Haiti's Big Lie

by Nik Barry-Shaw

www.zcommunications.org/, May 1, 2008

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister of the Third Reich (1933-1945)

With six people killed in the food protests that erupted throughout Haiti in early April, observers immediately began trying to explain why violence had once again shattered the country's two years of apparent stability. Yet rather than blame the massive structural violence of hunger and social exclusion, or even the UN troops who were responsible for the deaths of several protestors[1], the source of the violence was said to lie elsewhere.

"Behind the riots, the spectre of Aristide," as a headline in the newspaper Le Devoir put it. "If the demonstrators had only socioeconomic demands," explained sociologist Laennec Hurbon, "they would have understood that you shouldn't loot businesses." Accordign to Hurbon, the looting and violence had been systematically planned by partisans of exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in an effort to force his return to the country.[2]

These kinds of baseless accusations are familiar to anyone who has followed Haiti's recent history. If there is one "big lie" consistently told with respect to Haiti over the past two decades, it is the allegation that Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his Lavalas movement used - and continue to use - street gangs to violently achieve political ends. From the attempted coup of July 2001 that President Aristide staged against himself, to his instigation of "mob violence" in 1991, to even the attacks he faked against his church in 1988, the litany of charges against Aristide made by his foes stretches back to the very beginning of his involvement in politics.[3] As Peter Hallward notes, it often seems immaterial to critics of Aristide to make any distinction between fact and accusation.[4] Yet the success of a propaganda effort, as Goebbels understood, has less to do with the veracity of its claims than with their ceaseless repetition.

A "big lie", however, is often difficult to grapple with - due to its very "bigness", all its various retellings and embellishments. When analyzing a propaganda campaign, therefore, it is useful to isolate one element of the "big lie" common to most accounts. The centerpiece in the most recent campaign of vilification is undoubtedly "Operation Baghdad" and the events of September 30, 2004.

***

Jean-Bertrand Aristide's second term as President of Haiti would end the same way as had his first had, cut short in a U.S.-backed coup d'état. Aristide's opposition to neoliberalism, his defiant stance towards the U.S. and France, and his enduring popularity with Haiti's poor had made him a marked man from the very beginning of his term in February 2001. After U.S. Marines forced Aristide out of the country by plane on February 29, 2004, Haiti quickly came apart at the seams. Haiti's police force crumbled, the prison system was emptied, and in the absence of any effective public order, crime, looting and gang warfare spiraled out of control.

At the same time, forces of repression hostile to the poor masses were quickly gathering strength. Three days after being appointed, the new Prime Minister Gerard Latortue openly embraced the rebels in a public appearance in Gonaives and hailed them as "freedom fighters".[5] The Minister of Interior, himself a former member of the military, announced that the rebels that had fought Aristide's government - composed mostly of members of Haiti's disbanded army and of paramilitary death squads that operated during the first coup - would be integrated into the police force.[6] Other factions of the rebels declared the Haitian army to be re-established and with the support of residents set up a base in the upper-class neighborhood of Pétionville.[7]

Visiting the country one month after the coup, an Amnesty International delegation reported a widespread "pattern of persecution" against supporters of the deposed government.[8] This persecution was an attempt to pacify the residents of Port-au-Prince's teeming slum neighborhoods - overwhelmingly supporters of Aristide - who continued to voice their opposition to the coup d'état and the Latortue regime that had been imposed on them. As the Haiti Accompaniment Project reported in July 2004, "despite stepped up repression, many groups in Port-au-Prince and in other parts of the country were preparing for ongoing long-term mobilizations to call for the return of democracy to Haiti."[9]

One such mobilization was the demonstration of September 30, 2004, marking the 13th anniversary of first coup that ousted President Aristide in 1991. Starting at 10 a.m., a crowd of more than 10,000 protestors wound their way through the capitol to demand an end to foreign military occupation, the departure of the Latortue government, the release of all political prisoners, and the return of the constitutional government, including President Aristide. Soon after the crowd passed the National Palace, police opened fire on the procession, killing two demonstrators.[10] Some press reports would claim protestors then retaliated, attacking police officers and looting businesses.

In a radio interview the next day, Gerard Latortue was unrepentant about police actions: "We fired on them. Some died, others were wounded, and others fled." The government banned all further demonstrations and Latortue indicated that they would take action against unauthorized protests.[11]

The day after the demonstration, government officials would announce the discovery of the headless bodies of three police officers, blaming Lavalas supporters for the crime.[12] The beheadings were described as the beginning of "Operation Baghdad", a campaign of terror and mayhem led by pro-Lavalas gangs intended to destabilize the country and force the return of President Aristide. "The decapitations are imitative of those in Iraq, and they are meant to show the failure of U.S. policy in Haiti," explained Jean-Claude Bajeux, head of the Centre Eucuménique des Droits de l'Homme (CEDH) and an anti-Aristide politician.[13] In the weeks that followed, Port-au-Prince would crackle with gunfire. The hospital morgue began to overflow with bodies, and press reports indicated the death toll to be at least 46 in the first two weeks of October alone.[14]

