Haiti Crisis: Anarchy or Yet Another Plot Against Democracy?

Haiti appears to be falling apart. The mainstream press, particularly that of the United States, appears to be taking the US State Department line that the Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide has become a corrupt demagogue. They frequently quote the line that the Haitian elections in 2000 were flawed, but they fail to provide the details surrounding the so-called flaw.

According to Ira Kurzban, an American lawyer representing Haiti in the United States, the Organization of American States declared the May 2000 Haitian elections largely free and fair. The flaw mentioned repeatedly in the mainstream American press had to do with OAS concern over vote counting methodologies for seven senate seats. Kurzban emphasized that the OAS did not feel that this "flaw" impacted the approximately 7500 other elected positions being determined during the election. Moreover, the OAS declared Aristide's re-election, which occurred later in November of 2000, to be free and fair, with no hint of flaws. Clearly democracy at work.

When the Bush Administration took power, after the US experienced its own very flawed presidential elections in 2000, they used the "flaw" in Haiti's elections as a pretext to cut off all aid. Now we should be clear here. The aid cut off wasn't simply that of the US. The Bush Administration successfully pressured all international lending and aid agencies to restrict aid going to Haiti.

Now the Bush Administration may have had a tiny scrap of an argument that the "flaw" concerning the vote counting of the seven senators needed to be dealt with. But Aristide did deal with it. He convinced the seven senators to resign in February or March 2001. A return of aid, however, was not forthcoming.

Given the past history of the US in Haiti, the sudden concern over a "flaw" in their elections was clearly an excuse to stop aid desperately needed to bring a fragile democracy to a functioning level. During the reign of the viscous Haitian dictators Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier, the US pumped millions in aid into Haiti. In 1991, less than a year after Aristide was first elected president of Haiti, a military coup overthrew the government, and the military junta in place received millions in aid from the US. 1991 you may recall was during the presidency of Bush the first, George W. Bush's father. It wasn't until 1994 that the Clinton Administration invaded Haiti and reinstalled Aristide as the democratically elected president.

US involvement unfortunately does not end there. The opposition groups in Haiti are surprisingly well funded for such a poor country. In fact, one of the major members of the Haitian opposition, who has been giving speeches to the press, one Andre Apaid, is a wealthy American citizen, who owns a lot of property in Haiti. But perhaps more importantly, the rebels who now control the northern half of Haiti are a mix of criminals with ties to the Duvalier regimes and the military junta of 1991 to 1994. According to OneWorld.net's Jim Lobe, "Guy Philippe, Cap Haitien's police chief under military rule, and Jean Pierre Baptiste, alias "Jean Tatoune" who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his participation in a 1994 massacre that killed dozens of people in Raboteau." are among the leadership of the rebels. Both of whom had fled to the Dominican Republic after Aristide's return in 1994.

For a country as devastatingly poor as Haiti, the rebel forces are remarkably well equipped, many with uniforms and assault weapons. Some news reports have claimed the rebel's weapons came from caches apparently hidden in Haiti for almost a decade, after the fall of the military junta in 1994. But according to Ira Kurzban, the arms were likely provided to the Haitian rebels in the Dominican Republic, and came from part of a US military aid shipment of some 20,000 M-16 assault rifles.

One question is, why on earth would the Bush Administration seek the overthow of a democratically elected government? Well back in 1991, the first Bush Administration clearly supported the military junta that overthrew Aristide by providing aid. Moreover, the current Bush Administration has made it clear that democratically elected governments of a certain left-wing persuasion, such as Venezuela's, are an unwelcome presence in the Americas. Aristide, like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, subscribes to a more leftist political orientation. Aristide has been very vocal and proactive in seeking reforms to redistribute wealth in Haitian society, although he has largely failed due to a complete lack of anything other than token support from the international community.

That the mainstream press in the US and Canada have failed to fully investigate the situation in Haiti is a disgusting reminder of the laziness and bias in our so-called press. They should be on the ground checking stories of American weapons getting into the hands of rebels, they should be following the money trails from the well funded Haitian opposition parties. Instead they're sounding like the PR arm of the Bush Administration's State Department.

It appears the US is attempting to repeat in Haiti what it failed to do to Chavez

Additional Information:
To download an interview with Haitian general council, Ira Kurzban click here.
In addition here are the impressions of
US Congresswoman Maxine Waters on Haiti.