|
The URL for this article is:
www.africaspeaks.com/haiti/1986-1994.html
HAITI 1986-1994
Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
--Dom Helder Câmara
by William Blum
What does the government of the United States do when faced with a
choice between supporting: (a) a group of totalitarian military
thugs guilty of murdering thousands, systematic torture,
widespread rape, and leaving severely mutilated corpses in the
streets ... or (b) a non-violent priest, legally elected to the
presidency by a landslide, whom the thugs have overthrown in a
coup? ...
But what if the priest is a "leftist"?
During the Duvalier family dictatorship -- Francois "Papa Doc",
1957-71, followed by Jean-Claude "Baby Doc", 1971-86, both
anointed President for Life by papa -- the United States trained
and armed Haiti's counter-insurgency forces, although most
American military aid to the country was covertly channeled
through Israel, thus sparing Washington embarrassing questions
about supporting brutal governments. After Jean-Claude was forced
into exile in February 1986, fleeing to France aboard a US Air
Force jet, Washington resumed open assistance. And while Haiti's
wretched rabble were celebrating the end of three decades of
Duvalierism, the United States was occupied in preserving it under
new names.
Within three weeks of Jean-Claude's departure, the US
announced that it was providing Haiti with $26.6 million in
economic and military aid, and in April it was reported that
"Another $4 million is being sought to provide the Haitian Army
with trucks, training and communications gear to allow it to move
around the country and maintain order."{1} Maintaining order in
Haiti translates to domestic repression and control; and in the 21
months between Duvalier's abdication and the scheduled elections
of November 1987, the successor Haitian governments were
responsible for more civilian deaths than Baby Doc had managed in
15 years.{2} The CIA was meanwhile arranging for the release
from prison, and safe exile abroad, of two of its Duvalier-era
contacts, both notorious police chiefs, thus saving them from
possible death sentences for murder and torture, and acting
contrary to the public's passionate wish for retribution against
its former tormenters.{3} In September, Haiti's main trade union
leader, Yves Richard, declared that Washington was working to
undermine the left before the coming elections. US aid
organizations, he said, were encouraging people in the countryside
to identify and reject the entire left as "communist",{4} though
the country clearly had a fundamental need for reformers and
sweeping changes. Haiti was, and is, the Western Hemisphere's
best known economic, medical, political, judicial, educational,
and ecological basket case.
At this time Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a charismatic priest
with a broad following in the poorest slums of Haiti, the only
church figure to speak out against repression during the Duvalier
years. He now denounced the military-dominated elections and
called upon Haitians to reject the entire process. His activities
figured prominently enough in the electoral campaign to evoke a
strong antipathy from US officials. Ronald Reagan, Aristide later
wrote, considered him to be a communist.{5} And Assistant
Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Elliott Abrams, saw
fit to attack Aristide while praising the Haitian government in a
letter to Time magazine during the election campaign.{6}
The Catholic priest first came to prominence in Haiti as a
proponent of liberation theology, which seeks to blend the
teachings of Christ with inspiring the poor to organize and resist
their oppression. When asked why the CIA might have sought to
oppose Aristide, a senior official with the Senate Intelligence
Committee stated that "Liberation theology proponents are not too
popular at the agency. Maybe second only to the Vatican for not
liking liberation theology are the people at Langley [CIA
headquarters]."
Aristide urged a boycott of the elections, saying "The army
is our first enemy." The CIA, on the other hand, funded some of
the candidates. The Agency later insisted that the purpose of the
funding program had not been to oppose Aristide but to provide a
"free and open election", by which was meant helping some
candidates who didn't have enough money and diminishing Aristide's
attempt to have a low turnout, which would have "reduced the
election's validity". It is not known which candidates the CIA
funded or why the Agency or the State Department, which reportedly
chose the candidates to support, were concerned about such goals
in Haiti, when the same electoral situation exists permanently in
the United States.
The CIA was "involved in a range of support for a range of
candidates", said an intelligence official directly active in the
operation. Countering Aristide's impressive political strength
appears to be the only logical explanation for the CIA's
involvement, which was authorized by President Reagan and the
National Security Council.
When the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded to know
exactly what the CIA was doing in Haiti and which candidates it
was supporting, the Agency balked. Eventually, the committee
ordered the covert electoral action to cease. A high-ranking
source working for the committee said the reason the program was
killed was that "there are some of us who believe in the
neutrality of elections."{7} Nevertheless, it cannot be stated
with any certainty that the program was actually halted.
The elections scheduled for 29 November 1987 were postponed
because of violence. In the rescheduled elections held in
January, the candidate favored by the military government was
declared the winner in balloting widely perceived as rigged, and
in the course of which the CIA was involved in an aborted attempt
of unknown nature to influence the elections.{8}
There followed more than two years of regular political
violence, coup attempts, and repression, casting off the vestiges
of the Duvalier dictatorship and establishing a new one, until, in
March 1990, the current military dictator, General Prosper Avril,
was forced by widespread protests to abdicate and was replaced by
a civilian government of sorts, but with the military still
calling important shots.
The United States is not happy with "chaos" in its client
states. It's bad for control, it's bad for business, it's
unpredictable who will come out on top, perhaps another Fidel
Castro. It was the danger of "massive internal uprisings" that
induced the United States to inform Jean-Claude Duvalier that it
was time for him to venture a life of struggle on the French
Riviera,{9} and a similar chaotic situation that led the US
Ambassador to suggest to Avril that it was an apt moment to
retire; transportation into exile for the good general was once
again courtesy of Uncle Sam.{10}
Thus it was that the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince
pressured the Haitian officer corps to allow a new election.
Neither the embassy nor Aristide himself at this time had reason
to expect that he would be a candidate in the election scheduled
for December, although he had already been expelled from his
religious order, with the blessings of the Vatican, because,
amongst other things, of "incitement to hatred and violence, and a
glorifying of class struggle". Aristide's many followers and
friends had often tried in vain to persuade him to run for office.
