Invasion on the cards
International Viewpoint #259 September 1994
WILL US President, Bill Clinton, decide on an eventual invasion of Haiti? Deposed Haitian President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, while having said he supports only a "surgical action", appears to be pushing for this solution. ARTHUR MAHON
N 31 JULY, the United States obtained the green light from the United Nations Security Council. As with France and Rwanda, they were authorised to lead a military invasion of Haiti when they wish to do so. The invasion of Panama was condemned by the United Nations. That of Haiti received in advance the blessing of the so-called "international community". One man in particular did a great deal to facilitate this vote: the President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. On Friday 29 July, he sent a letter to the office of the Secretary General of the UN, Boutros Boutros Ghali. In this he affirmed that "the moment has come for the international community, a party to the Governor's Island Accord, to take prompt and decisive action, under the authority of the United Nations, with a view to allowing the complete application of that accord." The Governor's Island Accord had been co-signed one year earlier by President Aristide and General Cédras. It envisaged in particular the return of the president on 30 October 1993 - which of course never took place.
### Precise
The Aristide letter arrived at a very precise moment. During the first discussion on the Security Council, the resolution presented by the United States had been the object of a bitter debate. It could not be voted upon on the date initially set, and was postponed to the following Sunday. Meanwhile, Aristide's letter (undoubtedly written at the behest of Washington), arrived, giving the resolution the legitimacy which it had lacked. Its meaning was confirmed sub-
### HAITI sequently by an unambiguous letter addressed by Fritz Longchamp, Haiti's representative at the UN, to the president of the Security Council. He asked to inform it "of the agreement of the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the draft resolution S/1994/904 that the Security Council will examine at its next meeting". To speak of the "government of President Aristide" was a very hypocritical manner of designating Aristide himself. Indeed, the only "government" to which Longchamp could make reference was that of Robert Malval, who resigned last December. However, in spite of the support of Aristide, China and Brazil abstained on the resolution. The vote of Brazil, Which currently sits on the Security Council as a non-permanent member, reflected the hostility of the majority of Latin American and Caribbean states.
At the end of 1993, Aristide began to declare, in a disquieting manner, that a military intervention would be welcomed by the Haitian population. He added at the same time that the Haitian constitution forbade him to demand such a thing. He went much further in an interview given to Howard French, a journalist on the New York Times, on 2 June. While repeating that the Haitian constitution prevented him from demanding a foreign intervention, he said, according to French, that "the United States should "commit itself to a surgical action" which would succeed in a tew hours in overthrowing the military leaders. According to French, Aristide referred to the US intervention in Panama in 1989 to overthrow the military dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega and added: "Haiti is not the first case. When things like this happen in another contry something is done. Why not in Haiti?".
Some days after the invasion of Panama, on 26 December 1989, Aristide was much more lucid when interviewed by Radio Haiti Inter. He said then: "We are still living in the era of slavery; national prestige is trampled underfoot; it is important then to reconstitute it. Those among us who were accustomed to grovel at the feet of a little clique of valets of imperialism should cease to do so, and look at what is happening now in Panama where the Americans oppress the people organising the resistance. When one thinks that the Yankees have already militarily occupied our soil and that they could well return, this time openly, one can say that, if one does not guard one's prestige, the worst could happen".
After his 2 June declaration in favour of a "surgical action", Aristide took some contrasting positions. The same day, he said: *I am not going to waste time in defining the type of action necessary, because the international community knows what to do." But later, during a conference at Managua, Nicaragua, then during an interview in Washington, he made it known that "Never, never, never would I accept a return to power thanks to an invasion. I am against a foreign occupation". These positions are only apparently contradictory. Aristide developed his position at an OAS meeting on 6 June. For him, "rapid and determined" action would come to an end once the military regime was eliminated. The Governor's Island Accord would then be applied anew. Those forces which had participated in a "surgical action" would be replaced by the Mission of the United Nations in Haiti (MINUHA) envisaged by the Governors Island agreement, and then characterized as a mission of "technical co-operation". Then he could himself return. In this theoretical schema, there was certainly no place for an "invasion" or an "occupation". Unhappily, the idea of a US division swooping down on the leaders of the Haitian armed forces, to capture Cédras and his friends, and leaving immediately, like a horde of guardian angels, is purely utopian. And the bloodthirsty example of Panama is there to show it.
