Gya: Eschewing the kool-aid

This one is a must-read! Somebody in the Caribbean finally gets it right about Aristide! Whoda thunk it!? This editorial writer needs to pound some sense into the heads of the Caricom leaders. I've omitted some, but the entire editorial absolutely must be read.

This time the Americans stumbled into Haiti. In an election year they clearly did not want to be there at all, bogged down as they are in Afghanistan and Iraq. But events overtook them, and they were then faced with the unpalatable prospect of either going in with all the risks attendant on that, or standing by while a country 600 miles from the coast of Florida descended into anarchy and flooded the US with refugees.

One of the questions which has been asked in this region, including by the PPP, is why the US insisted on President Aristide's departure before they would send in the marines, and why they would not support a man who was a 'democratically elected' leader. After all, they had restored him to office in 1994 following his removal in a 1991 coup d'etat, and not to bolster him now is to open themselves to accusations of coup-mongering. It is a not unreasonable question, and the first thing which has to be said is that Mr Aristide's impeccable democratic credentials did not survive his restoration to office.

During the period when the accommodating Mr Preval kept the presidential seat warm for him, the electoral council was filled with Aristide supporters, a council which subsequently organized the 2000 legislative elections. International observers deemed these elections seriously flawed, and over opposition objections presidential elections were held that same year which Mr Aristide won with more than 90% of the vote. The opposition boycotted the poll, however, which produced a turnout variously estimated at between 10 and 40 per cent.

There are still more serious charges to be laid at Mr Aristide's door. One of these is that over the period of a decade, he has made himself a millionaire, Professor Anselme Remy of Haiti's State University writing in the T&T Review of March 1 that he had joined the ranks of the very bourgeoisie which he had claimed to be fighting against. Some of the same corrupt business people, said Remy, who still controlled the country's resources, were his close associates.

The Professor went on to say that the Haitian President had used welfare funds as part of a patronage system to buy rising corrupt politicians and contenders, and had utilized taxes and money from international donors in a similar fashion. Forty per cent of the national budget was assigned to the presidency, and any "significant disbursal" of funds required Mr Aristide's personal approval. The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that for its part, the United States estimated that 70% of all foreign aid - of which it was providing the larger portion - was being pocketed by corrupt officials.
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The international press and human rights groups over the years have given various details about Mr Aristide's armed gangs, who terrorized, beat and sometimes murdered political opponents, kidnapped wealthy citizens, and at one time or another held sway over whole wards in urban areas like Port-au-Prince through the use of violence. In other words, in the vacuum created by the non-functioning of state institutions, President Aristide fell back in the end on the time-honoured methods of his autocratic predecessors.

In company with some of the murderous rebels, senior members of Mr Aristide's government, including the judiciary and the police force, were involved in the narcotics trade. Last year, for example, the US revoked the visas of several senior officials including the Minister of the Interior on those grounds. The San Francisco Chronicle has quoted three unnamed diplomatic sources as saying that in the interview with the Haitian President prior to his departure, testimony from a Haitian drug baron sentenced to 27 years in a Miami court was used as leverage to push the head of state into resigning.
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The US, constrained to intervene in a country where it didn't want to be, and where there was no effective state, adopted an approach which would put its soldiers at least risk. Any solution depended on disarming not just Aristide's gangs, but also the rebel warlords, whom the Americans were hoping to coax into laying down their weapons if the head of state resigned. They feared that if he didn't go they might have to confront them, in addition to which the rebels might go into Port-au-Prince and cause a bloodbath before any foreign troops landed. Whether in actual fact the US will be able to successfully stabilize the situation will not yet be known for some time.

Mr Aristide has accused the US of "kidnapping" him; that seems unlikely, although they clearly leaned heavily on him to go. Given the circumstances, the regional criticism of American actions in this particular instance is probably unfair, although that does not mean to say that the US is above criticism in other respects. Far from it. They have behaved reprehensibly towards Haiti, including during the period when Mr Aristide was in office and their trade policies spiced with a dash of malice destroyed the country's rice industry. While there was hope in 1994 that their record might be reversed, they did not stay long enough to redeem themselves by building the institutions which could create a viable democratic state, not even providing the new police force with the kind of funding which was necessary for it to operate.

Despite its glorious revolution, in its two centuries of independence, Haiti has become a victim of its rulers, of entrenched political violence, and of the malevolence of other states - in particular France and the US. After Mr Aristide left, Colin Powell was reported as saying that Haiti has been "a sad story for almost 200 years now." He added wearily, "We'll try again this time." Well this time, if they really do succeed in establishing some sort of framework of security by disarming the various warlords, they had better hang in there long enough to get it right.

The amazing thing is that so much of the Caribbean press and government leadership act as though Aristide's hands were clean. If Caricom leaders know that Aristide is a thug and continue to support him, it is of a piece with their siding with France against the U.S. on Iraq. Which is to say, the objection is not one of principle, of regard for constitutional process and rule of law; rather, like France, it is one of anti-U.S. bias and fear of American hyper-power. Iraq apparently was as instructive for Caricom as it was for Moammar Ghaddaffi; additionally, Haiti brought the Iraq lesson a little too close to home. No matter what one thinks of U.S. intervention in the affairs of a sovereign nation, if Iraq and Haiti encourage Caricom leaders to toe the line with their populations, perhaps that is a good thing. Given this scenario, it is no wonder that Chavez is hollering fit to bust a gut in Venezuela.