Now they finally succeeded, and in October he became the candidate
of a loose coalition of reformist parties and organizations.{11}
On the eve of the election, former US Ambassador to the UN,
Andrew Young, visited Aristide and asked him to sign a letter
accepting Marc Bazin, the US-backed and funded candidate, as
president should Bazin win. Young reportedly said there was fear
that if Aristide lost, his followers would take to the streets and
reject the results.{12} Young was said to be acting on behalf of
his mentor, former president Jimmy Carter, but presumably the
White House also had their finger in the pie, evidencing their
concern about Aristide's charisma and potential as a leader
outside their control.
Despite a campaign marred by terror and intimidation, nearly
a thousand UN and Organization of American States (OAS) observers
and an unusually scrupulous Haitian general insured that a
relatively honest balloting took place, in which Aristide was
victorious with 67.5 percent of the vote. "People chose him over
10 comparatively bourgeois candidates," wrote an American Haiti
scholar who was an international election observer, "because of
his outspoken and uncompromising opposition to the old ways."{13}
Aristide's support actually included a progressive bourgeois
element as well as his larger popular base.
The president-priest took office in February 1991 after a
coup attempt against him in January failed. By June, one could
read in the Washington Post:
Proclaiming a "political revolution," Aristide, 37, has injected a spirit of hope
and honesty into the affairs of government, a radical departure after decades
of official venality under the Duvalier family dictatorship and a series of military
strongmen. Declaring that his $10,000 monthly salary is "not just a scandal,
but a crime", Aristide announced on television that he would donate his
paychecks to charity.{14}
The Catholic priest had long been an incisive critic of US
foreign policy because of Washington's support of the Duvalier
dynasty and the Haitian military, and he was suspicious of foreign
"aid", commenting that it all wound up in the pockets of the
wealthy. "Since 1980, this amounted to two hundred million
dollars a year, and these were the same ten years during which the
per capita wealth of the country was reduced by 40 percent!"{15}
Aristide did not spell out a specific economic program, but
was clear about the necessity of a redistribution of wealth, and
spoke more of economic justice than of the virtues of the market
system. He later wrote:
I have often been criticized for lacking a program, or at least for imprecision in that regard.
Was it for lack of time? -- a poor excuse. ... In fact, the people had their own program. ...
dignity, transparent simplicity, participation. These three ideas could be equally well
applied in the political and economic sphere and in the moral realm. ... The bourgeoisie
should have been able to understand that its own interest demanded some concessions.
We had recreated 1789. Did they want, by their passive resistance, to push the hungry to
demand more radical measures?{16}
Seriously hampered by the absence in Haiti of a strong
traditional left, and confronted by a gridlocked parliament that
constitutionally had more power than the president, Aristide
didn't succeed in getting any legislation enacted. He did,
however, initiate programs in literacy, public health and agrarian
reform, and pressed for an increase in the daily wage, which was
often less than three dollars, a freeze on prices of basic
necessities, and a public-works program to create jobs. He also
increased the feeling of security amongst the population by
arresting a number of key paramilitary thugs, and setting in
motion a process to eliminate the institution of rural section
chiefs (sheriffs), the military's primary instrument of unfettered
authority over the lives of the peasants.
In office, though not the uncompromising revolutionary
firebrand many anticipated, Aristide frequently angered his
opponents in the wealthy business class, the parliament, and the
army by criticizing their corruptness. The military was
particularly vexed by his policies against smuggling and drug
trafficking, as well as his attempt to de-politicize them. As for
the wealthy civilians -- or as they are fondly known, the morally
repugnant elite -- they did not much care for Aristide's agenda
whereby they would pay taxes and share their bounty by creating
jobs and reinvesting profits locally rather than abroad. They
were, as they remain, positively apoplectic about this little
saintly-talking priest and his love for the (ugh) poor.
However, Aristide's administration was not, in practice,
actually anti-business, and he made it a point to warm up to
American officials, foreign capitalists and some elements of the
Haitian military. He also discharged some 2,000 government
workers, which pleased the International Monetary Fund and other
foreign donors, but Aristide himself regarded these positions as
largely useless and corrupt bureaucratic padding.{17}
Jean-Bertrand Aristide served less than eight months as Haiti's
president before being deposed, on 29 September 1991, by a
military coup in which many hundreds of his supporters were
massacred, and thousands more fled to the Dominican Republic or by
sea. The slightly-built Haitian president who, in the previous
few years, had survived several serious assassination attempts and
the burning down of his church while he was inside preaching, was
saved now largely through the intervention of the French
ambassador.
Only the Vatican recognized the new military government,
although the coup of course was backed by the rich elite. They
"helped us a lot," said the country's new police chief and key
coup plotter, Joseph Michel Francois, "because we saved them."{18}
No evidence of direct US complicity in the coup has arisen,
though, as we shall see, the CIA was financing and training all
the important elements of the new military regime, and a Haitian
official who supported the coup has reported that US intelligence
officers were present at military headquarters as the coup was
taking place; this was "normal", he added, for the CIA and DIA
(Defense Intelligence Agency) were always there.{19}
We have seen in Nicaragua how the National Endowment for
Democracy -- which was set up to do overtly, and thus more
"respectably", some of what the CIA used to do covertly --
interfered in the 1990 election process. At the same time, the
NED, in conjunction with the Agency for International Development
(AID), was busy in Haiti. It gave $189,000 to several civic
groups that included the Haitian Center for the Defense of Rights
and Freedom, headed by Jean-Jacques Honorat. Shortly after
Aristide's ouster, Honorat became the prime minister in the coup
government. In a 1993 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, he declared, "The coup was justified by the human
rights record of Aristide." Asked what he himself had done as
prime minister to halt the massive human rights violations that
followed the overthrow, Honorat responded: "I don't have my files
here."
In the years prior to the coup, the NED also gave more than
$500,000 to the Haitian Institute for Research and Development
(IHRED). This organization played a very partisan role in the
1990 elections when it was allied with US-favorite Marc Bazin,
former World Bank executive, and helped him create his coalition
(just as NED was instrumental in creating the coalition in
Nicaragua which defeated the Sandinistas earlier in the year).
