Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 18 2001 (IPS) — Monday’s violence in Port-au Prince, described by his supporters as an attempted coup d’etat against the government of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide , is fanning fears here of renewed instability in a country invaded and occupied by the United States just seven years ago.

Such instability could fuel a growing exodus of Haitians who are fleeing the country for the Bahamas and the United States, according to analysts here who said the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush may be forced soon to end its policy of “benign neglect” toward the Caribbean nation.

“What we see are the signs of unrest,” said one State Department official Monday.

“Jeb (Bush, the president’s brother and governor of Florida) is probably looking at this and the rising number of boat people and getting a bit nervous,” said Rachel Nields, a Haiti specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) here. “Right now, the U.S. has no policy toward Haiti; they’ve just handed it over to the OAS (Organisation of American States).”

The 1994 military intervention by the administration of former president Bill Clinton was prompted in part by the exodus of thousands of Haitian boat people who tried to reach Florida during the brutal military regime which took power after ousting Aristide in September 1991.

In Monday’s events, several truckloads of unidentified armed commandos attacked a downtown prison and then stormed the National Palace in a pre-dawn raid. They were beaten back by guards. Later, Aristide supporters attacked opposition figures and offices around the capital, according to reports monitored here.

At least four people, including two police guards, were killed in the commando assault on the Palace, according to reports which noted that roadblocks were erected throughout the capital in the course of the day.

The U.S. State Department called for calm and urged the government “to take appropriate measures and maintain calm.”

But U.S. officials, as well as independent analysts, including former Aristide supporters here, said such attacks are likely to recur in the absence of any serious effort by Aristide to break the political impasse between his loyalists and the opposition Democratic Convergence coalition.

That impasse began with the disputed May 2000 parliamentary elections in which Aristide’s Lavalas Family party claimed a complete sweep over the objections of opposition parties and international observers who charged that the counting had been improperly manipulated.

“The Aristide faction’s flagrant cheating in the counting of the May 2000 vote has created a regime of severely impaired legitimacy,” according to Jim Morrell, a Haiti expert at the Council on International Policy (CIP), a think-tank which supported Washington’s restoration of Aristide in 1994.

“Without that legitimacy, you’re just got a factional power grab (which is) fair game for the next group of plotters,” he said, warning that nominally pro-Aristide factions may use Monday’s violence assault as a pretext “to further crack down on opposition politicians, independent journalists, and human-rights workers.”

Aristide government officials suggested that the latest attack, like several last July carried out against capital’s police academy and several police stations, was the work of forces loyal to Guy Philippe, a former military officer who once headed the police in Cap-Haitien, the country’s second-largest city. He is believed to be based in neighbouring Dominican Republic.

But experts here said they couldn’t be sure who was responsible, only that the violence was certain to increase tensions which were already running high in recent weeks, and particularly since anti-government riots broke out in Petit Goave over the weekend.

The OAS has been working since the disputed elections to gain agreement by the two sides whereby certain seats would be subject to new balloting. But the precise details of how and when new elections will be carried out have not yet been agreed despite more than a dozen missions to the Haitian capital by OAS Assistant Secretary General Luigi Einaudi.

While tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid has continued to flow to Haiti, virtually all through non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as much as half billion dollars in loans and grants to Haiti have been held up by foreign and international donors pending resolution of the dispute.

In addition, Haiti went on non-accrual status with the World Bank in September when it failed to pay its debt obligations for more than six months, making it impossible for the Bank to resume lending or even providing grant support except for certain kinds of health and related projects.

“The payment of arrears is the least significant,” stressed one senior Bank official. “The key thing is the willingness to improve transparency and governance. It is best not to lend money, if it is just going to the purchase of a house for one person or another,” she noted, adding that some recent public spending has been used to buy houses and cars for high officials.

The result is that the Americas’ poorest country has been slipping ever-deeper into misery from which an ever-growing number of Haitians are tempted to escape by boat, or across the border into the Dominican Republic.

“This is putting a tremendous strain on the western part of the Dominican Republic,” said the Bank official, who asked not to be identified. “It’s a time bomb, because the Dominicans are being very resentful.”

In addition to the growing impoverishment of the country, repression and general lawlessness also appear to be growing, according to human rights group whose warnings about the situation have grown increasingly insistent since Aristide was re-elected as president last December.

In a report released in late September, Amnesty International said that respect for human rights and the rule of law had fallen to its lowest level since the military was ousted by the U.S. intervention in 1994.

And last month, Richard Menard, the head of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a press rights watchdog, warned that Aristide would be added to his group’s annual list of international “predators of press freedom” if an investigation into the April 2000 murder of Jean Dominique, a highly popular radio personality, were not concluded in a fair and transparent manner.

Testimony acquired by an investigating judge so far has suggested the involvement of Sen. Dany Toussaint, an influential member of Lavalas Family in the murder of the journalist. The Lavalas-dominated Senate, however, has refused to strip him of his parliamentary immunity.