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April
14, 2004
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What the President Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion Story: We Rule; You
Die
April
13, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Ill, Old and Young of Fallujah Ask:
"Do We Look Like Fighters?"
Stan
Goff
The Bridge: a Rant
Dave
Lindorff
The Real Lessons of Vietnam
April 10
/ 12, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Greatest Radical Journalist of His Age
Patrick
Cockburn
Ambush, Kidnap, Murder: Another Day in "Post War" Iraq
Ellen Cantarow
Health Under Siege on the West Bank
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
Werther
Pseudoconservatism Revisited: When God is Pro War & Other Delicacies
Robert
Fisk
Bush's War Lords to Their Critics: "Just Shut Up"
Gary Leupp
Indian Wars, Vietnam and Orientalist Fantasy
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Cont.
Jorge Mariscal
Perils of the Bootstrap
Phil Gasper
Defying Stereotypes About Death Row
Dave Zirin
Bringing the Black Freedom Struggle Into Sports: an Interview with Lee
Evans
Brandy
Baker
The Revolution is Playing at a Theater Near You
Mickey Z.
Underground Music is Free Media: an Interview with Twiin
Ali Tonak
Get Ready for the Million Worker March
Harry Browne
Asking the Wrong Question About Richard Clarke & 9/11
Gideon
Samet
The Sharonizing of America
Conn Hallinan
Remote Control Warriors
Website
of the Weekend
Taboo
Tunes
April 9,
2004
Robert
Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L.
Hess
The
Non--Confessions of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8, 2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick
Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid
Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas
Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7,
2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick
Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali
Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert
Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6, 2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William
Blum
The
Anti--Empire Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan
Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al--Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert
Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
|
April
14, 2004
Return to Haiti
The
American Learning Zone
By TOM REEVES
I returned this month from Haiti as part of the
first independent U.S. observer delegation since the removal on February
29 of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. More than a decade ago, I helped
organize the New England Observer Delegations to Haiti -- nine diverse
groups of prominent Boston area people who went to Haiti after the first
coup d'etat against President Aristide. We witnessed a reign of terror
by the Haitian military, in which at least 3,000 democracy activists
were slaughtered. We also witnessed the almost universal jubilation
of the Haitian urban and rural poor (85% of the population) on Aristide's
return.
This
time I went to see the results of another coup against Aristide, one
clearly planned, funded and orchestrated by the U.S. I felt a terrible
déjà vu: massive violence against the poor, especially
against Aristide's Lavalas movement; the very same paramilitary and
former Haitian army officers committing the atrocities. Convicted mass
murderers acting as judges, administrators and police. Despite intimidation
and brutal attacks on the poorest neighborhoods, we saw overwhelming
support for Aristide among the poor, and violent hatred of Aristide
by the tiny elite. A crucial difference was the attitude of the professionals
and many intellectuals. They expressed a sense of betrayal by Aristide,
and joy at his fall. Yet one of them told me, "The Haitian people
elected Aristide, and only they should have been able to take him down."
We
heard from people who witnessed night--time raids against Lavalas. In
one case in the poor neighborhood of Bel Air, we were told U.S. helicopters
came with blinding lights, heavily armed U.S. fired into crowds, killing
between five and twenty persons (March 17). Members of our group interviewed
relatives of victims and eyewitnesses to this attack. In case after
case, we were told that known criminals and former army men were incorporated
into the police. They harassed or beat Lavalas supporters and hounded
for "arrest" former government officials.
A
stream of people came to see us from their hiding places at great risk
to tell us this. Jeremy was one. Now 21, he met Aristide at age 11.
He worked for Children's Radio (Radio Ti Moun) funded by Aristide's
foundation. Jeremy tearfully recalled the past month: He fled the radio
station as it was trashed. He was chased and saw his young companions
beaten. He ran from his aunt's house as three former military came looking
for him. They shot his aunt and she died on the way to the hospital.
This happened a week before we arrived. Jeremy had been afraid to go
to her funeral.
A
woman came to us from the community group, Ai Bobo Brav, victims of
the last coup. I'd met her last March when she told me, "Every
Haitian baby knows Bush's game." Back then she'd forecast the coup.
Now she was living it. "While your President was sleeping in his
bed, they kidnapped our president. They dragged him off. It was so disrespectful.
