I'm going to make an effort to remain calm while writing this.  However,  I find it difficult to understand how anyone can convince themselves of this sort of humbug.

In 1991, Aristide served seven months of a six-year tem of office, was ousted by a paramilitary organization financed by private financial interests in the USA, and stuck in exile for almost 3 years while the FAd'H/FRAPH* junta caused a gigantic struggle of Haitians to flee.  After the embarrassment of this human rights crisis, coupled with a similar exodus from Cuba, becomes too much, the foreign policy community in Washington agreed to a mission to restore Aristide.  During this time, the junta had waged a campaign of constant terror and mass murder against the supporters of the legitimate government.

Now, those same people, who were accustomed to constant attacks by the Haitian Army, were totally determined to never leave themselves exposed to that sort of thing again.  The people who supported Aristide were not a faction, they weren't a tribe, they weren't a bunch of thugs, they were THE VAST MAJORITY OF HAITIANS.  No, no, not the vast majority of Haitians with BLOGS; the VAST MAJORITY OF HAITIANS.  They didn't want socialism (although some no doubt would like it, if it were in the realm of possibility), but they did want to have some dignity, and protection, and access to their plot of land so they could farm in peace.  The FRAPHists wanted to reduce the VAST MAJORITY OF HAITIANS to virtual indentured servitude, without protection or security in the enjoyment of their own property.  

Still, don't take my word for it; use common sense.  The FRAPH years were ones of constant desperate attempts to flee Haiti.  Hundreds died at sea; thousands were detained in squalor at INS detention facilities.  The UN-US peacekeepers arrived in Port-au-Prince in October '94 and at reached troop strength of 20,000 (1st Brigade, 101st  Airborne; 10th Mountain, et al.)  They refused to do police work and spent a large share of resources protecting the FAd'H perpetrators, who naturally demanded protection so they could parade through places their goons had committed atrocities months before.

Aristide arrived with no armed contingent, in a country that had BEEN MADE lawless through forty years of totalitarian movements, plus decades more of rule by US-backed military juntas (Pres. Lescot, et al).  He had ruled for SEVEN MONTHS.  What the hell was he supposed to do?  The US Department of State was playing keep-away with Haitian tax revenues, effectively denying him access to the levers of state power after playing a charade of "restoring" the legitimate head of state.   That's right, the entire revenue administration had to pass through foreign hands so State could demand that Aristide do as it wanted.  The Army officer corps was totally committed to ousting Aristide the moment it had an opportunity.  So Aristide did what diplomats have always done: he negotiated a truce among the numerous armed gangs defending their neighborhoods in Haiti.
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* FAd'H: the conspiracy of business elites, military, and foreign (Anglo-Euro-NorthAm) commercial interests that ousted Aristide, prompting condemnation by the UN-GA.  The FAd'H, with assistance of people like Sen. Jesse Helm's office, financed the creation of FRAPH to make the junta look like a populist movement.  Totally dependent upon cash, FRAPH instantly became a splinter of the already-tiny Haitian rejectionist movement after Aristide was restored.

Let me make an analogy: from '33 to '40, the head of the League of Nations was a fellow named Joseph Avenol.  Since most of the major powers of the day were members, one could make the spurious assumption that Avenol outranked them (at least, until they withdrew from the League).  Blaming Aristide for the emergence of the Haitian militia--some of which, naturally, feared Aristide less than the alternative--is like blaming Avenol for the Japanese invasion of China, since they did so on his watch.  And of course, Avenol was the General Secretary, so of course he was responsible for the Italian invasion of Abyssinia ('35), the Soviet invasion of Finland (1939) and the prolonged European oppression of the 3rd World.

I hope it's obvious that the mere title of "General Secretary of the League of Nations" or "President of Haiti" are understood NOT to confer that sort of agency on their holders.  In Haiti, Aristide had to work with the armed forces existing already; the UN-US peacekeepers never bestirred themselves to disarm the militia, but blamed a single, unarmed man for failing to do so--when Aristide was denied every instrument of political power by an occupation force.  Say, shall we blame the misery of Burma on Daw Aun Saung Suu Kyi?  Dammit, she's been PM of the country since 1990!  (I am being ironic here.)  Western (and white) critics of Aristide will blame his refusal to accept the assistance of the Western military detachments in Haiti as an instrument of state power.  After all, they were "legitimate" whereas the Haitian militia were not. But the fact was that they had no intention of allowing Aristide to govern; under the more cooperative Rene Preval (1996-2001) the occupation force softened its terms, while Preval accepted IMF terms and conditions for an SAP. Haiti became safe for business, and then, in '98, the Haitian economy imploded.  Preval's support had vanished after he accommodated the foreign business demands (unrestricted logging), yet the "international community" did not come through: they didn't disarm the militia for Preval, either. 

Again, in 2001, Pres. Aristide was forced to rebuild the uneasy coalition of armed groups in Haiti.   But now, the armed groups were becoming greedy.  Blaming this on Aristide, again, is like blaming the recent behavior of the US government entirely on Kofi Annan.  Aristide had no armed force of his own, and no means of creating one; the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) did, and used cupidity of the Cannibal Army to stage a rupture with Aristide.  Remember, the IMF had already transferred a gigantic share of Haitian state assets out of the hands of Aristide, so Aristide was again minus basic tools of governance.  Aristide governed idealistically, but without illusions: he relied on his popular mandate and moral authority (supported as he was by the overwhelming majority of Haitians), but also diplomatic skills: he had no armed force that was loyal to him.  He had no money, and no access to money that other leaders would have used to impose state power.