IHRED was led by Leopold Berlanger who, in 1993, supported the
junta's sham election aimed at ratifying the prime ministership of
Bazin, Honorat's successor and a political associate of Berlanger.
Another recipient of NED largesse was Radio Soleil, run by
the Catholic Church in a manner calculated to not displease the
dictatorship of the day. During the 1991 coup -- according to the
Rev. Hugo Triest, a former station director -- the station refused
to air a message from Aristide.
The NED has further reduced the US Treasury by grants to the
union association Federation des Ouvriers Syndiques, founded in
1984 with Duvalier's approval, so that Haiti, which previously had
crushed union-organizing efforts, would qualify for the US
Caribbean Basin Initiative economic package.{20}
But despite its name and unceasing rhetoric, the National
Endowment for Democracy did not give a dollar to any of the
grassroots organizations that eventually merged to form Aristide's
coalition.
Within a week of Aristide's overthrow, the Bush administration
began to distance itself from the man, reported the New York
Times, "by refusing to say that his return to power was a
necessary pre-condition for Washington to feel that democracy has
been restored in Haiti." The public rationale given for this
attitude was that Aristide's human rights record was questionable,
since some business executives, legislators and other opponents of
his had accused him of using mobs to intimidate them and tacitly
condoning their violence.{21} Some of Haiti's destitute did carry
out acts of violence and arson against the rich, but it's a
stretch to blame Aristide, whatever his attitude, given that these
were enraged people seeking revenge for a lifetime of extreme
oppression against their perceived oppressors, revenge they had
long been waiting for.
A year later, the Boston Globe could editorialize that the
Bush administration's "contempt for Haitian democracy has been
scandalous ... By refusing to acknowledge the carnage taking place
in Haiti, the administration has all but bestowed its blessing on
the putschists."{22}
Two months earlier, in testimony before Congress, the CIA's
leading analyst of Latin American affairs, Brian Latell, had
described coup leader Lieut. Gen. Raoul Cédras as one of "the most
promising group of Haitian leaders to emerge since the Duvalier
family dictatorship was overthrown in 1986". He also reported
that he "saw no evidence of oppressive rule" in Haiti.{23}
Yet the State Department annual human-rights report for the
same year stated:
Haitians suffered frequent human rights abuses throughout 1992, including
extra-judicial killings by security forces, disappearances, beatings and other
mistreatment of detainees and prisoners, arbitrary arrests and detention
and executive interference with the judicial process.{24}
The New York Times' one-year-post-coup status report was remarkably blunt:
Since shortly after the overthrow -- when Secretary of State James Baker echoed
President Bush's famous "this aggression will not stand" statement about Iraq --
little consideration has been given to backing up American principles in Haiti with
American muscle. ... Recently, an adviser of the [coup government] repeated Father
Aristide's longtime complaint when he said that "all it would take is one phone call"
from Washington to send the army's leadership packing. ... supporters and opponents
of Father Aristide agree, nothing more threatening than a leaky and ineffective embargo,
quickly imposed ... has ever been seriously contemplated, which reflects Washington's
deep-seated ambivalence about a leftward-tilting nationalist [who] often depicted the
United States as a citadel of evil and the root of many of his country's problems. ...
Despite much blood on the army's hands, United States diplomats consider it a vital
counterweight to Father Aristide, whose class-struggle rhetoric ... threatened or
antagonized traditional power centers at home and abroad.{25}
During this period, numerous nocturnal arrivals of US Air Force planes in
Port-au-Prince were reported in Haitian clandestine newspapers. Whether this
had any connection to the leaking embargo may never be known. When asked,
a US embassy official said the flights were "routine".{26}
The CIA's clients
I. From the mid-1980s until at least the 1991 coup, key members of
Haiti's military and political leadership were on the Agency's
payroll. These payments were defended by Washington officials and
a congressman on the House Intelligence Committee as being a
normal and necessary part of gathering intelligence in a foreign
country.{27} This argument, which has often been used to defend
CIA bribery, ignores the simple reality (illustrated repeatedly in
this book) that payments bring more than information, they bring
influence and control; and when one looks at the anti-democratic
and cruelty levels of the Haitian military during its period of
being bribees, one has to wonder what the CIA's influence was.
Moreover, one has to wonder what the defenders of the payments
would have thought upon learning during the cold war that
congressmen and high officials in the White House were on the KGB
payroll. Even after the supposed end of the cold war, we must
consider the shocked reaction to the case of CIA officer Aldrich
Ames. He was, after all, only accepting money from the KGB for
information. In any event, money paid by the CIA to these men, as
well as to the groups mentioned below, was obviously available to
finance their murderous purposes. When Qaddafi of Libya did this,
it was called "supporting terrorism".
Did the information provided the CIA by the Haitian leaders
include advance notice of the coup? No evidence of this has
emerged, but four decades of known CIA behavior would make it
eminently likely. And if so, did the Agency do anything to stop
it? What did the CIA do with its knowledge of the drug
trafficking which the Haitian powers-that-be, including Baby Doc,
were long involved in?{28}
II. In 1986 the CIA created a new organization, the National
Intelligence Service (SIN). The unit was staffed solely by
officers of the Haitian army, widely perceived as an
unprofessional force with a marked tendency toward corruption.
SIN was purportedly created to fight the cocaine trade, though SIN
officers themselves engaged in the trafficking, and the trade was
aided and abetted by some of the Haitian officials also on the
Agency payroll.
SIN functioned as an instrument of political terror,
persecuting and torturing Father Aristide's supporters and other
"subversives", and using its CIA training and devices to spy on
them; in short, much like the intelligence services created by the
CIA elsewhere in the world during the previous several decades,
including Greece, South Korea, Iran, and Uruguay; and created in
Haiti presumably for the same reason: to give the Agency a
properly trained and equipped, and loyal, instrument of control.