It hurt me so. She wept.
Driving
back to Port Au Prince from Jacmel on Friday, I saw a cow munching on
garbage by a sign in English advertising a school. The sign said, "Welcome
to the American Learning Zone." The U.S. State Department point
man on Haiti, Roger Noriega (also involved in the Iran--Contra plot
in Nicaragua) told an audience in Washington last year that Cuba and
Venezuela should pay close attention to events in Haiti. One of the
first acts by U.S. marines after landing in Haiti this year may have
been to establish a perimeter around Mole St. Nicolas, the peninsula
opposite Guantanamo, jutting into the narrow strait between Haiti and
Cuba. Local residents reported to Haitian news media that U.S. military
structures were being built on the site long sought by the U.S. as a
companion base to Guantanamo.
What
interests provoke such an expensive, brutal lesson in Haiti? Haiti has
no oil. Of course there are thousands of sweat shop workers who toil
for less than a dollar a day. Of course there are big US companies that
supply rice, wheat and other staples supplanting Haitian rice and cassava,
so that nearly 70% of the food consumed by Haitians must be imported,
mostly from the U.S. This for a country that once provided more wealth
to France than all its other New World colonies! And then there is Aristide,
the little Liberation Theology priest who preached a message of conflict
between the tiny elite and the desperately poor majority. Haiti is so
close to Cuba -- that other obsession of U.S. foreign policy. One of
Aristide's first acts was to establish ties with Cuba. More than 500
Cuban doctors remain in Haiti, helping the poorest communities. They
must be remembering Grenada, where a U.S. occupation twenty years ago
ousted Cuban doctors. Most of all, Haiti sits in what the U.S. sees
as it's back yard, it's playground, it's lap. Upstart, uncontrolled
forces there are just too close to home. So -- Venezuela and Cuba and
others beware: Haiti is the American (imperial) learning zone.
HAITI
SHOULD BE A LEARNING ZONE FOR SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS, TOO
Haiti
should be a learning zone for all Americans who would understand and
counter the imperial U.S. policy of intervention world--wide. If the
U.S. can get away with covert and overt support for a "rebellion"
in Haiti led by former military and para--military, many of whom have
been convicted of murders and other human rights violations dating to
the last coup, it will be psyched for similar operations in Venezuela
and perhaps even in Cuba. The evidence is clear: U.S. weapons (intended
for the Dominican army) were smuggled into Haiti by former Haitian military
and para--military, many of whom were trained and long funded by the
CIA and other U.S. agents. U.S. money, both government and private,
flowed into the coffers of NGOs attached to the "opposition"
-- the right--wing Convergence and the neo--liberal "Group of 184,"
led by the Haitian business elite (including the sweat--shop owners)
and widely publicized by the ultra--conservative "Haiti Democracy
Project"(HDP) in Washington, D.C. Among the funders and organizers
of the opposition were the IRI and NDI, the international NGOs closely
tied to the U.S. Republican and Democrat Parties respectively. IRI and
HDP operatives were present at meetings organized by FRAPH (a CIA--funded
para--military group) and former Haitian military in the Dominican Republic
-- at which Dominican authorities claimed plans were laid a year ago
for a Haitian coup.
In
Jacmel, we met students, women and union organizers who had formed specifically
anti--Aristide groups to counter the existing organizations in Jacmel
-- for the purpose of joining the demonstrations led by the Convergence
and 184 to demand the ouster of Aristide earlier this year. Pierre J.G.C.
Gestion, a leader of the MHDR (Haitian Movement for Rural Development)
proudly asserted his connection to USAID, the State Department Democracy
Enhancement program and the NDI. "They trained us and taught us
how to organize, and we organized the groups you see here to demand
the corrupt government of Aristide be brought down."
We
also met representatives in Port au Prince of SOFA, CONAM, ENFOFANM
and other progressive women's groups, as well as Batay Ouvriye, the
rightly heralded support group for the Free Trade Zone and other mostly
women workers in the assembly industries (sweat shops). These women's
and labor groups were strongly critical of Aristide's government and
the Lavalas movement. During the past few months, they openly called
for Aristide's removal, and they chose not to denounce the opposition's
"zero option" strategy of non--cooperation and non--compromise.
