[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 130 (Monday, October 11, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1948-E1950]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 HAITI SMOLDERING ON THE EDGE OF CHAOS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MAXINE WATERS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 8, 2004

  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, on February 29 of this year, President Jean-
Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically elected President of Haiti, 
was overthrown in a coup d'etat. This coup d'etat was led by heavily 
armed thugs and killers, many of whom are former members of the Haitian 
Armed Forces which were disbanded in 1995 and are notorious for their 
history of human rights violations. These thugs and killers have 
refused to disarm and now control several Haitian towns and cities, 
where they terrorize the local population. They are demanding the 
reestablishment of the Haitian Armed Forces, and they even had the gall 
to claim that the Haitian Government owes them more than 10 years of 
back pay.
  The following research paper, entitled ``Haiti: Smoldering on the 
Edge of Chaos,'' is an insightful analysis of the crisis in Haiti 
brought about by these thugs and killers. The paper was written by 
Jessica Leight, a research fellow at the Washington-based Council on 
Hemispheric Affairs, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization. I 
hope my colleagues find Ms. Leight's analysis informative.

                 Haiti: Smoldering on the Edge of Chaos

       Six months after the abrupt and violence-laced departure of 
     constitutionally-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, 
     and over three months after the deployment of U.N. 
     peacekeeping units which were hailed as an instrument for 
     order and stability for this long-troubled Caribbean island, 
     Haiti remains poised on the edge of chaos. Just as nature in 
     the form of a tropical storm that has managed to kill as many 
     as 3,000 Haitians, thousands more have died over the past 
     decade, victims of right-wing military and paramilitary 
     forces. Today, ruled by a bumptious, ineffectual and 
     illegitimate cabal whose only validity is supplied by U.S. 
     fiat, Haiti now faces the imminent de facto reconstitution of 
     its brutal Haitian Armed Forces (FADH), dissolved by Aristide 
     in 1995. Across the island, bands of former soldiers are 
     seizing police stations and establishing themselves as the de 
     facto local power, at times displacing the remnants of the 
     national police and placing large swaths of the country under 
     what is effectively outlaw rebel jurisdiction. Meanwhile 
     these soldiers demand the restitution of unpaid wages over 
     the past ten years for such services as torturing and 
     murdering civilian victims.
       These soldiers of ill-fortune have met little, if any, 
     resistance from the rump Washington-imposed interim 
     government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, and at times 
     they have received open encouragement from Latortue's 
     ``cabinet members,'' most notably Interior Minister (and 
     former general) Herard Abraham and the island's notorious 
     justice minister Bernard Gousse, both of whom have suggested 
     that former soldiers--some of the most prominent among whom 
     have already been convicted in absentia for human rights 
     violations committed during the military government of 1991-
     1994--could simply be integrated into the police force.