At the same time that SIN was receiving between half and one
million dollars a year in equipment, training and financial
support, Congress was withholding about $1.5 million in aid for
the Haitian military because of its abuses of human rights.
Aristide had tried, without success, to shut SIN down. The
CIA told his people that the United States would see to it that
the organization was reformed, but that its continued operation
was beyond question. Then came the coup. Afterwards, American
officials say, the CIA cut its ties to SIN, but in 1992 a US Drug
Enforcement Administration document described SIN in the present
tense as "a covert counternarcotics intelligence unit which often
works in unison with the C.I.A." In September of the same year,
work by the DEA in Haiti led to the arrest of a SIN officer on
cocaine charges by the Haitian authorities.{29}
III. Amongst the worst violators of human rights in Haiti was the
Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), actually
a front for the army. The paramilitary group spread deep fear
amongst the Haitian people with its regular murders, public
beatings, arson raids on poor neighborhoods, and mutilation by
machete. FRAPH's leader, Emannuel Constant, went onto the CIA
payroll in early 1992 and, according to the Agency, this relation
ended in mid-1994. Whatever truth lies in that claim, the fact is
that by October the American Embassy in Haiti was openly
acknowledging that Constant -- now a born-again democrat -- was on
its payroll.
The FRAPH leader says that soon after Aristide's ouster an
officer of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Col. Patrick
Collins, pushed him to organize a front that could balance the
Aristide movement and do intelligence work against it. This
resulted in Constant forming what later evolved into FRAPH in
August 1993. Members of FRAPH were working, and perhaps still
are, for two social service agencies funded by the Agency for
International Development, one of which maintains sensitive files
on the movements of the Haitian poor.
Constant -- who has told in detail of having attended, on
invitation, the Clinton inauguration balls -- was the organizer of
the dockside mob that, on 11 October 1993, chased off a ship
carrying US military personnel arriving to retrain the Haitian
military under the UN agreement (see below). This was while
Constant was on the CIA payroll. But that incident may have been
something out of the Agency's false-bottom world. Did Washington
really want to challenge the military government? Or only appear
to do so? Constant actually informed the United States beforehand
of what was going to happen, then went on the radio to urge all
"patriotic Haitians" to join the massive demonstrations at the
dock. The United States did nothing before or after but allow its
ship to turn tail and run.{30}
In the summer of 1993, United Nations-mediated talks on Governors
Island in New York between Aristide, living in exile in
Washington, and the Haitian military government, resulted in an
accord whereby the leader of the junta, Gen. Cédras, would step
down on 15 October and allow Aristide to return to Haiti as
president on 30 October. But the dates came and went without the
military fulfilling their promise, meanwhile not pausing in their
assaults upon Aristide supporters, including the September murder
of a prominent Aristide confidant who was dragged out of church
and shot in full view of UN officials, and the assassination a
month later of Aristide's justice minister, Guy Malary.
Pleased with its "foreign-policy-success" in securing the
agreement in New York, the Clinton administration seemingly was
willing to tolerate any and all outrages.
But an adviser to Cédras declared afterward that when the
military had agreed to negotiate, "the whole thing was a
smokescreen. We wanted to get the sanctions lifted. ... But we
never had any intention of really agreeing to Governors Island, as
I'm sure everyone can now figure out for themselves. We were
playing for time."
Aristide himself never liked the UN plan, which granted
amnesty to those who mounted the coup against him. He declared
that the United States had pressured him to sign.{31}
Speaking to congressmen in early October, CIA official Brian
Latell -- who had previously praised Cédras and his rule -- now
characterized Aristide as mentally unbalanced. Was this perhaps
amongst the information provided the CIA by their agents in the
Haitian military? (During the election campaign, Aristide's
detractors in Haiti had in fact spread the rumor that he was
mentally ill.){32} Latell also testified that Aristide "paid
little mind to democratic principles", and had urged supporters to
murder their opponents with a technique called "necklacing", in
which gasoline-soaked tires are placed around victims' necks and
set afire. Neither Latell nor anyone else has provided any
evidence of Aristide engaging in an explicit provocation, although
this is not to say that necklacing was not carried out as an act
of revenge by Haiti's masses, as it was in 1986 following the
ouster of Duvalier.
At the same time, congressman were exposed to a document
purporting to describe Aristide's medical history, claiming that
he had been treated in a mental hospital in Canada in 1980,
diagnosed as manic depressive and prescribed large quantities of
drugs. This claim was described in the media as emanating from
the CIA, but the Agency denied this, saying it had seen the
document before and had judged it to be a partial or complete
fake, but adding that it still stood by its 1992 psychological
profile of Aristide which concluded that the deposed president was
possibly unstable.
The claims were denied by Aristide and his spokesman and
independent checks with the hospital in Canada showed no record of
his being a patient there. Nonetheless, congressional opponents
of Aristide now had a rationale for trying to limit the extent of
US support to him, and some of them argued that the United States
should not embroil itself in Haiti on behalf of such a leader.{33}
"He [Latell] made it the most simplistic, one-dimensional
message he could -- murderer, psychopath," said an administration
official familiar with Latell's briefing.{34} (In 1960, the
Eisenhower administration had regarded another black foreign
leader who didn't buy into Pax Americana, Patrice Lumumba, as
"unstable", "irrational, almost psychotic".{35} Nelson Mandela
was often described in a similar fashion by his opponents. Some
of those who make such charges may indeed believe that
conspicuously rejecting the established order is a sign of
insanity.)
The junta, which was concerned that President Clinton might
order military action against Haiti, was pleased. A spokesman
observed that "after the information about Aristide got out from
our friends in the CIA, and Congress started talking about how bad
he is, we figured the chances of an invasion were gone."{36}
Though the Clinton administration publicly repudiated the
claims about Aristide's mental health in no uncertain terms, it
nonetheless continued to negotiate with Haiti's military leaders,
a policy which stunned supporters of the Catholic priest.
"Apparently," marveled Robert White, a former US ambassador to El
Salvador and an unpaid adviser to Aristide, "nothing will shake
the touching faith the Clinton administration has in the Haitian
military's bona fides."
