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HAITI: Did U.S. Push or Pull Aristide from Power?
By Marty Logan
MONTREAL, Mar 2 (IPS) - As rebel leader Guy Philippe declared himself
Haiti's "military chief" Tuesday, speculation continued to fly over the U.S.
role in deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's flight from power Sunday.
More than one observer suggested that now that the champion of the poor in
the western hemisphere's poorest nation was gone, it was time to look ahead
to rebuilding - but first to disarming the various armed factions in Haiti.
On Monday, Aristide told CNN (the Cable News Network) that U.S. soldiers
forced him to board a plane that landed in Africa 20 hours later.
"I called this a coup d'etat the modern way, to have a modern kidnapping,"
said Aristide. "We had to leave and spent 20 hours in an American plane not
knowing where they were going with us until they told us 20 minutes before
we landed in the Central African Republic".
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell denied that version of events. Aristide
"was not kidnapped", Powell said. "We did not force him onto the airplane.
He went onto the airplane willingly. And that's the truth," he told
reporters Monday.
Hours after Aristide's flight, the United Nations Security Council
authorised a multinational intervention force for the country.
On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he knew nothing more
about Aristide's departure, adding, " I hope this time the international
community will go in for the long haul and not a quick turn-around . it may
take years and I hope we will have the patience to do it".
Tuesday morning a spokesman for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) told the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) he did not think the anti-Aristide
rebels joined with Washington to depose the embattled leader.
"A lot of people are making the link from the rebels to the United States
and saying the United States had a role in him (Aristide) being forced out.
Do you make that link?" the CARICOM spokesman, Jamaican Foreign Minister KD
Knight, was asked.
"No, I haven't made that link. I've heard that link being made but I haven't
made it. We are just going on what's happened on the ground, what's evident
to all onlookers, the behaviour of the rebels, the behaviour of the
opposition," answered Knight.
CARICOM criticised the world community last week for not sending a military
force to Haiti sooner, and Knight suggested Tuesday the group might not
recognise a governing authority in Haiti - one of 15 CARICOM members -
that included the rebels.
The regional body was to meet Tuesday to discuss how to officially react to
the events in Haiti.
One non-governmental observer said the international community will likely
make no meaningful contribution to the island country, even now that
Philippe - a former policeman and army cadet who fled the country after a
failed coup attempt against Aristide in 2001 - and other known human rights
violators appear to have assumed some power.
"The international community, by which we mean in the case of Haiti the
United States, France and to a lesser extent Canada, have already made it
absolutely clear that they're not going to intervene in any positive way in
Haiti," said Charles Arthur, director of the UK organisation, Haiti Support
Group.
Instead, the role of the international armed force "will be to protect
whatever assets the international community believes it has, which in short
will be the main infrastructure of the capital, the embassies, the big
businesses, the areas where the rich people live . the basic infrastructure
of the country", he added.
"The peacekeeping, the law and order, in a de facto fashion, will be the
preserve of whoever is in charge of the Haitian Army and the Haitian police
force, which it looks like is going to be Guy Philippe," said Arthur.
But Tuesday, U.S. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher rejected
Philippe's claim. "The rebels have to lay down their arms and go home," said
Boucher, according to Associated Press (AP).
Arthur argued the world should not mourn the departure of Aristide. "Clearly
the United States is the main player in getting him to leave. Whether the
left and progressive forces all over the world should be focussing on the
issue of the Aristide presidency, I don't think so".
"In my opinion, based on working with grassroots organisations in Haiti over
the last 12 years, Aristide hasn't been able to deliver the demands and
aspirations of the 85 percent of (the people who are poor) in Haiti. And
this is one of the reasons why it was possible for the United States to
remove him from power," according to Arthur.
Haitian politics has been blocked since the opposition parties refused to
participate following 2000 elections that rights groups and bodies like the
Organisation of American States (OAS) declared flawed.
But more than one week ago, and with Philippe and other heavily-armed rebels
advancing on the capital Port-au-Prince from the north, Aristide agreed to a
CARICOM action plan that would see him stay in office until his term ended
in 2006 as part of a power-sharing government with the opposition.
But his opponents refused to accept the strategy.
"I think they (the United States) facilitated his leaving certainly, but I
don't think the United States was responsible for his leaving," said Carolyn
Fick, a professor of history at Montreal's Concordia University.
"There were negotiations and they put pressure on Aristide but so did the
internal situation in Haiti put pressure on him, in spite of his declaration
to the contrary," added Fick, author of 'The Making of Haiti: The Saint
Domingue Revolution From Below'.
"He's gone but the point is now, where to go. I think that it has to be a
civil and political solution. The rebels have not put down their arms. They
promised to do so - they haven't. I don't think they will until they get
guarantees. My feeling is that they're going to negotiate for the
restoration of the Haitian Army."
According to another observer, "I don't think anybody knows exactly what
occurred. It's clear that there was a tremendous amount of international
pressure put on Aristide and in the end I don't know what finally convinced
him to leave; whether in fact he had been trapped or whether he was
convinced simply to leave because his life was at stake and the lives of so
many thousands of other people might have been at stake".
Added Leslie G. Desmangles, a professor of international studies at Trinity
College in Hartford, "(Aristide) left and the question as to whether he was
taken away or whether he left on his own I think at this point is rather
moot, because what's important at the moment is that he's gone and that now
we have to look forward to reshaping the politics and the government of the
country".
That tremendous task will have to begin with basic services. For example,
aid group Oxfam said Tuesday "at least 80,000 people in Port de Paix and
60,000 people in Cap Haitien (both in the country's north) have no access to
clean water, many others are short of food and the threat of disease due to
poor sanitation is growing".
Groups stopped delivering aid because of insecurity earlier this month, and
"lack of access to sufficient quantities of clean water combined with the
general lack of adequate sanitation could soon lead to disastrous outbreaks
of water-related disease", added the Oxfam statement.
(END/2004)
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