Posted on 02/29/2004 11:52:29 AM PST by Defendingliberty
Haitian conflict can’t be understood without background
My mother, an American, lived in Haiti under Jean-Claude Duvalier, one of Latin America’s cruelest dictators. She always says, “Just when you think Haiti couldn’t get worse, it usually does.”
Earlier this week, Bush sent U.S. troops to Haiti to guard the American Embassy and called for international aid to negotiate a peaceful settlement between Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the country’s rebel factions - many former Aristide supporters.
Understanding the mess means comprehending Haiti’s decades-long decline.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former priest, legitimately won the presidency in 1991, and most thought he was the country’s savior. But he wasn’t exempt from dirty politics. He used “necklacing”- placing a tire around someone’s neck, dousing it with kerosene and lighting it on fire - as a political tool.
But in true Haitian form, Aristide was ousted seven months into his presidency.
By 1994, Clinton sent troops to Haiti to reinstall Aristide. The mission wasn’t a success.
In 2000, when Aristide was again “elected,” Clinton wasn’t celebrating. Aristide was chastised for rigging the election and killing some of his opponents.
Now two individuals, a former police chief under Aristide and the leader of a paramilitary death squad, have teamed up with rebels. Aristide is paying armed gangs to terrorize military opponents and civilians who disapprove of the government.
The population is so fed up that many are willing to fight under men known for human- rights abuses. Others just live in fear.
Haiti is known as a cocaine shipment point. More than $1 billion in drugs is funneled to our country via Haiti.
And who’s the biggest, baddest drug dealer of all? You guessed it - Aristide.
Bush doesn’t want to send more troops to Haiti. It would be political suicide for a president whose foreign policy already is weak.
So, bring in the CIA and pay off Aristide, his rebels and anyone who can prevent immigrants from coming here. It’s been done.
Or don’t. Haitian history, U.S. involvement and all, is a sad cycle. And it can get worse. But it’s got to get better.
Claudia Adrien, a Latin American studies and history senior, is a member of the Alligator editorial board.
This is a fact I find the press, and Democrats have forgotten.
They wanted the white president replaced with a black man whith whom they could work some deals on real estate,government contracts, imports, etc..
Does anyone else remember it this way or am I thinking of some other country?
American lives are too precious for your crappy country anyway, you stupid twit.
Here's a press story on the subject from 1994:
The United States gave former Haitian military strongman Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras a million dollar-plus "golden parachute" to resign and go into exile, including the rental of three of his houses, according to U.S. and Haitian sources.
Cedras, who fled to Panama early Thursday and whom President Clinton and other U.S. officials have described variously as a "thug," "stooge" and "killer," was forced to resign as commander in chief of the Haitian army or face a hostile American invasion.
As part of a deal to avoid arrest, Cedras had promised early this week to leave the country and permit the return Saturday of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was driven into exile by a military coup on Sept. 30, 1991.
But Cedras delayed his departure while he wrested final financial concessions from the United States - a promise that the Americans would rent his own home in the suburb of Peguyville, his mother-in-law's Port-au-Prince home and a beachfront house about 40 miles to the north.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Stanley Schrager denied reports that senior American military officials would live in any of the three homes but confirmed that the United States would rent the properties.
He declined to give the price beyond saying they would be leased "at fair market value," possibly to U.S. personnel.
Sources close to the Haitian military, however, said the Peguyville home, which has been stripped bare, would be rented for $4,000 a month for a year, to be paid in advance.
The leases for the beach house and the mother-in-law's home, also for a year, are for "several thousand dollars" a month each, the sources said.
The payments to Cedras, which include the cost of exile for his chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Philippe Biamby, are not the first to be made to Haitians held responsible for ousting Aristide since the U.S. troops began arriving Sept. 19.
American military officers and civilian officials have provided lucrative contracts to several wealthy Haitian families implicated in the coup or known to back the three-year military regime.
Arguing that these families were the only sources of needed services and properties, the United States has leased large tracts of land for housing and storage facilities, even building a gasoline pipeline and storage tanks.
As with any improvements to the Cedras properties, all enhancements to these tracts will be given to the owners, free of charge.
"Our intent (in financing Cedras' exit) was to smooth the transition to President Aristide," Schrager said, "to make that come about as smoothly as possible." He also said there "were no cash inducements" involved.
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No wonder they called him the Haitian Mandela.
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