Yet I heard no answer to our question: "What did you think would
happen if Aristide was forced to leave by the right--wing rebels or
by a U.S. occupation?" I believe these groups did not ask themselves
that question.
I
think they were blinded by their feeling that Aristide had betrayed
his progressive mandate. A good bit of their analysis of Aristide's
record was right -- though not all. Aristide did accept a compromise
when he returned. He did include, at U.S. insistence, elements of the
former army and even Duvalierists in his regime. Yet the government
put in place by this recent coup is far worse: it is full of such Macoutes,
and worse -- convicted mass murderers. It has already militarized the
police and is preparing the return of an unreconstructed Haitian army
-- the instrument of U.S. and elite oppression in Haiti since it's creation
by the U.S. at it's first invasion in 1915.
Aristide
also compromised terribly on the issues of structural adjustment --
he did put in place the first Free Trade Zone, and lay plans for a second
one, a bitter insult to Haitian labor. He did begin privatization. He
did not protect Haitian products adequately. Yet he did not compromise
on everything. He continued to agitate for a better minimum wage, against
the sweat shop owners. He resisted most of the demanded privatization.
He held out for collective bargaining rights for the Free Trade Zone
workers. He continued to make small steps toward agrarian reform. As
Paul Farmer and others have shown, he made greater strides in fighting
AIDS and promoting literacy than any previous government. The Latortue
government from the start has been wholly dominated by free trade enthusiasts,
neoliberal theoreticians and the worst of the sweatshop owners and other
business elite.
The
women's groups told us bluntly that the situation under Aristide was
the worst in Haiti's history -- worse than Duvalier and worse that Haiti
during the 1991--1994 coup period. Yet I met these groups during that
time. They were in hiding then, terrified by the very same elements
now roaming Haiti freely, committing atrocities now as then. When U.S.
and other international delegations visited them a year ago, under Aristide's
rule, they functioned openly. They did not appear terrorized. Their
most concrete criticisms were that when they demonstrated against the
government -- during the same period as the sometimes violent demonstrations
orchestrated by the 184 and the Convergence, and coming during a time
when it was clear that former military and para--military (the CIA--funded
FRAPH) were entering the country and preparing a coup -- police stood
by as people they called Lavalas threw bottles of urine and stones at
them. All of that is terrible -- and should not have gone without a
severe criticism of Aristide and Lavalas. But it cannot be compared
to the brutal onslaught by the Fraph and former army officers in Gonaives,
Cap Haitien and elsewhere after Feb. 5. Aristide's alleged abuses pale
beside the documented reports of the "rebels" slaughtering
police and Lavalas and mutilating their bodies; of summary executions;
of groups of Lavalas herded into containers and dumped into the sea.
Perhaps
worst of all, I listened again (as I had a year ago) to the litany of
abuses the NCHR (National Coalition for Haitian Rights) says it documented
against officials of the Aristide government and the Lavalas movement.
They rightly protested cases like that of the journalist Jean Dominique
and a dozen other high profile attacks on opposition activists and as
many as three opposition journalists. Yet during the two years leading
up to this latest coup, they adamantly refused to investigate now--verified
allegations of murders, arson and bombings against the government and
Lavalas by former military and FRAPH. They scoffed at the alleged coup
attempt at the National Palace in December of 2001, though Jodel Chamblain
now boasts that was an initial coup attempt.
Although
they were the only human rights group in the country adequately funded
and having trained monitors throughout Haiti, the NCHR became completely
partisan: anti--Lavalas, anti--Aristide. This is simply not proper for
a group calling itself a "Haitian Rights" organization. During
the final month before the coup, they abandoned any pretext of impartiality,
joining calls for the ouster of Aristide, without reference to the means.
After Feb. 29, they continue to site abuses by "chimere,"
whom they call simply "Aristide gangs," without documenting
the connections. Though they told our group they had "heard about"
violence against unarmed Lavalas, including the possible complicity
of U.S. marines in the Bel Air incident, the NCHR said they "lacked
access" to the pro--Lavalas shanty--towns. Of course they lacked
access: they lacked any shred of credibility as a human rights monitor.
