Ousting Aristide: Was This a Racist Coup?

by Obi Akwani, MGV Editor

First Published February 2004

It was only a month ago in January that Haiti celebrated the bicentennial of its independence. Two hundred years of national self-rule is nothing to sniff at by any standard and I am sure all Haitians are rightfully proud of their national heritage. Yet the importance of the occasion was marred by the confounding forces of poverty, political unrest at home and lack of positive interest by much of the rest of the world.

One of the few world leaders who saw fit to attend the bicentennial was South African President Thabo Mbeki. He gave the Haitians $1.25M (R10 million) and took flak from the White opposition and press at home for both the gift and the visit. Tony Leon, leader of the Democratic Alliance party, questioned the value of the trip and accused the president of "propping up yet another international outcast."

In response a spokesman for the Mbeki government accused detractors of South Africa's involvement in the bicentennial "of feeding the stereotype of Africans and black people as failures."

Such negative international reaction fortified Aristide's opposition at home and aided the eclipse of the bicentennial while helping ensure the forcible removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president of Haiti.

Aristide himself has claimed, in several telephone interviews with the press and in conversations with members of the US congress, Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel, that he was forced out in a US engineered coup. Waters has called Aristide's ouster "a terrible reversal of the State Department's position" and urges an immediate call for a Congressional hearing if indeed it was a US engineered coup. It has also been pointed out that the anti-Aristide forces led by ex-policemen and exiled para-militaries wore US military uniforms and were armed with US made weapons.

Let's stop for a minute and reflect on what the bicentennial means. Two hundred years ago, after more than a decade of struggle by poor slaves and free blacks against the imperial forces of France, the downtrodden African revolutionaries emerged victorious against French forces. Their victory remains the only successful slave revolt in human history. It was the triumph of the human spirit against the will of domination and oppression.

By that victory, the Haitians reaffirmed for all human-kind that the natural freedom of the human spirit can not be compromised or held down forever. But for the imperial powers whose fortunes had for over two hundred years, before then, depended on exploitation of slave labor, the success of the Haitian Revolution was terrible omen.

Both the British and the Spanish attempted to takeover the island colony but were repelled by Toussaint L'ouverture and his fellow defenders of St. Domingue (French colonial name for Haiti). In his final push to try and re-take the territory in 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte instructed his generals thus:

"The Spaniards, the British and the Americans are equally worried to see a Black Republic. The admiral and the major general will write memorandums to the neighboring establishments in order to let them know the goal of the government, the common advantage for the Europeans to destroy the black rebellion and the hope to be seconded."

How coincidental then that it is at this very moment of the bicentennial celebration of the eternal freedom of the human spirit signified in that victorious revolution that the removal of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide by discredited soldiers and exile para-militaries should happen and take all our attention away from the great significance of the bicentennial.

Haitians, it seems, must continue to pay enormous price for being the first to buck a historical trend considered virtually impossible -- before they did it -- at least by the official scribes of modern history. It is true that the Jews escaped slavery under the powerful pharaohs of Egypt by fleeing across the Sinai. That too was a demonstration of the power of that undying spirit. And within the vast empire of ancient Rome Spartacus fought the great power but, as we are told in history, his rebellion was ultimately crushed. Fortune, circumstance and, most importantly, valor allowed General L'ouverture and his compatriots to prevail where no one expected them to succeed.

Since then, it has seemed almost as if the world wants to bury this unprecedented achievement by African descendants in the Americas under the heap of great poverty and murderous politics that has been the lot of Haiti since 1804.

When General Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared independence on January 1, 1804, none of the European powers or nearer neighbor, USA, recognized the Black republic. They were all afraid that its example would rub off on the remaining slave populations in other territories. It took until 1838 before France agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the Haitian nation and this recognition came at an exorbitant price -- payment of 150 million francs (about $22 billion in today's currency) which Haiti did not not finish paying until 1947. The new nation had to take out a loan to pay off the debt. The United States waited until the domestic slave issue had been decided by the American Civil War before sending its first ambassador, African-American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass as Consular Minister to Haiti.

The rise of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haitian politics in 1990 was heralded by the majority of the Haitian people -- the poor -- who saw in him a champion for their cause. The only people that hated the popular former priest were some of the elite in Haiti and abroad.

It was also a Republican administration and another President Bush, father of the current one, who was leader of the US when Aristide first came to power. His administration also was averse for an Aristide presidency in Haiti -- the Secret Service put out information in the media questioning the Haitian leader's sanity.

In the election that brought Aristide to power the Republican administration in Washington favored Marc Bazin who was beaten by Aristide 5 to 1 in the ensuing polls.

In 1991 two coup attempts (the second was successful) were made against Aristide's government. While the Organization of American States condemned the coup and called for an economic embargo against the plotters, Bush refused to commit the US to the embargo thus undermining the OAS plan.

It took the arrival of the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton in Washington for Aristide to be restored as president of Haiti in 1994.

Now in the bicentennial year of Haitian independence, another Republican administration is accused of master-minding a coup against Aristide and the Haitian government. Even though the Bush administration dismisses the allegations as "nonsense", there are some evidence of American involvement.

Three days after the May 7, 2003 arrest by Dominican authorities of Guy Philippe -- the coup leader who has, since Aristide's departure on February 29, 2004, appointed himself military chief -- Haitian police in the coastal city of Gonaives also nabbed James Glenn White, an American described as a "missionary," as he was illegally importing army uniforms, assault weapons, munitions, and grenade launchers into Haiti. The US embassy gave no comment on the matter. White was ordered deported in July 2003.

>From that point on unrest grew in Haiti until Guy Philippe (who the Aristide government never managed to extradite from the Dominican Republic) and his men marched into Haiti armed and wearing uniforms similar to the ones James Glenn White was caught trying to import, sacking one police station after another on their way to the capital Port-au-Prince.

Critics have accused the US, France and other Western governments of standing bye and even tacitly supporting the insurgents -- men known to be members of the old death squads in Haiti -- against a democratically elected government. Aristide had called on the international community to help contain the uprising and even offered a power-sharing deal to the rebels to no avail. It appeared both the rebels and the world powers simply wanted Aristide gone. Only after he had been removed did promises of peace-keeping troops from the US and other governments begin in earnest.

Aristide was still insisting that he would stay on right up to the moment the US whisked (kidnapped by Aristide's own account) him away to asylum in Africa.