                             An Army Reborn

       In the face of these developments, FADH leaders are 
     gathering strength in a bid to retake political power and 
     restore the repression for which the army could always be 
     counted to provide throughout most of Haiti's turbulent 
     twentieth-century history, the U.N. stabilization force 
     and the international community alike have remained almost 
     deafeningly silent. At the present time, the U.N. presence 
     in Haiti is more myth than fact, while a handful of 
     renegades with a military background, in conjunction with 
     the tiny opposition business and professional Group of 
     184, have the clearest access to the Latortue regime and 
     its ability to obtrusively impact on the daily lives of 
     the population. Within Haiti, international troops drawn 
     principally from the former rogue armed forces of Brazil, 
     Argentina and Chile, which were better known for the 
     repression of their own citizens during previous eras of 
     military rule than for their nation-building skills, are 
     seemingly paralyzed by inaction. These U.N. forces have 
     made only the paltriest of efforts to preserve order in 
     the face of paramilitary power-grabs by ex-FADH and police 
     figures like Louis-Jodel Chamblain and Guy Philippe. They 
     have proven better at stalking pro-Aristide Lavalas 
     party's political forces than well-armed renegade former 
     soldiers.
       In Washington, a State Department preoccupied by Iraq and 
     North Korea appears to have all but overlooked the island's 
     existence; and in New York, a craven lack of political will 
     is in evidence, accompanied by the kind of Machiavellian 
     plotting by the U.S. and French U.N. Security Council 
     delegations that was witnessed when that body refused to 
     provide an international police force to defend Arisitide 
     earlier this year. Nor is U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan 
     any more sensitive to the plight of the Haitian populace than 
     he was just before Aristide's downfall, when he provided 
     cover for the U.S. insistence that the former president 
     deserved to be forced into exile because he was a failed 
     leader.
       There has yet to be any kind of clear acknowledgment of the 
     magnitude of the threat that Haiti's already battered 
     democratic institutions face from the military resurgence on 
     the island, much less the strategy which will be used to 
     disarm these illegal militias as well as clearly establish 
     the authority of a trained, professional police force, and 
     bring to justice the same former soldiers accused of human 
     rights abuses who are now making outrageous demands for 
     compensation. Quite to the contrary, as the exoneration of 
     mass murderer Louis Chamblain by Justice Minister Gousse and 
     the island's tainted courts graphically exemplifies, Haiti is 
     still a very sick country.
       Thus as the clock continues to tick on a peacekeeping 
     mission originally authorized for only six months, it seems 
     increasingly likely that the United Nations will exit Haiti 
     much as the United States and Canada precipitously did in 
     1996: leaving behind a profoundly unstable political 
     situation dominated by heavily armed factions, as thousands 
     of weapons remain in the possession of right-wing vigilantes 
     as well as some in the hands of pro-Aristide supporters. The 
     situation is made even more volatile today by the former 
     military leadership's aspirations to restore both the army 
     and the same reign of terror it applied during the decades-
     long Duvalier and post-Duvalier military dictatorships, as 
     well as under the brutal 1991-1994 military junta led by the 
     brute General Roaul Cedras.


              The Haitian Military: Rising from the Ashes?

       Among the most alarming signs of military resurgence within 
     the last sixty days was the acquittal on August 17, in a show 
     trial, of former army captain and paramilitary leader Louis-
     Jodel Chamblain, previously convicted in absentia for the 
     1993 murder of prominent Aristide supporter Antoine Izmery. 
     This outrageous verdict, achieved under the aegis of 
     Latortue's disreputable justice minister, Bernard Gousse, was 
     reached after a ludicrously brief overnight trial in which 
     the prosecution called only one witness who proved to be 
     entirely irrelevant to the case. This earned for the interim 
     government opprobrious remarks on the editorial pages of the 
     New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as widespread 
     denunciations from human rights organizations, and even from 
     the State Department, which bears much of the blame for the 
     current dysfunctional rule of the island. However, the 
     subsequent rash of self-serving individual power plays on the 
     part of the ex-soldiers, and the government's utter 
     unwillingness to confront or even denounce such challenges to 
     state authority, has received virtually no attention outside 
     of Haiti. This development has to be rightfully considered 
     part of the same dangerous phenomenon which includes the 
     growing power of former military figures like Chamblain, as 
     well as sly ideologues like the grinning Justice Minister 
     Gousse, who was clearly complicit in 
     orchestrating Chamblain's acquittal.
       For example, only six days after the conclusion of the 
     Chamblain trial, the Haitian Times reported on August 18 that 
     the interim government had appointed Winter Etienne--a leader 
     of the bloody armed uprising in Gonaives that preceded 
     Aristide's exile, who is also the coordinator of the National 
     Reconstruction Front, a party headed by former army officers, 
     including rebel leader Guy Philippe. The last named became 
     the director of the National Port Authority in Gonaives, the 
     very city he earlier had helped sack. At the Ministry of 
     Interior, former ranking military figure Minister Herard 
     Abraham continues to add former high-ranking military cronies 
     to his staff; among the recent arrivals is former colonel 
     Williams Regala, a particularly sinister aide to former 
     dictator General Henri Namphy and undoubtedly a main plotter 
     of the massacre of voters during Haiti's aborted November 29, 
     1987 election. Regala joins another former colleague, Colonel 
     Henri-Robert Marc-Charles, a member of the Cedras-led 
     military junta that overthrew democratically-elected 
     President Aristide 1991, who currently is the target of a (as 
     yet un-enforced) judicial order requiring his imprisonment 
     prior to trial for alleged involvement in a peasant massacre 
     in Piatre in March 1990.


