Pacific Views

The armed opposition in Haiti.

[We noticed when posting that this is Pacific Views post #666. Fundamentalist Christians should probably stop reading here.]

We were wondering about the history of the armed groups that now effectively control Haiti, after some assistance from Washington. We found a good description of these groups in this Human Rights Watch backgrounder on the armed uprising.

The insurgents did not come out of nowhere. Indeed, former members of the Haitian Armed Forces (Forces Armées d’Haiti, FAd’H) have been mobilizing around the border of the Dominican Republic in central Haiti for about three years. In general, ex-soldiers resent President Aristide for having dismantled the army in 1995, and for, they claim, failing to provide them with the salary and pension benefits they were due. A group of former military officers announced themselves in November 2002 in the tiny town of Pernal, near Belladere on the Dominican border. Over the course of the following year, bands of thirty to 100 men harassed police, killed some people linked to the government, took over towns temporarily, and began recruiting supporters. On July 25, 2003, they reportedly killed four members of a Ministry of Interior delegation that visited the area. Along with unseating Aristide, the main goal of these forces is to reestablish the army.

In Artibonite, a group known as the Cannibal Army (which now calls itself the Artibonite Resistance Front) took root. Based in the poor seaside Raboteau neighborhood of Gonaïves, this originally community-based organization coalesced in the late 1980s. During the 1991-1994 military rule, the Raboteau group, and its charismatic leader Amiot Métayer, was the target of several bloody attacks. Most notoriously, in April 1994, the army and paramilitaries attacked the area, killing least fifteen people. The case, which became known as the Raboteau massacre, finally went to trial in 2000. A jury convicted sixteen former soldiers and paramilitaries of involvement in the massacre, and thirty-seven other defendants in absentia.

Under pressure from the international community to address violence against the political opposition, the government had Métayer arrested on July 3, 2002. Métayer was alleged to have participated in the killing of a security guard at an opposition party headquarters in Gonaïves in December 2001. He claimed to have received arms and funding from the government. His supporters broke him out of prison on August 2, 2002, and in the subsequent months he shifted position several times between support for and opposition to the government. While in support of the government, the Cannibal Army harassed and threatened independent journalists, and in November 2002 it partially destroyed a Gonaïves radio station and drove seven reporters into exile. But when Amiot Métayer was found murdered on September 20, 2003, his followers turned definitively to calling for President Aristide’s resignation. Led by Amiot’s brother Butteur Métayer, they launched the current insurrection in February.

Nice bunch of democrats, aren't they? And these are the folks that Dubya's administration is handing over the country to.

Human Rights Watch also has background info on the leaders of the armed opposition — and, let us tell you, these guys are real winners:

The most disturbing figure in the rebel leadership is Louis Jodel Chamblain. [...]

Chamblain was a sergeant in the Haitian army (FAd’H), and a member of the elite Corps des Leopards. He left the army in 1989 or 1990 and reappeared on the scene in 1993 as one of the founders of the Revolutionary Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress (Front révolutionnaire pour l’avancement et le progrès haïtien, FRAPH). Known as its number two leader, he had a reputation for violence and action (in contrast to the better known and more media-friendly Emmanuel "Toto" Constant). In the report of Haitian Truth and Justice Commission, there is a statement by Emmanuel Constant that explains that FRAPH’s central committee was composed of himself, Chamblain, Mireille Durocher-Bertin, a lawyer who was murdered in 1995, and Alphonse Lahens (a prominent Duvalierist).

Chamblain was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for the 1993 murder of businessman and activist Antoine Izmery, as well as for involvement in the 1994 Raboteau massacre. He is also implicated in the assassination of Justice Minister Guy Malary, who was ambushed and machine-gunned to death with his body-guard and a driver on October 14, 1993. According to a 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights, "FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill [Justice Minister Guy] Malary." [...]

The leader of the insurrectionary forces, Guy Philippe, age thirty-five, trained by the United States as an army officer in Ecuador. He was integrated into the new Haitian National Police in 1995 and his first command post was in Ouanaminthe, on the northern border with the Dominican Republic. Later, in about 1997 to 1999, he served as police chief for Delmas, a large urban district on the north side of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. During his tenure there, the UN/OAS International Civilian Mission learned that dozens of suspected gang members were summarily executed, mainly by police under the command of Inspector Berthony Bazile, Philippe’s deputy.

On October 18, 2000, Haiti’s prime minister announced that Philippe and other officers were plotting a coup d’etat. Before they were arrested, however, the men escaped over the border to the Dominican Republic.

When the Cannibal Army broke into Gonaives prison in August 2002, they released some 150 prisoners, including Jean Pierre Baptiste, alias “Jean Tatoune.” Tatoune was serving a sentence of life imprisonment for participating in the 1994 Raboteau massacre. He had led anti-Duvalier mobilizations in Gonaïves in 1985 and was honored for years as a key figure in the uprising that forced Duvalier out. But during the 1991-1994 military government he became a local FRAPH leader. Tatoune now belongs to the Artibonite Resistance Front.

So it seems that Dubya has decided that Haiti should be run by pretty much the same folks that the Clinton administration helped kick out of power in the 1990s. We guess this makes as much sense as any of Dubya's foreign policy, but that's certainly no comfort to the Haitian people who will have to live under a government run by butchers.

Posted by Magpie at March 1, 2004 06:06 PM | TrackBack