Aristide supporters asserted that such faith reflected long
and continuing relations between American military officers and
Haiti's top commanders, Cédras and Francois, the police chief,
both of whom had received military training in the United States.
Time magazine suggested that "the U.S. attitude toward some of
Haiti's henchmen is not as hostile as American rhetoric would
indicate."{37}
This attitude was commented upon by the Lawyers Committee for
Human Rights:
Faced with [Aristide's] talk of radical reform, an old and deep-rooted American instinct
has taken hold. Repeated in countless countries, both during and after the Cold War,
it is this: When in doubt, look to the military as the only institutional guarantee of
stability and order.{38}
It had indeed been to the military that the Reagan and Bush
administrations had looked to provide these qualities, praising
the sincerity of the Haitian army's commitment to democracy on
several occasions.{39}
The Clinton administration was as hypocritical on the Haiti
question as were its predecessors, exemplified by its choice for
Secretary of Commerce -- Ron Brown had been a well-paid and
highly-active lobbyist for Baby-Doc Duvalier.{40} Cédras's spit-
in-the-face deceit on the Governors Island accord appeared to
bother Washington officials much less than the fact that Aristide
would not agree to form a government with the military.{41} By
February 1994, it was an open secret that Washington would as soon
be rid of the Haitian priest as it would the Haitian strongmen.
The Los Angeles Times reported: "Officially it [the US] supports
the restoration of Aristide. In private, however, many officials
say that Aristide ... is so politically radical that the military
and the island's affluent elite will never allow him to return to
power."{42}
Ideologically, if not emotionally, the antipathy of the
administration's senior officials to Aristide's politics was
hardly less than that of his country's ruling class. Moreover,
the predominant reason the strongmen were in disfavor in
Washington's eyes had little to do with their dreadful human-
rights record per se, but rather that the repression in Haiti was
provoking people to flee by the tens of thousands, causing the
United States an enormous logistical headache and image problem in
the Caribbean and Florida, as well as costing hundreds of millions
of dollars.
The gulf between the administration and Aristide widened yet
further when Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced that
a group of Haitian parliamentarians, whom he characterized as
"centrists", had put forth a plan which would pardon the army
officers who engineered the coup, and which called for Aristide to
name a prime minister, who in turn would create a cabinet
acceptable to Aristide's domestic foes. These steps, the plan
anticipated, would establish a coalition government and clear the
way for Aristide's eventual return to office.
Aristide, who had not been consulted at all, flatly rejected
the proposal that would have allowed some awful villains to escape
punishment, made no mention of a date or timetable for his
restoration, contained no guarantee that he would ever be able to
return to power at all, and would require him to share power with
a politically incompatible prime minister and some cabinet members
of similar ilk.
Christopher added that any strengthening of the embargo
against Haiti would depend on Aristide's acceptance of the plan.
The United States, he said, was wary of tougher sanctions because
they would increase the suffering in Haiti.{43} At the same time,
the State Department's chief Haiti expert, Michael Kozak, blamed
"extremists on both sides" for scuttling the plan. This, said a
Haitian supporter of Aristide, "created a moral equivalency
between Aristide and the military. That put Aristide on the same
level as the killers."{44}
The Bush administration, employing the UN and the OAS as
well, had pressed similar proposals and ultimatums upon the
beleaguered Aristide on several occasions. His failure to embrace
them had stamped him as "intransigent" amongst some officials and
media.{45}
Aristide's rejection of the plan can perhaps be better
understood if one considers whether Washington would ever insist
to the Cuban exiles in Miami that if they wanted US support for
their return to Cuba, they would have to agree to a coalition
government with Castroites, or that Iraqian exiles would have to
learn to live with Saddam Hussein. The repeated insistence that
Aristide accept a "broad-based" government, or a government of
"national consensus" is ironic coming from the Bush and Clinton
administrations, in which one cannot find an open left-liberal,
much less a leftist or socialist, scarcely even a plain genuine
liberal, in any middle- or high-level position. Nor has the
severe suffering of the Cuban people from the American embargo had
any noticeable effect upon the policy of either administration.
It soon developed that the plan, which had been labeled "a
bipartisan Haitian legislative initiative" had actually originated
with a State Department memo; worse, the Haitian input had come
from supporters of Aristide's overthrow, including Police Chief
Francois himself.{46}
A further symptom of the administration's estrangement from
Aristide was a report from the US Embassy in Haiti to the State
Department in April. While conceding widespread and grave
violations of human rights by the military regime, the report
claimed that Aristide "and his followers consistently manipulate
and even fabricate human-rights abuses as a propaganda tool." The
Aristide camp was described as "hardline ideological".{47}
Congressional liberals, particularly the Congressional Black
Caucus, were becoming disturbed. In the midst of their growing
criticism and pressure, State Department Special Envoy to Haiti
Lawrence Pezzullo, by this time openly described as the author of
the "legislative" plan, resigned. A week later several
congressmen, attended by wide media coverage, were arrested in a
protest outside the White House.
By early May, given the congressional pressure, the Grand
Haitian Plan discredited and abandoned, the sanctions an
international joke, the refugees still washing up on Florida
shores, while many thousands of others were filling up Guantánamo
base in Cuba, the Clinton administration was forced to the
conclusion that -- though they still didn't like this man Jean-
Bertrand Aristide with his non-centrist thoughts -- they were
unable to create anything that smelled even faintly like a rose
without restoring him to the presidency. Bill Clinton had painted
himself into a corner. During the campaign in 1992, he had
denounced Bush's policy of returning refugees to Haiti as "cruel".
"My Administration," he declared, "will stand up for
democracy".{48} Since that time the word "Haiti" could not cross
his lips without being accompanied by at least three platitudes
about "democracy".
