why did the White
House abandon the Caribbean compromise proposal it endorsed just days
before? These questions have not been asked. Then again, we live in an
age when entire wars can be launched on phony pretences with few
questions asked.
What should happen now is unlikely to pass. The United Nations should
help restore Mr Aristide to power for his remaining two years in
office, making clear that yesterday's events were an illegal power
grab. Second, the US should call on the opposition, which is largely a
US construct, to stop the violence immediately and unconditionally.
Third, after years of literally starving the people of Haiti, the
long-promised and long-frozen aid flows of Dollars 500m should start
immediately. These steps would rescue a dying democracy and avert a
possible bloodbath.
The writer is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University
http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/000195.html
Note: Ousted Haitian President Aristide claims he was 'kidnapped'
"Jean-Bertrand Aristide said in a telephone interview Monday that he
was "forced to leave" Haiti by U.S. military forces who said they
would "start shooting and killing" if he refused."
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