 Erosion of Authority of the most pathetic Government in the Caribbean

       Given these pro-military signals on the part of the 
     Latortue government, which consistently has demonstrated its 
     sympathy for former military leaders at the same time it 
     officially rejects the idea of reconstituting the armed 
     forces on the grounds that such a momentous step should be 
     taken only by the

[[Page E1949]]

     next elected government, it is hardly surprising that bands 
     of former soldiers are making ever more far-fetched bids for 
     power in municipalities across Haiti. On August 17, five 
     officers of the national police's riot squad (CIMO) returned 
     to their Port-au-Prince headquarters asserting that a group 
     wearing the garb of the disbanded military had attacked them 
     and seized their weapons and uniforms. Subsequently, Radio 
     Kiskeya reported that other CIMO officers have accused the 
     government-appointed director of the National Police 
     Administration and former military figure, Destorel Germain, 
     of organizing the attack along with a number of demobilized 
     soldiers seeking reinstatement, an accusation that raises 
     the specter of collaboration between some of the more 
     predatory elements of the police force and bands of ex-
     soldiers, in the latter's fight for legal status.
       Former military elements already have begun to establish 
     their control over a series of small urban areas, 
     particularly in the desperately poor Central Plateau region. 
     On September 1, a large force of 150 former soldiers took 
     control of Petit-Goave, southwest of the capital, and seized 
     ten police officers as hostages the following day in 
     neighboring Grand-Gove. This was in retaliation for the 
     arrest of four soldiers by police officials. The two sides 
     subsequently agreed to an exchange of prisoners. Also on 
     September 2, more than fifty heavily armed ex-soldiers 
     demonstrated in Gonaives, calling for the reconstitution of 
     the army and the restoration of their back pay. Once there, 
     they were met with open arms by the fiercely anti-Aristide 
     rebel group, the Gonaives Resistance Front--itself largely 
     constituted by former soldiers--which expressed its support 
     for the immediate formation of a legally reorganized and 
     retrained army.
       Even more alarming was the response of the official 
     government authorities to the Gonaives march. Rather than 
     denouncing this clear threat to public order on the part of a 
     ``gang of thugs'' (as they earlier had been characterized by 
     Secretary of State Colin Powell), departmental delegate Elie 
     Cantave declared that the former soldiers had no aim other 
     than to help the people of that city as he prepared to 
     negotiate with them over their taking over as their 
     headquarters a state school located within the city. Further 
     south in Jacmel and on the same day, yet another contingent 
     of former soldiers arrived to reinforce with arms and 
     ammunition a group of their colleagues occupying the office 
     of Radio Ti Moun. And in perhaps the most symbolically 
     important incident, former soldiers occupied the police 
     station in Belladere on the Dominican border on September 5 
     and immediately repainted the facility in yellow, the 
     traditional color of FADH barracks. Simultaneously, the band 
     of ex-soldiers in control of Petit-Goave was swelled by new 
     arrivals, and coast guard installations in Les Cayes remained 
     under the control of ex-soldiers.
       The first evidence of a response on the part of the 
     government and the U.N. peacekeeping force came on September 
     7, when Haitian police, backed by Argentine troops, 
     regained control of Saint-Marc a day after former soldiers 
     took control of the city sixty miles north of Port-au-
     Prince. In response, rebel leader Sergeant Remissanthe 
     Ravix declared on behalf of the ex-soldiers, ``We'll fight 
     to the last man. We'd rather die in combat instead of 
     dying on our knees. They [government authorities] came to 
     power thanks to our weapons they now declare illegal. If 
     they think they can deny us our rights, they will know the 
     same fate as Aristide. The fact that we left Saint-Marc 
     does not mean we gave up. We'll teach a lesson to those 
     who want to destroy the military.'' Ravix, once implicated 
     in a brutal 2002 massacre committed by former FADH 
     personnel in Belladere, is now the most visible and 
     rambunctious spokesman for the ex-soldiers' movement, 
     which is on the brink of maintaining de facto control over 
     large swaths of Haiti.