Something had to be done or another "foreign-policy failure"
would be added to the list the Republicans were drooling over in
this election year ... but what? Over the next four months, the
world was treated to a continuous flip-flop -- numerous
permutations concerning sanctions, handling of the refugees, how
much time the junta had to pack up and leave (as much as six
months), what kind of punishment or amnesty for the murderous
military and police, whether the US would invade ... this time we
mean it ... now we really mean it ... "our patience has run out",
for the third time ... "we will not rule out military force", for
the fifth time ... the junta was not terribly intimidated.
Meanwhile, an OAS human-rights team was accusing the Haiti
regime of "murder, rape, kidnaping, detention and torture in a
systematic campaign to terrorize Haitians who want the return of
democracy and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide", and Amnesty
International was reporting the same.{49}
Time was passing, and each day meant less time for Aristide
to govern Haiti. He had already lost almost three of the five
years of his term, plus the eight months he had served.
By the summer, what Bill Clinton wanted desperately was to
get the junta out of power without having to deal with the thorny
question of congressional approval, without a US invasion, without
any American casualties, without going to war on behalf of a
socialist priest. If Washington's heart had really been set on
the return to power of Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the CIA
could have been directed to destabilize the Haitian government any
time during the previous three years, using its tried and trusted
bribery, blackmail, and forged documents, its disinformation,
rumors, and paranoia, its weapons, mercenaries, and
assassinations, its multinational economic strangleholds, its
instant little armies, its selective little air assaults imbuing
the right amount of terror in the right people at the right time
... the Agency had done so with much stronger and more stable
governments; governments with much more public support, from Iran
and Guatemala, to Ecuador and Brazil, to Ghana and Chile.
Much of what was needed in Haiti was already in place,
beginning with the CIA's own creation, the National Intelligence
Service, as well as a large network of informants and paid assets
within other security forces such as FRAPH, and knowledge of who
the reliable military officers were.{50} US intelligence even had
a complete inventory of Haitian weaponry.{51}
The failure of Clinton to make use of this option is
particularly curious in light of the fact that many members of
Congress and some of the administration's own foreign policy
specialists were urging him to do so for months.{52} Finally, in
September 1994, officials revealed that the CIA had "launched a
major covert operation this month to try to topple Haiti's
military regime ... but so far the attempt has failed". One
official said the effort "was too late to make a difference". The
administration, we were told, had spent months debating what kind
of actions to undertake, and whether they would be legal or
not.{53}
Or they could have made the famous "one phone call". Like
they meant it.
Betrayal
"The most violent regime in our hemisphere" ... "campaign of rape,
torture and mutilation, people starved" ... "executing children,
raping women, killing priests" ... "slaying of Haitian orphans"
suspected of "harboring sympathy toward President Aristide, for no
other reason than he ran an orphanage in his days as a parish
priest" ... "soldiers and policemen raping the wives and daughters
of suspected political dissidents -- young girls, 13, 16 years old
-- people slain and mutilated with body parts left as warnings to
terrify others; children forced to watch as their mothers' faces
are slashed with machetes" ...{54}
Thus spaketh William Jefferson Clinton to the American people
to explain why he was seeking to "restore democratic government in
Haiti".
The next thing we knew, the Haitian leaders were told that
they could take four weeks to resign, they would not be charged
with any crimes, they could remain in the country if they wished,
they could run for the presidency if they wished, they could
retain all their assets no matter how acquired. Those who chose
exile were paid large amounts of money by the United States to
lease their Haitian properties, any improvements made to remain
free of charge; two jets were chartered to fly them with all their
furniture to the country of their choice, transportation free,
housing and living expenses paid for the next year for all family
members and dozens of relatives and friends, totaling millions of
dollars.{55}
The reason Bill Clinton the president (as opposed, perhaps,
to Bill Clinton the human being) could behave like this is that he
-- as would be the case with any other man sitting in the White
House, like Jimmy Carter who told Cédras that he was a man of
honor and that he had great respect for him -- was not actually
repulsed by Cédras and company, for they posed no ideological
barrier to the United States continuing the economic and strategic
control of Haiti it's maintained for most of the century. Unlike
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a man who only a year earlier had
declared: "I still think capitalism is a mortal sin."{56} Or
Fidel Castro in Cuba. Lest there be doubt here, it should be
noted that shortly before Clinton made the remarks cited above,
Vice President Gore declared on television that Castro has a worse
record on human rights than the military leaders of Haiti.{57}
The atrocities of the Haitian government were simply trotted
out by President Clinton to build support for military
intervention, just as he cited the junta's drug trafficking; after
all these years, this was now discovered, as Noriega's long-time
dealings were finally condemned when it was time for a military
intervention into Panama.
But the worst of the betrayal was yet to come.
Per the above agreement with Raoul Cédras, US armed forces began
arriving in Haiti 19 September to clear the way for Aristide's
arrival in mid-October. The Americans were welcomed with elation
by the Haitian people, and the GIs soon disarmed, arrested, or
shot dead some of the worst dangers to life and limb and
instigators of chaos in Haitian society. But first they set up
tanks and vehicles mounted with machine guns to block off the
streets leading to the residential neighborhoods of the morally
repugnant elite, the rich being Washington's natural allies.{58}
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's reception was a joyous celebration
filled with optimism. However, unbeknownst to his adoring
followers, while they were regaining Aristide, they may have lost
Aristidism. The Los Angeles Times reported:
In a series of private meetings, Administration officials admonished Aristide to
put aside the rhetoric of class warfare ... and seek instead to reconcile Haiti's rich
and poor. The Administration also urged Aristide to stick closely to free-market
economics and to abide by the Caribbean nation's constitution -- which gives
substantial political power to the Parliament while imposing tight limits on the
presidency. ... Administration officials have urged Aristide to reach out to some
of his political opponents in setting up his new government ... to set up a broad-
based coalition regime. ... the Administration has made it clear to Aristide that if
he fails to reach a consensus with Parliament, the United States will not try to
prop up his regime.{59} Almost every aspect of Aristide's plans for resuming
power -- from taxing the rich to disarming the military -- has been examined by
the U.S. officials with whom the Haitian president meets daily and by officials
from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other aid organizations.