"Sentiments"
Even if he says that he perceives no community of "sentiments", Aristide claims to note the existence of "mutual interests" with the United States. "If I was capable of intervening alone, I would do it", he says. "If the United States could act alone, they would do it also. But we must advance together." The networks of militants still active on the ground are well aware, they say, that a US intervention would be disastrous,
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International Viewpoint #259 September 1994 not only because of its long term effects, but also because the concrete action of the US services in Haiti since the coup d'état has sought to anihilate them. They can see this every day. They are familiar with the practices of the US embassy. They know that the US services collaborate with the Haitian soldiers and the civilians in their pay. Under cover of humanitarian concerns, the US has opened three offices in Haiti, where it is possible to demand exile. This programme is supervised by specialists in "counter-insurrection" who have proved themselves in Latin America and Vietnam. One of these specialists helped set up a computer data-base in Colombia to struggle against subversives, terrorists and drugs traffickers". Another, a veteran of the Nazi army, worked for Somoza in Nicaragua until 1979. Interviews seeking political asylum allow the US services to make a detailed X-ray of the popular and democratic movement. On this basis, some cadres of the popular organisations have received visits, on occasion from US functionaries offering them a US visa if they cease their activities, but sometimes from soldiers or civilians who have come to arrest them. A US intervention would allow the US services to increase their activitytenfold. A number of militants of the popular organizations could be assassinated during so-called armed confrontations. One officer told the newspaper Newsday: "These people who are training themselves are not going to try and fight the United States. They are going to flee with their arms and use them. Against who? Against
Lavalas (the creole name for the mass movement)." Already, during the invasion of Panama, US soldiers prepared lists of persons to liquidate. The United
States wishes to reform the Haitian army and bring to heel an oligarchy which is incapable of setting up a stable regime.
But their first priority is to reduce the
Haitian people to silence. Aristide has burnt his fingers before in trying to conclude a "tactical alliance" with cer-
32 tain sectors of the bourgeoisie, and later a "marriage" with the Haitian army. He is continuing along the same road in believing that he can find a convergence of interests with imperialism.
Letters
The Security Council resolution of 31 July took note of the letters from Aristide and Longchamp of 29 and 30 July. However, what is envisaged has nothing very much to do with the "surgical action" of a few hours recommended by Aristide in June. The multinational force "constituted by the member states (for which read: the United States) is authorised to utilise all necessary means" not only "to facilitate the departure from Haiti of the military leaders... and the prompt return of the legitimately elected President", but also to "install and maintain a secure and stable climate which will allow the application of the Governor's Island Accord." This multinational force will leave only when two conditions are fulfilled: When a stable and secure climate has been created and the MINUHA has been given a structure and adequate personnel to assure the totality of its functions". The MINUHA, in the words of the Governor's Island Accord, must render "assistance for the modernisation of the Haitian armed forces and the creation of a new police force". In July 1993, Aristide had asked for a MINUHA force of 1,000. In September 1993, the Security Council had decided to send 1,300. The resolution of 31 July sought to increase it to 6,000 military personnel. Boutros Ghali had even proposed 15,000 soldiers in one of his reports! The functions attributed to MINUHA are no longer those previously envisaged. Certainly it is still suppo sed to "professionalise the Haitian armed forces and create a separate police force" , but also, first and foremost, to "maintain the secure and stable conditions created during the multinational phase and to assure the protection of international personnel and the essential installations". Decidedly, there is a lot to fear in these "secure and stable conditions"! What is envisaged is no longer a civil unit, devoted to the construction of roads and schools, as in the resolution of September 1993. Indeed, there is no longer any need of such a pretext to justify the presence of numerous US soldiers.
The task of MINUHA should be finished no later than February 1996, that is, when Aristide finishes his presidential term. But there will be no lack of pretexts to justify, if necessary, the maintenance of US troops. For example, it is probable that the "professionalism" of the armed forces will not be assured by that date. Indeed, research undertaken by the Haiti Anti-Intervention that even last year it was envisaged that the training of the army and the police would be assured essentially not by MINUHA but in the framework of a bilateral US/Haitian programme.! This programme was not mentioned, but was not ruled out either by the Governor's Island Accord. This training wa,s in particular, to be provided by the Green Berets (a unit of the Special Forces), the ICITAP (International Criminal Investigation Training Assistance Program) and the IMET (International Military Education and Training Programs). According to the monthly magazine for mercenaries, Soldier of Fortune (which is very well informed), "the Special Forces... trained more than 50,000 Vietnamese "irregulars'. They've trained the military in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala. They're in Kuwait. They work with the CIA". The ICITAP has notably trained
1. Why we oppose US intervention in Haiti. Available from HAIC, PO Box 755, Fort Washington Station, New York, NY 10040-9998. = (1) 212 592 3612.
International Viewpoint #259 September 1994 the police of El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Bolivia and Panama. The IMET is known for financing the infamous School of the Americas, where some hundreds of Haitian officers have been trained, such as the current chief of police, Colonel Michel François. These are the institutions which are to oversee the "professionalisation" and "modernisation" of the Haitian police and army!
Aristide was elected president because he appeared to have principles, refusing to compromise with the powerful. He has not shown the same qualities on the international scene. Here he has behaved to a large extent with the cynicism characteristic of all presidents. At one UN General Assembly meeting, he even went so far as to express the wish that Taiwan, which had given him some support, might "re-find its place inside the great family of the United Nations". For some months he said nothing about Clinton's treatment of Haitian refugees, who were intercepted at sea by the US coastguards and sent back to their executioners. But when Clinton seemed to abandon him at the end of 1993, and when pressures multiplied for him to share power with the putschists, Aristide used the issue of the refugees as a weapon. He convoked a conference at Miami in mid-January under the theme "Democracy in Haiti: the solution to the refugee crisis".