A causual glipse at the the history of Haiti should make it clear that there is a deep, violent cleavage between the vast majority of Haitians, who live in slums or tiny rural plots in the hills, and the tiny business class who are closely tied to retailers in North America and Europe.  The business class illegally log and profit from the desperate working conditions of the dispossessed Haitian slumdweller.   I'm sorry to use such blunt language here, but conditions in Haiti are like those of an antebellum Mississippi plantation.  The unimaginable squalor and ardurous toil of the sweatshops is the absolutely only choice for survival for a vast proportion of the population, since the plutocracy will never recognize their meager accumulations of capital.  Since the ruling class recognizes only its on property rights, a tradition of utter lawlessness has prevailed for decades.

One need carry no brief for Aristide to see that it is absurd to blame him--a single man, with no independent source of cash, no loyal fighting force, and only 29 months of authority between 1991 and 2002--for this lawlessness, after not merely the US State Department, but the business interests of France, the UK, and many other Western powers have spent hundreds of millions occupying the country and exploiting its labor. Somehow, we are supposed to believe that 20,000 US soldiers, plus several thousand others from Canada, France, and other UN member states, could not weaken the armed mobs or even stand against them on the boulevards of Haiti, yet somehow Aristide is to blame. 

Seriously, how can anyone believe this?  And by the way: I'm not going to hunt it down, but I've read at least one article in The Guardian promoting the "Aristide is a monster" version of history, adding--as always--that the US to blame because Aristide is allegedly a US puppet!  I'm sorry, but the staff of the Guardian might as well argue that orgasms are evil because the US invented those too.  It's a twist they add to every story to get the readers to believe it.  No, we have a lot to answer for in Haiti, but not for supporting Aristide: we are quite innocent of that.

Moreover, the current election cycle in Haiti--likewise, under the aegis of US-UN troops--was also accompanied by fraud and intimidation against the Lavalas movement that supports Preval. Preval had to break publicly with Aristide long ago, lest he suffer the same reprisals by the soi-disant international community, but he is definitely a proxy for the exiled Aristide.

And by the way: observe how the former members of the murderous FAd'H/FRAPH were allowed to remain in Haiti while the greater part of the foreign peacekeepers protected them?  Yet the government of the Central African Republic was threatened with sanctions for allowing Aristide to visit Jamaica.  Can we at least admit that the enemies of Aristide are the leaders of the most powerful leaders in the world, and they use totalitarian methods against him?  Is that a clue, perhaps?

OK, I'll try to calm down now.  Sorry, I'm burning up.  I'm so angry my eyes sting.

Here's a few worthies who have succeeded Aristide.

Guy Philippe:  trained by U.S. Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s... Says that the man he most admires is former Chilean ruler Gen. Augusto Pinochet. He praises him for helping make Chile prosperous through economic market reforms.

Human Rights Watch reported Friday, February 27, 2004, that during Philippe's term as police chief of the Port-au-Prince suburb of Delmas from 1997 to 1999  [I.e., under Pres. Preval], international monitors "learned that dozens of suspected gang members were summarily executed, mainly by police under the command of Inspector Berthony Bazile, Philippe's deputy."

On March 2, 2004, Philippe and his paramilitaries retook control of the former Haitian Army headquarters across from the National Palace... That same day, Philippe announced he would arrest Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, who is a top official of Aristide's Lavalas party...   Neptune's home was burned and looted and that he was being pursued by armed gangs... Local radio reported that Neptune was evacuated from his office by helicopter as Guy Philippe led a mob in a march to the office.

Makes one feel relieved to know those people from Famny Lavalas aren't running the show any more, huh?  Philippe will surely clear out those riff-raff for good.

Louis-Jodel Chamberlain: In 1987, Chamblain allegedly headed government death squads that interrupted a planned election that would have marked the transition to civilian rule. In all, 34 voters were killed, and the election was cancelled...  Chamblain formed a paramilitary organization, the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), in 1993 as tensions grew between supporters of Aristide's reinstatement and supporters of the military government.

This article is really good at explaining the participants in real Haitian power.

What didn’t make it into the American press was the fact that Antoine is the brother of George Saati, the co-founder of the extreme right-wing Haitian party Movement for National Unity, known by its acronym MOUN, which is closely allied with the Democratic Convergence and the Group of 184.  George Saati also owns the Haitian manufacturing concern Simi Global Corporation and is wealthy in his own right.  Antoine explained his arrest as a vendetta instigated by one Eddy Deeb against whom his brother was then taking civil action in the Haitian courts.  It turns out that getting to know Guy Philippe will properly involve cameo appearances by many such figures as Antoine and George Saati.

 

The Democratic Convergence, the Group of 184, and MOUN, for all intents and purposes, make up the opposition to popular government in .  Their respective leaders — Evans Paul, Andre Apaid and George Saati — are the leadership of the opposition, with Apaid, an American citizen of Haitian descent, clearly having gained precedence over the others

[...]

“The Opposition” as they have recently been called in the American press, is closely advised by the International Republican Institute, in the .  The IRI is chaired by Senator John McCain and is largely managed by high-level neo-conservative Republicans, many actively serving in the Congress of the .  It is a private think tank that receives funding from the taxpayer via the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development.  The de facto executive committee of “The Opposition” is the Haiti Democracy Project, also an American NGO largely managed by high-level neo-conservative Republicans...

 

Excellent. I may have to pass the url for this page around a vit.

Thanks, P6, I just had to get that off my chest.

Ghosts of Cité Soleil?

Haiti is haunted alright. But it is by the legacy of Duvalier and U.S. intervention rather than the actions of the powerless and ineffectual Aristide.

BTW: Colin Powell and Condi Rice, the Amos n' Andy of the Bush regime, deserve a special place in hell for their roles in destabilizing and then removing Aristide.