The finished package clearly reflects their priorities. ... Aristide obviously has toned
down the liberation theology and class-struggle rhetoric that was his signature
before he was exiled to Washington.{60}
Tutored by leading Clinton administration officials,
"Aristide has embraced the principles of democracy [sic], national
reconciliation and market economics with a zeal that Washington
would like to see in all leaders of developing nations."{61}
Aristide returned to Haiti 15 0ctober 1994, three years and
two weeks after being deposed. The United States might well have
engineered his return under the same terms -- or much better of
course -- two to three years earlier, but Washington officials
kept believing that the policy of returning refugees to Haiti, and
when that was unfeasible, lodging them at Guantánamo, would make
the problems go away -- the refugee problem, and the Jean-Bertrand
Aristide problem. Faced ultimately with an Aristide returning to
power, Clinton demanded and received -- and then made sure to
publicly announce -- the Haitian president's guarantee that he
would not try to remain in office to make up for the time lost in
exile. Clinton of course called this "democracy", although it
represented a partial legitimization of the coup.{62} As can be
deduced from the above compilation of news reports, this was by no
means the only option Aristide effectively surrendered.
His preference for the all-important position of prime
minister -- who appoints the cabinet -- was Claudette Werleigh, a
woman very much in harmony with his thinking, but he was forced to
rule her out because of strong opposition to her "leftist bent"
from political opponents who argued that she would seriously hurt
efforts to obtain foreign aid and investment. Instead, Aristide
wound up appointing Smarck Michel, one of Washington's leading
choices.{63} At the same time, the Clinton administration and the
international financial institutions (IFIs) were carefully
watching the Haitian president's appointments for finance
minister, planning minister, and head of the Central Bank.{64}
Two of the men favored by Washington to fill these positions
had met in Paris on 22 August with the IFIs to arrange the terms
of an agreement under which Haiti would receive about $700 million
of investment and credit. Typical of such agreements for the
Third World, it calls for a drastic reduction of state involvement
in the economy and an enlarged role for the private sector through
privatization of public services. Haiti's international function
will be to serve the transnational corporations by opening itself
up further to foreign investment and commerce, with a bare minimum
of tariffs or other import restrictions, and offering itself,
primarily in the assembly industries, as a source of cheap export
labor -- extremely cheap labor, little if any increase in the
current 10 to 25 cents per hour wages, distressingly inadequate
for keeping body and soul together and hunger at bay; a way of
life promoted for years to investors by the US Agency for
International Development and other US government agencies.{65}
(The assembly industries are regarded by Washington as important
enough to American firms that in the midst of the sanctions
against Haiti, the US announced that it was "fine-tuning" the
embargo to permit these firms to import and export so they could
resume work.){66}
The agreement further emphasizes that the power of the
Parliament is to be strengthened. The office of the president is
not even mentioned. Neither is the word "justice".{67}
As of this writing (late October 1994), Aristide's dreams of
a living wage and civilized working conditions for the Haitian
masses, a social security pension system, decent education,
housing, health care, public transportation, etc. appear to be
little more than that -- dreams. What appears to be certain is
that the rich will grow richer, and the poor will remain at the
very bottom of Latin America's heap. Under Aristide's successor
-- whomever the United States is already grooming -- it can only
get worse.
Aristide the radical reformer knew all this, and at certain
points during September and October he may have had the option to
get a much better deal, for Clinton needed him almost as much as
he needed Clinton. If Aristide had threatened to go public, and
noisily so, about the betrayal in process, spelling out all the
sleazy details so that the whole world could get beyond the
headlined platitudes and understand what a sham Bill Clinton's
expressed concerns about "democracy" and the welfare of the
Haitian people were, the American president would have been faced
with an embarrassment of scandalous proportion.
But Aristide the priest saw the world in a different light:
Let us compare political power with theological power. On the one hand, we see those in
control using the traditional tools of politics: weapons, money, dictatorship, coups d'état,
repression. On the other hand, we see tools that were used 2,000 years ago: solidarity,
resistance, courage, determination, and the fight for dignity and might, respect and power.
We see transcendence. We see faith in God, who is justice. The question we now ask is this:
which is stronger, political power or theological power? I am confident that the latter is
stronger. I am also confident that the two forces can converge, and that their convergence
will make the critical difference.{68}
NOTES
1. New York Times, 27 February 1986, p. 3; 11 April 1986, p. 4.
2. Fritz Longchamp and Worth Cooley-Prost, "Hope for Haiti", Covert
Action Information Bulletin (Washington), No. 36, Spring 1991, p.
58. Longchamp is Executive Director of the Washington Office on
Haiti, an analysis and public education center; Paul Farmer, The
Uses of Haiti (Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 1994), pp. 128-9.
3. The Guardian (London), 22 September 1986.
4. Ibid.
5. Reagan: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, An Autobiography (Orbis Books,
Maryknoll, NY, 1993, translation from 1992 French edition), p. 79.
Hereafter, Aristide Autobiography.
6. Time magazine, 30 November 1987, p. 7.
7. CIA and the 1987-88 election: Los Angeles Times, 31 October 1993,
p. 1; New York Times, 1 November 1993, p. 8.
8. New York Times, 1 November 1993, p. 8.
9. Allan Nairn, "The Eagle is Landing", The Nation, 3 October 1994,
p. 344; citing US Col. Steven Butler, former planning chief for US
armed forces in the Caribbean, who was involved in the operation.
10. Farmer, p. 150; New York Times, 13 March 1990, p. 1.
11. Aristide Autobiography, pp. 105-6, 118-21.
12. Haitian Information Bureau, "Chronology: Events in Haiti,
October 15, 1990 - May 11, 1994", in James Ridgeway, ed., The Haiti
Files: Decoding the Crisis (Essential Books, Washington, 1994), p.
205.
13. Robert I. Rotberg, Washington Post, 20 December 1990, p. A23.
14. Washington Post, 6 June, 1991, p. A23. In his autobiography,
op. cit., pp. 147-8, Aristide writes that he reduced his salary from
ten to four thousand as well as eliminating a number of other
expensive perks.
