Let’s summarize a little. Aristide was forced out of Haiti in a paramilitary coup because the US was arming the paramilitaries and Aristide had no force of his own. By all accounts, his people, the Lavalas activists and grassroots, were actually much more radical and had much more will to resist and fight for their country’s independence and against a return of the vicious dictatorship that plagued that country for decades (with a very brief and partial interruption under Aristide). But Aristide needed to take the lead, and Aristide did not, and so the coup happened.
There was some international sentiment against the coup, from South Africa, Venezuela, Jamaica, and a few other countries — but most of the countries who you might have hoped would defend the independence and democracy of a small weak country did not do so. Instead, countries like Brazil, Chile, and Argentina joined the UN occupation force that is effectively guaranteeing that neither Aristide nor democracy can be restored, while the forces of the Haitian dictatorship reconstitute themselves and return to their work of liquidating the social and activist base of the popular movements in the country.
It is early to tell. But there are beginning to be signs that the Haitian movements are engaging in armed resistance against the occupation and the Haitian police.
I’ve been republishing and reporting news from the Haiti Information Project here (get on their list by writing ot haitiinformationproject@yahoo.com). Today’s report says that the slum of Bel Air, a very poor part of the very poor city of Port Au Prince, is still being besieged by Haitian police and UN troops. Those forces have been raiding into the slum for days now, but people in the slum have been shooting back. It all started on September 30 with a set of killings and arrests against unarmed Lavalas demonstrators. They’ve been ‘sweeping’ the slums since, killing a few here, arresting a few dozen there. In Bel Air yesterday, the Haitian Police and Brazilian UN troops raided a slum, killed 5, and arrested 34, according to the HIP report, which uses testimony from residents. According to those same residents, one of the Brazilian soldiers was wounded in the foot by gunfire.
There was a story that crept into the mainstream media about Lavalas people beheading Haitian police and calling it “Operation Baghdad”. This is being used to justify the raids. I’m dubious. There’s very little real evidence. And in any case resistance movements don’t just start off by beheading people. They start off as this one might be — demonstrations, that are then repressed; firing back at vicious raids. It’s all very convenient too, a pretext to attack and do mass reprisals in the neighbourhoods and a chance to smear Haitians and Iraqis all at once.
The problem is that if this does become an insurgency/counterinsurgency dynamic, Haitians will have the same problem they always have had. The people they are fighting are the most powerful in the world or backed by them. They, by contrast, are almost completely alone and no one in the world seems to care at all.