***

The very origins of the name "Operation Baghdad" are deeply contested. The interim government alleged the "fanatical hordes" of Aristide partisans "constantly claim responsibility for the terror they have instilled, operating under names echoing doom and gloom such as 'Operation Baghdad'."[15] However, according to Joseph Guyler Delva, head of the Haitian Journalists Association and widely regarded as one of the most even-handed observers in Haiti, the term "Operation Baghdad" was coined by Latortue himself. Lavalas partisans, on the other hand, had never spoken of any such operation.[16]

The interim government's version of the events of September 30 was equally suspect. Government officials presented no evidence that the decapitations were the work of Aristide supporters, and did not release any photos or names of the alleged victims.[17] The Comité des Avocats Pour le Respect des Libertés Individuelles (CARLI), a human rights group, reported that two officers had been decapitated, but by former soldiers on September 29, the day before the demonstration. It was not until after the demonstration that the government began to blame the crimes on Lavalas supporters, according to CARLI.[18]

The interim government also failed to substantiate its more general claim that a violent campaign against it was underway. As the Observer (UK) noted one month after "Operation Baghdad" had allegedly begun:

Evidence of such "destabilization" is scant. Shootings and robberies have become common in central Port-au-Prince, but it is not always clear whether they are politically motivated or the result of crime sparked by desperate economic conditions and an ineffectual police force. [Minister of Justice Bernard] Gousse said he knew of only two lootings, and that police officers had only been killed while carrying out raids in slums.[19]

CARLI's investigation of "Operation Baghdad" yielded the same result, leading the organization to conclude that there was no such operation launched by Lavalas supporters.[20]

Whatever its origins, the trajectory of the name (or epithet more accurately) and accompanying story is instructive. The sectors that had participated in the opposition to Aristide's government - such as Bajeux's CEDH and other foreign-funded "civil society" groups, political parties, and intellectuals - enthusiastically took up the "Operation Baghdad" label. They joined in blaming Aristide and his supporters for the violence wracking Port-au-Prince, and called on the interim government for more vigorous action against them. [21]

U.S. and UN officials were also quick to jump on the "destabilization" bandwagon. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was unequivocal about the source of the post-September 30 violence: "Over the past two weeks, pro-Aristide thugs have murdered policemen, looted businesses and public installations, and terrorized civilians."[22] U.S. Embassy officials would also repeat the claim that police officers had been beheaded in "a slum gang operation called 'Operation Baghdad'" when speaking with human rights investigators.[23]

Lavalas activists and political leaders, on the other hand, immediately denounced the violence, and condemned the police for firing on unarmed demonstrators. One Lavalas spokesperson identified "Operation Baghdad" as "a calculated attempt to manipulate the media and U.S. public opinion."[24] Trade unionist Paul "Loulou" Chery charged that the name had been concocted to "demonize the movement, the people and Lavalas supporters in particular."[25] Likewise, tens of thousands of demonstrators in Cap-Haitien marched behind a banner on December 16, 2004 decrying "Operation Baghdad" as a plot by the bourgeoisie "to put an end to Lavalas."[26] These statements, however, rarely if ever found their way into Western press reports about the violence in Haiti after September 30.

Faced with a regime intolerant of dissent and outraged at the attacks on the demonstrators of September 30, the poor neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince erupted. "Skirmishes, barricades and spontaneous demonstrations have sprung up daily in poor neighborhoods around the capital since the police and paramilitary gunmen tried to stop a massive demonstration on September 30," Haiti Progres reported on October 6.[27] When the barricades failed to prevent the police and UN troops from entering the neighborhood, the invaders would be met with a hail of stones and bottles and other debris thrown by residents.[28]

Destabilization or no destabilization, the Latortue government unleashed a new wave of repression against the Lavalas movement. Scores of prominent Lavalas figures and popular organization activists were arrested on charges of being "intellectual authors of the violence", of hiding "organizers of violence", or simply being "close to the Lavalas authorities." These arrests were conducted with neither warrants nor evidence - hardly surprising given the vagueness of the charges.[29] Haiti's prisons - emptied following the coup d'état - overflowed with detainees, the vast majority Lavalas members or poor people from the pro-Aristide bidonvilles.[30]

The frequency and violence of the police operations also increased dramatically in the following weeks, with some community members describing their neighborhoods as being "under siege". The November 2004 delegation of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights described these chilling conditions:

On an almost daily basis, the Haitian National Police in various units and dressed in a wide variety of uniforms, often masked, select and attack a neighborhood in operations reported as efforts to arrest armed gang members, with UN soldiers backing them up.