               Escalating Violence, Ineffective Response

       The government's show of resolve in Saint-Marc on September 
     7 hardly deterred the ex-soldiers in their attempts to 
     establish themselves as a rival security force. Also, on 
     September 7 in Port-au-Prince, two ex-soldiers, reportedly 
     from Petit-Goave, were shot and killed by riot police near 
     the Prime Minister's office in Musseau after firing at a 
     police station. According to Police Commissioner Fritz Gerald 
     Appolon, the two were riding in a seized police car that had 
     been reconfigured as an army vehicle, and were fatally 
     wounded after one of them shot at an officer who had called 
     upon him to lay down his weapon. Ravix denounced the incident 
     as an ``assassination'' and called for retaliation across the 
     country. The following day, in response, a group of ex-
     soldiers attacked the police station in Hinche and hundreds 
     of former FADH and its supporters from other anti-Aristide 
     factions paraded in Cap-Haitien demanding ten years of back-
     pay. These former soldiers already had begun arrogating 
     police functions to themselves inside of Cap-Haitien, 
     including going out on surveillance patrols. In Petit-Goave, 
     rebels took four police officers hostage and seized their 
     weapons, though they were released later that day.
       In the face of this wave of new challenges, the government 
     and U.N. peacekeepers alike appear virtually helpless. Prime 
     Minister Latortue and his self-caricaturing government 
     have made bold declarations that peacekeepers will 
     ``imminently'' retake control of all government buildings, 
     but the prospect of any such action occurring any time 
     soon appears to be nothing more than a mixture of bluff 
     and fantasy. The government has set up a committee to 
     negotiate with the soldiers and offered as an initial 
     concession, the integration into the police force of up to 
     1,000 former soldiers of a body that once numbered over 
     6,000 in strength. However, Ravix refused to meet with the 
     commission, declaring in Petit-Goave, ``The government 
     doesn't need to reconstitute us. We are here. We have 
     always been here. The only thing the government has to do 
     is pay us the 10 years, seven months they owe us and let 
     us do our jobs.'' On September 12, the government did 
     succeed in obtaining the commitment of a group of 
     representatives of former military personnel (of which 
     Ravix was not a member) to a vaguely worded declaration 
     asserting that ``The matter of the military will be dealt 
     with through dialogue; the authority of the Government 
     must be respected; [and] the voluntary and peaceful 
     evacuation of public buildings actually under the control 
     of demobilized soldiers must be done . . . within the 
     framework of an agreement between the two parties.''
       Whether this vague rhetoric will produce any concessions in 
     practice on the part of the ex-soldiers remains to be seen, 
     but subsequent demonstrations in their support in St.-Marc 
     and Petit-Goave, on September 13 and a march of ex-soldiers 
     wearing military uniforms in the capital on September 15 sent 
     a clear signal that the militant remnants of the FADH are far 
     from ready to yield their arms to civil authority.