We
also heard from PAPDA (Platform to Advocate for Alternative Development)
which had called for Aristide's ouster on the grounds of his compromises
with "U.S. imperialism," as well as corruption and human rights
violations. PAPDA had functioned openly in its offices under Aristide,
right up to and through this year's coup, though at least one PAPDA
member was killed, allegedly by "chimere." Camille Chalmers,
PAPDA's director, said, "This is a sad day for Haiti. But it was
the people who overturned Aristide. The U.S. only came in to shape the
results, as they always do....Right now, the population has regained
some hope. This hope will go against the marines. Confrontations are
already happening."
Though
the current government is extremely pro--neo--liberal, a PAPDA coalition
leader on environmental issues, Yves Wainwright, has accepted the post
of Minister of the Environment. "The current political situation
has not been defined," Chalmers told us. "If the Provisional
Government were to develop a logical program it would conflict with
U.S. interests. Under Aristide, we had less and less space to organize
and demonstrate -- we were repressed. As long as we can demonstrate
against the military occupation now, we will retain a tiny space."
Together, some 40 similar anti--Aristide "left" groups have
formed the RDP (Popular Democratic Regroupment) to put forward an alternative
opposition program to the government, even while some work within that
government.
One
man I hoped to see, but did not, was Chavannes Jean--Baptiste. Chavannes
was at times very close to Aristide -- serving as his spokesperson when
he returned after the coup. Chavannes is founder and leader of the MPP
(a large peasant group in the Central Plateau). Shortly after Aristide
chose Preval for his successor, Chavannes announced his break with Aristide
(there was indeed an ugly confrontation between Chavannes and Lavalas
activists in Mirebalais). By the 2000 election, Chavannes openly embraced
his former worst enemies, and joined the Convergence. Later Chavannes
joined the more palatable, but clearly neo--liberal, Group of 184. MPP
has now endorsed its "Social Contract," put forward by elite
business groups.
A
peasant from Mirabalais in the Central Plateau told me he had evidence
that most of the weapons and men moved from the Dominican Republic to
start the rebellions in Gonaives and Cap Haitien in early February,
came through Chavannes' turf. "No way could that have been done
without his active support." Chavannes is said to be considering
a position in the de facto government -- as minister for peasant affairs.
I was with Chavannes and his mother when they wept on seeing the ruins
and vandalism at their offices in Papay on their return after the first
coup in 1994. That damage was done by the very same para--military and
military who now occupy much of the country. Another dissident peasant
whom I met told of Chavannes' embracing and throwing a feast for Chamblain,
the convicted murderer and FRAPH member who "liberated" Hinche,
the MPP base. Chamblain now sits in Cap Haitien, acting as "judge"
condemning and punishing "criminals" and "traitors."
Such alliances may be -- as the civil society leader told us -- just
strange bedfellows in wartime, but on a personal level, they are hard
to understand.
International
human rights organizations, especially Human Rights Watch and Journalists
Without Borders, and to a lesser extent Amnesty International, have
taken the NCHR reports uncritically and failed to develop other impartial
human rights contacts in Haiti. Progressive funders like Grassroots
International and NGOs in Canada, the US and Europe also listened uncritically
to their "partners" and funded groups in Haiti like PAPDA,
SOFA, Batay Ouvriye and MPP.
The
primary lesson to be learned for funders and NGOS, and for all solidarity
activists, is that solidarity must first of all be with the people of
Haiti -- by the assertion of their will by voting, as Haitians did for
Aristide in 2000 (the OAS and international NGOs certified that at the
time). Beyond that, international funding and solidarity groups (and
here the criticism is equally valid for those who were wholly supportive
of Lavalas without critique) must not put on blinders when they visit
Haiti. They must listen critically to all sides. They must watch for
concrete evidence of the mass base of the organizations they fund --
and evidence that the rank and file feel as the "leaders"
do.
It
remains to be seen whether the U.S. empire will gain more from its exercise
in the learning zone of Haiti, or the international solidarity movement.
Let us hope for the latter -- since the next learning zones may come
sooner than we expect, especially if the Bush regime lives through its
debacle in Iraq and survives the November election.
Material for this article was compiled partly from observations
and interviews in conjunction with the Emergency Haiti Observation Mission,
a group of 24 diverse people from throughout the U.S. and Canada, coordinated
by the Quixote Center in Maryland. The ideas expressed in this article
are solely those of the author.
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