[3-9-04]

To: PPF National Committee
From: Tom Driver
Subject: Haiti
Date: 3/2/04

The gist is this:

What has come to climax in Haiti the last two days is a classic US-engineered coup d'etat in Latin America, like Guatemala or Chile. Although Aristide has countenanced some acts of violence and some corruption during his presidency, this is surely not the reason for his ouster, which instead has to do with the inability of the US to control him. I believe that if the US had supported his democratic aims in 1991 when he first came to office his actions in the years since then would have been much less open to question. We are now to see the return of the Haitian Army, which will be the effective power in Haiti no matter who is President and will be at the beck and call of Uncle Sam.

Here is a synopsis of my take on Haiti's recent history:

My last visit to Haiti occurred in April and early May of 2000. I left there only a week or so before what later became known as the "flawed" elections. Preval was still President, but Aristide was to run again for election in December. When I got home from that trip, I told everyone who asked me about Haiti: "The United states is going to do everything in its power to prevent Aristide's election. But it probably will not succeed because he is so overwhelmingly popular with Haiti's impoverished majority. Therefore, what they will do is everything they can think of to make it impossible for him to govern."

We are now watching the climax of that strategy. The May, 2000, parliamentary elections were challenged on a technicality, declared to be "flawed," and made the pretext for the few people opposed to Aristide to boycott the presidential election later that year, which in turn became the basis for saying that his presidency was not legitimate. In the summer of 2000 the International Republican Institute helped cobble together a political coalition of splinter parties that became known ever after as "the opposition." From the start, it adopted what it called "zero option," which meant that it would not cooperate with Aristide in any way as long as he was in office.

Yesterday (March 1) John Kerry became the first U.S. politician that I have heard who described the US role in Haiti correctly. He said that the US, by telling Aristide consistently that he had to come to terms with the opposition, had in effect empowered them to refuse all compromise. I can't remember if Kerry mentioned it, but the other thing the US did on the political front was to block loans to Haiti by the InterAmerican Development Bank that had been intended mainly for health and education.

It is now clear, as some of us suspected all along, that the US was also engaged in covert operations to prepare for the use of arms against Aristide and for the return of the Haitian Army (FADH), which Aristide had disbanded, against the wishes of the US Government, in 1995 in the most popular move he ever made as President. The recent insurgency is equipped with powerful weapons, has used a land and sea strategy, was trained in the Dominican Republic, is headed by the same military and paramilitary criminals who worked with the CIA in 1991-94, could not have taken place without US Government knowledge, and shows every sign of being an intentional part of US strategy.

This morning (March 2) Maxine Waters (D.-CA), Randall Robinson (formerly head of TransAfrica Forum), and some of the foreign press are reporting having talked with Aristide by phone, who tells them that he was kidnapped, taken from the palace in Port-au-Prince at gun point and flown to a destination that was unknown to him. He says that he did NOT resign as President of Haiti. This contradicts what the NY Times and others are saying about his departure.

The gist again, in short:

What we have here is a classic US-engineered coup d'etat in Latin America, like Guatemala in 1954 or Chile in 1981. Although Aristide has countenanced some acts of violence and some corruption, this is surely not the reason for his ouster, which instead has to do with the inability of the US to control him. I believe that if the US had supported his democratic aims in 1991 when he first came to office his actions in the years since then would have been much less open to question. We are now to see the return of the Haitian Army, which will be the effective power in Haiti no matter who is President and will be at the beck and call of Uncle Sam.

Tom F. Driver Sheffield, MA

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