At the same time, he brandished another threat against Washington: that he would encourage mobilisations, and even armed struggle in Haiti. In his New Year's speech, he explained that, during 1993 the Haitian people had marched to the rhythm of negotiation rather than that of mobilisation. In 1994, it would be the other way round and he recalled a Haitian expression, "Fè koupe fe", meaning "It takes fire to fight fire". These fine words came too late. For, since the coup, Aristide had never seriously occupied himself with helping the popular movement to resist repression and organise itself. From time to time he certainly launched appeals for nationwide mobilisations on an uninterrupted basis. But this was never followed by any concrete work on his part. And nothing indicates that anything has changed in this respect since his ringing declarations of 1 January. As for the refugees, they were again abandoned to their fate during the Miami conference. Under pressure from Clinton, the agenda was changed. A commission discussed the subject, but those who drew up the final resolution took little account of its
However, this thorny question was soon to re-emerge. Indeed, every week the US press was carrying stories that the victims of the death squads were being devoured by pigs, that the army, searching for a guerrilla unit, had burnt hundreds of houses in the north of Haiti. and massacred peasants, and that UN observers were alarmed at the use of rape as a new method of repression. In these conditions, Clinton found it harder and harder to justify the systematic sending back to Haiti of the boat people intercepted by the coast guard.
Moreover, during the first months of 1994, the Clinton administration continued to intrigue against Aristide. It wished to impose on him a political solution still less advantageous than the Governor's Island Accord. Congress went so far as to propose that Aristide and the refugees should be installed definitively on a little island situated off the coast of Haiti. But Aristide, drawing the lessons of preceding months, refused
Denounced
He resorted again to his secret weapon; the question of the refugees. He denounced Clinton's Haitian policy as "racist". And on 4 April, he announced (finally) that he was abrogating the accord, signed by Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1981, which authorised the return of the boat people to Haiti. In the following weeks, Randall Robinson, a famous black activist, began a hunger strike, six members of Congress were arrested while demonstrating before the White House against the repatriation of boat people, and 95 of their Democratic colleagues proposed draft legislation for a change of policy towards Haiti.
Clinton thus had to change course. He announced that he would propose to the UN a toughening of sanctions towards the putschists, would dismiss the US special envoy to Haiti, and would consider the possibility of a military intervention. Military manoeuvres began to be organised. On 8 May, Clinton decided that from mid-June the boat people would no longer be sent back without having been questioned and being able to demand asylum. However, the deportations continued. In July, they reached new heights; on 8 July, 800 people were taken back to Haiti after having been interrogated on an American boat! Finally, Clinton succeeded in provisionally settling the problem by a dissuasive policy. He announced in July that no refugee intercepted at sea would step foot in the United States; whatever their status, those not returned to Haiti would be condemned to stay indefinitely in an internment camp elsewhere in the Caribbean. The situation which currently obtains in the internment camp at Guantanamo, which led to a revolt on August 13, gives a foretaste of what a US occupation of Haiti would be like. Thus, according to the newspaper Haiti en Marche, among those working for the US army at Guantanamo are a brother of the Haitian chief of police, and a brother of a leader of FRAPH (the paramilitary organisation which has taken the place of tontons-macoutes)!
Will Clinton finally decide on a military intervention? Nothing at the moment indicates that this is certain. Two months away from the mid-term Congressional elections, he is politically very weak. Indeed, on the Haitian question, he comes up against opposition from the Republicans, the Pentagon and a business community with interests in the Dominican Republic. None of these has any desire to see Aristide back in Port-au-Prince. The press has been hostile towards the prospect of a military intervention. And the administration itself is very divided. Some, like William Perry, of the Defense Department, say that no military intervention is immediately planned and, in any case, "Haiti does not represent a vital interest for the United States". Like William Gray, the new special envoy to Haiti, he thinks that sanctions, and some assurances as to their future, will be enough to make the Haitian military leaders leave. For him, military intervention should only be a last resort. It is true that, in Haiti, some have argued for the departure of Cédras in exchange for the non-return of Aristide. On the other hand, Strobe Talbott, responsible for the Haitian dossier at the State Department, favours an ultimatum being delivered to the military regime.
### Affair
The affair is not simple for the United States, for numerous political problems are posed. What should be done with the Haitian army? Would it be necessary for there to be general disarmament of the army and the paramilitaries (and the partisans of Aristide?) as was discussed in July with Boutros Ghali? Would the population become uncontrollable if Aristide really returned to the presidential palace? Will Haiti be transformed effectively into a US protectorate? For Walter Fauntroy, former
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defeat of the Greater Serbia policy is a precondition for peace. But it is also necessary that the construction of states on exclusive ethnic bases is rejected, while reciprocal protections and rights are assured to all the communities however, this is not the logic of the