15. Aristide Autobiography, p. 144.
16. Ibid., pp. 127-8, 139.
17. Aristide's policies in office:
a) Washington Post, 6 June, 1991, p. A23; 7 October 1991, p. 10;
b) Aristide Autobiography, chapter 12;
c) Farmer, pp. 167-180;
d) Multinational Monitor (Washington, DC), March 1994, pp. 18-23
(land reform and unions).
18. San Francisco Chronicle, 22 October 1991, p. A16.
19. Alan Nairn, "Our Man in FRAPH: Behind Haiti's Paramilitaries",
The Nation, 24 October 1994, p. 460, referring to Emannuel Constant,
the head of FRAPH.
20. NED, etc.:
a) The Nation, 29 November 1993, p. 648, column by David Corn;
b) Haitian Information Bureau, "Subverting Democracy", Multinational
Monitor (Washington, DC), March 1994, pp. 13-15.
c) National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, D.C., Annual
Report, 1989, p. 33; Annual Report, 1990, p. 41.
d) Aristide Autobiography, p. 111, Radio Soleil's catering to the
government.
21. New York Times, 8 October 1991, p. 10.
22. Boston Globe, 1 October 1992.
23. New York Times, 1 November 1993, p. 8; 14 November, p. 12.
Latell's report was presented in July 1992.
24. Ibid., 14 November 1993, p. 12.
25. Howard French, New York Times, 27 September 1992, p. E5.
26. "Chronology", The Haiti Files, op. cit., p. 211.
27. New York Times, 1 November 1993, p. 1.
28. Drugs: Ibid., p. 8; The Nation, 3 October 1994, p. 344, op.
cit.; Los Angeles Times, 20 May 1994, p. 11.
29. SIN: New York Times, 14 November 1993, p. 1; The Nation, 3
October 1994, p. 346, op. cit.
30. a) The Nation, 24 October 1994, pp. 458-461, op. cit.; Allan
Nairn, "He's Our S.O.B.", 31 October 1994, pp. 481-2.
b) Washington Post, 8 October 1994, p. A8;
c) Los Angeles Times, 8 October 1994, p. 12;
d) New York Daily News, 12 October 1993, article by Juan Gonzales,
which lends further credence to the idea that the ship incident was
a set-up.
31. Time magazine, 8 November 1993, pp. 45-6.
32. Farmer, p. 152.
33. Aristide's mental state:
a) Los Angeles Times, 23 October 1993, p. 14; 31 October, p. 16; 2
November, p. 8.
b) New York Times, 31 October 1993, p. 12 (re fraudulent document).
c) Washington Post, 22 October 1993, p. A26.
d) CBS News, 13 October 1993; 2 December 1993, report by Bob Faw,
stated: "This hospital in Montreal told the Miami Herald it never
treated Aristide for psychiatric disorders."
34. New York Times, 23 October 1993, p. 1.
35. Dwight Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace,
1956-1961 (New York, 1965) p. 573; Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies:
The Making of an Unfriendly World (New York, 1984) p. 57.
36. Time magazine, 8 November 1993, p. 46.
37. Clinton administration's relation to Haitian leaders: Ibid., p.
45.
38. George Black and Robert O. Weiner, op-ed column in the Los
Angeles Times, 19 October 1993. Black is editorial director and
Weiner coordinator of the Americas program of the Committee.
39. Washington Post, 2 December 1987, p. A32; 11 September 1989, p.
C22, column by Jack Anderson; The Guardian (London), 22 September
1986.
40. Juan Gonzalez, "As Brown Fiddled, Haiti Burned", New York Daily
News, 9 February 1994.
41. New York Times, 18 December 1993, p. 7.
42. Los Angeles Times, 16 February 1994, p. 6.
43. Ibid., 24 February 1994, 26 February; Multinational Monitor,
March 1994, op. cit., p. 15.
44. Los Angeles Times, 14 April 1994, p. 4. Kozak's remark was made
in February.
45. Kim Ives, "The Unmaking of a President", in The Haiti Files, op.
cit., pp. 87-103.
46. Multinational Monitor, March 1994, op. cit., p. 15; Los Angeles
Times, 14 April 1994, p. 4.
47. Murray Kempton, syndicated column, Los Angeles Times, 12 May
1994.
48. Los Angeles Times, 25 September 1994, p. 10.
49. Ibid., 21, 24 May 1994; the words are those of the Times;
Amnesty Action (AI, New York), Fall 1994, p. 4.
50. The Nation, 3 October 1994, p. 346, op. cit.
51. Los Angeles Times, 23 September 1994, p. 5.
52. Ibid., 24 June 1994, p. 7.
53. Ibid., 16 September 1994.
54. Ibid., 16 September 1994, p. 8.
55. Ibid., 14 October 1994, p. 1.
56. Isabel Hilton, "Aristide's Dream", The Independent (London), 30
October 1993, p. 29, cited in Farmer, p. 175; Aristide added, "but
the reality's different in the United States."
57. Los Angeles Times, 5 September 1994, p. 18, Gore was speaking on
"Meet the Press".
58. Ibid., 1 October 1994.
59. Ibid., 17 September 1994, pp. 1 and 10; see also p. 9.
60. Ibid., 1 October 1994, p. 5.
61. Ibid., 8 October 1994, p. 12.
62. New York Times, 16 September 1994.
63. Los Angeles Times, 24, 25 October 1994.
64. Ibid., 19 October 1994.
65. A slightly condensed version of the Haitian economic plan can be
found in Multinational Monitor (Washington, DC), July/August 1994,
pp. 7-9. For a description of life in Haiti's oppressive assembly
sector, see: National Labor Committee, "Sweatshop Development", in
The Haiti Files, op. cit., pp. 134-54.
66. New York Times, 5 February 1992, p. 8.
67. Multinational Monitor, July/August 1994, op. cit.
68. Aristide Autobiography, pp. 166-7.
This is a chapter from Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, by William Blum
|  |
