To highlight its position, the day Aristide was sworn in, the CD inaugurated its own parallel government. The world community barely blinked nor did the dominant media, as always blaming Aristide for Haiti's problems.
2000 - 2003: Investing in Pluralism
From the time he gained prominence in the late 1980s, Aristide was roughly treated. The Clinton administration was "profoundly hostile" to him, but George Bush neocons felt "genuine hatred" and showed it. One initiative was the "Democracy and Governance Program" to counter the "failure of democratic governance in Haiti." Its strategy - "developing political parties, helping non-governmental organizations resist Haiti's growing trend toward authoritarian rule, and strengthening the independent media." In other words - back all efforts to crush Aristide and FL.
The extremist hard right International Republican Institute (IRI) was part of the scheme with its own special viciousness - "backing the most regressive, elitist, pro-military" Haitian factions plus allying with the CD and G-184 against Aristide and FL.
One of IRI's strategic partners was the so-called 2002-formed, Washington-based Haiti Democracy Project (HDP). Its members represent a who's who of American and Haitian elites, united with a singular aim - crushing Haiti's "popular democracy" and returning the country to its pre-Aristide condition.
Haiti's anti-goverment or "independent" media also had its role, especially radio because of the country's high illiteracy rate. Throughout the 1990s and ahead of Aristide's 2000 reelection, anti-Lavalas propaganda was sustained and vicious. It was so hostile that in late 2003, the National Association of Haitian Media (ANMH) banned Aristide from its member stations' airwaves to prevent him from answering his critics.
The campaign against him was also helped when one of Haiti's few independent journalists, Jean Dominique, was mysteriously murdered in April 2000, just weeks before the decisive May legislative elections. Dominique rankled the opposition for years, was the country's most widely respected and influential radio voice, and strongly supported Lavalas and the poor. It's no surprise he was silenced or any doubt who did it.
Without a countervailing voice, the dominant media's specialty was unchallenged - round-the-clock anti-Lavalas propaganda all the time. So when small anti-Aristide demonstrations are held, like the one on May 28, 1999, they're reported as a "tide of dissent." In contrast, huge pro-Lavalas gatherings are downplayed or ignored.
At the same time, Haiti Progres (the country's largest weekly publication) reported "a media campaign was also launched in the United States to split the Haitian community and undermine the support of the Congressional Black Caucus" and other pro-Lavalas advocacy groups. Its themes were familiar and consistent - FL government corruption, autocracy and complicity in human rights abuses. Earlier in the 1990s, the US media called Aristide "flaky, volatile, confrontational, demagogic, unpredictable, radical, tyrannical, a psychopath, Anti-American, anti-democratic," and more. Then it got worse in his second term.
2001 - 2003: The Return of the Army
Economic pressure paralyzed Aristide's government, yet it took brute force to unseat him, and the scheme advanced along familiar lines. While USAID, NED, IRI and others funded the CD and G-184, covert training and equipping a rebel army (called the FLRN) went on in neighboring Dominican Republic (DR). This, of course, is a CIA specialty, although no smoking-gun evidence reveals what, in fact, went on - so far.
However, it's known that "contingency plans for an insurgency" were likely well advanced by the late 1990s. CIA operatives accompanied US occupation troops in 1994, and recruited and preserved FRAPH leaders, army personnel, and others to be used as an anti-Aristide paramilitary force. They went on the Agency's payroll for the time their services would be needed. It arrived in late 2000, and consider who led it.
Three names were prominent:
-- former Cap-Haitien police chief, dispassionate killer, member of Haiti's army, and Augusto Pinochet admirer, Guy Philippe;
-- former Macoute, FRAPH assassin and leader of the infamous "Raboteau massacre," Emmanuel "Toto" Constant; and
-- the similarly credentialed Louis Jodel Chamblain, described by a US intelligence official as a "cold-bloded, cutthroat, psychopathic killer" and perfect for what CIA had in mind.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
Many thanks to Stephen Lendman for another review of another extremely important book.
"Damming the Flood" fills in the big picture on what U.S. human rights groups, such as Quest for Peace and Center for Constitutional Rights, were telling us about Haiti in the 1990s. It transcends Haiti as simply a national story; something big seems to be taking hold in Latin America. Perhaps, as we face deep recession in the U.S., those grassroots forces will redeem our nation also.
by
MyTwoCents (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 36 comments)
on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 1:53:33 PM
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