             Stabilization Mission is Too Weak to Stabilize

       At the same time that the government has shown itself 
     utterly incapable of (or uninterested in) controlling the 
     rebel bands, the U.N. Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH) has 
     disavowed itself of any responsibility in dealing with the 
     ex-soldiers. Spokesman Toussaint Kongo-Doudou declared, ``We 
     have no comment on the subject because it is a government 
     problem. It is not a problem of the MINUSTAH. This is a 
     Haitian affair.'' As astounding as this statement appears, 
     given that among the principal points of MINUSTAH's mandate 
     are the disarmament of armed factions--of which the ex-
     soldiers are currently the most powerful--the 
     establishment of a climate of security in advance of 
     national elections on the island is a must. The 
     acknowledgement of a stalemate when it comes to security 
     issues is an all too accurate description of the current 
     limitations of the undersized U.N. force now in Haiti. To 
     date, only 2,755 of an authorized 6,700 U.N. troops have 
     arrived in Haiti, making deployments in the north and east 
     of the country impossible, and only a few hundred of the 
     3,000 civilian police officers authorized have been 
     trained and deployed. Thus the U.N. is unable to maintain 
     a security presence in many of the more remote regions of 
     the countryside, and has yet to launch the disarmament 
     program that is a fundamental prerequisite for the 
     reestablishment of some measure of political stability.
       Moreover, the U.N. force's Brazilian commanders have openly 
     warned that they do not have enough troops to stop renewed 
     conflict. Likewise, Argentine Defense Minister Jos Pampuro 
     highlighted the particularly troubling prospect that renewed 
     skirmishes could have taken place on September 18, the 
     anniversary of the dissolution of the army by Aristide. While 
     additional troops from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Spain and Morocco, 
     among others, are expected to bring the total MINUSTAH force 
     to 5,000 members by the end of October, for the moment, the 
     U.N. peacekeepers have been rendered completely incapable of 
     fulfilling their most basic function: preserving order and a 
     measure of governmental authority.


 The Sound of Silence: Washington, New York Turn Their Eyes Away from 
                             Port-au-Prince

       Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the rapidly 
     deteriorating security situation in Haiti is the 
     extraordinary indifference, aside from some storm-related 
     humanitarian aid in response to the natural catastrophe that 
     just hit Haiti, that has been exhibited by the international 
     community in the face of this creeping coup being executed by 
     the former FADH. The Security Council issued only an anemic 
     statement on September 10 in which it stressed ``the urgency 
     of disbanding and disarming all illegal armed groups,'' but 
     offered not even the whisper of a commitment to ensure that 
     this task is in fact achieved. The Organization of American 
     States has remained silent, as has the State Department, and 
     much of the Caribbean Community, which over the past six 
     months had taken the most courageous stands on unfolding 
     events in Haiti. CARICOM is now riven by internal 
     divisions over whether to readmit the Latortue government 
     into CARICOM.
       Also strangely absent is the recently appointed U.N. 
     Special Representative to Haiti, Chilean diplomat Juan 
     Gabriel Valdes. His selection was widely hailed at the time 
     as evidence of a new Latin American commitment to inter-
     hemispheric cooperation, but he has since all but disappeared 
     from carrying out his admittedly difficult mission. While his 
     capacity for action may be constrained, Valdes should at the 
     very least be actively attempting to convey to the Security 
     Council, the Bush administration and the leaders of other 
     hemispheric bodies the gravity of the unfolding military 
     takeover in Haiti. Unfortunately, up to now, Haiti's

[[Page E1950]]

     plight has been overshadowed by the persistent bloodshed in 
     Darfur, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or has been patronizingly 
     dismissed as yet another round of violence in a perennially 
     unstable country. Additionally, the natural disaster that 
     occurred to the island landed a devastating blow to its 
     ability to function.
       Haiti has reached a point of crisis, and decisive 
     intervention is required if any shred of, or hope for, 
     Haitian democracy is to be preserved. However shorthanded and 
     overburdened its staff may be, the task of convincing the 
     international community of the necessity of such intervention 
     falls first to the U.N. Stabilization Mission and to Valdes. 
     Hopefully, in the coming months they will decisively 
     demonstrate their commitment to ensuring that Haiti is not 
     being abandoned by the international community yet again, or 
     that leading U.N. authorities, including Valdes, will at 
     least have the dignity of resigning from their assignment in 
     protest of the cruel hoax now being unleashed on the island 
     and its population.

                          ____________________