. . . [T]here are dead bodies in the street almost daily, including innocent bystanders, women and children. The violent repression . . . has generated desperate fear in a community that is quickly losing its young men to violent death or arbitrary arrest.[31]

These incursions were characterized by "execution-style killings" and in some cases massacres, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG). On 26 October, twelve young men were killed in the Fort National area, while on 27 October, the bodies of four young men were found in the Carrefour-Péan area, near Bel-Air. "All had been shot in the head and at least one had bound wrists," according to the ICG, and witnesses identified black-clad police officers wearing balaclavas as the perpetrators.[32]

Calls for an independent enquiry into these killings were stonewalled by the Latortue government. The interim authorities categorically denied any responsibility for human rights abuses by its security forces, while blocking access to either the penitentiary or the morgue by journalists and human rights observers.[33]

***

The announcement of "Operation Baghdad" by the interim government did not happen in a vacuum. By late September 2004, Haiti's interim government headed by Florida businessman Gerard Latortue was in dire straits. The 5-month-old administration was faced with a growing resistance movement in the quartiers populaires and accusations of corruption and ineptitude were coming from all quarters. Diplomatic problems began cropping up as well; in a radio interview on September 16, 2004, "Latortue complained that human rights criticism was making his relations with donor countries difficult."[34]

The allegations, moreover, seemed perfectly calibrated to the prevailing North American media environment. The decapitation of Nick Berg by his captors in May 2004 had caused a media shock wave, and on September 20-21, 2004, two more American contractors were beheaded in Iraq, with the fate of a British colleague still hanging in the balance as of September 30.[35] What better way for the Latortue regime to discredit its opponents than to accuse them of the same tactics as Al-Qaida in Iraq?

The government's claims should therefore have invited a substantial amount of skepticism. Latortue was desperate to recover some domestic legitimacy and his international backers needed a pretext to continue supporting the government's pacification of the slums.

Port-au-Prince's poorer residents understood quite clearly the utility of the "Operation Baghdad" fiction. "By saying we are 'gang members' or 'chimères,' the press are trying to discredit our demands for justice," a Bel-Air resident explained to the San Francisco Bay View. "Who cares about giving justice to those criminal gang members who just sell drugs and misbehave?"[36]

"The police officers will say that this was an operation against gangs. But we are all innocent," said Eliphete Joseph, a young man from the Fort National district speaking to journalists following a police massacre. "The worst thing is that Aristide is now in exile far from here in South Africa, but we are in Haiti, and they are persecuting us only because we live in a poor neighborhood."[37]

Such common-sense interpretations were nowhere to be found in the Canadian media, who generally accepted the government's claims at face value. Although disappointing, the media's performance was typical of journalistic coverage of Canada's interventions abroad; what proved to be much more puzzling was the unflinching credulity of Canadian organizations that claimed to be giving a voice to Haiti's grassroots.

On October 22, 2004, as government attacks on the slums were reaching a fever pitch, the Concertation pour Haiti (CPH) issued a press release "denouncing the climate of terror ravaging Haiti, particularly since September 30, when the chimères, the armed partisans of former President Aristide, launched Operation Baghdad."[38] Just a few days earlier, the Quebec-based non-governmental organization (NGO) Alternatives had produced a near identical analysis of the situation in Haiti. "A vast operation of terror has been set in motion in Port-au-Prince principally in the popular neighborhoods of Bel-Air and Cite Soleil. It is militants of [Aristide's] Famni Lavalas who are behind this campaign," wrote Tania Vachon in the Journal d'Alternatives, a monthly insert in Le Devoir, "dubbed 'Operation Baghdad' because of the extreme acts of violence that are perpetrated: public beheadings, sexual assaults, attacks on street vendors etc."[39]

Neither article considered the possibility that the interim government and its foreign backers were trying to manipulate public opinion. Latortue's accusation that Lavalas had launched "Operation Baghdad" was uncritically repeated, while no mention was made of Lavalas statements to the contrary.

Alternatives and the CPH both lamented the lack of action by UN forces and Haiti's police in the face of a wave of Lavalassian violence, with the CPH going so far as to complain that police operations in the poor neighborhoods "regularly fail[ed] to produce results." Neither group mentioned the well-documented "results"- in the form of brutal killings and arbitrary arrests - produced by the ongoing UN/police incursions into the pro-Lavalas slums. The CPH communique ended with a call for reinforcement and increased funding of the police and UN troops.

With blame for the violence being heaped on Lavalas, Latortue's international patrons were able to give their full backing to the campaign of repression. Despite a long-standing arms embargo on Haiti, the US government authorized the shipment of thousands of new firearms to the Latortue government in November 2004, including military rifles and machine guns.[40] Then-Prime Minister Paul Martin, visiting Haiti on November 14, promised Canada would stand "shoulder to shoulder" in with the interim government in their efforts to re-establish "security". "You're not going to have a democracy when people are afraid for their lives," said Martin.[41]

***

Sadly, the views of the CPH and Alternatives were not idiosyncratic. The CPH issued its statement on behalf of a coalition of development NGOs, unions and civil society groups, and Alternatives generally occupies the left wing of the NGO world.[42] Despite having opposed the 1991 coup d'état against Aristide, by the time of the second coup in 2004 the CPH, Alternatives and the vast majority of Canadian NGOs working in Haiti were openly hostile to the popular movement and regarded much of violence that followed as the result of a shadowy conspiracy of Aristide supporters - with the puppet master pulling the strings from his exile in South Africa. The "Operation Baghdad" smear is today common currency amongst NGOs and continues to be used against Lavalas activists. In a recently published report, Alternatives referred to it simply as "one of the most serious massacres since 2004."[43]

The tumultuous class dynamics of Haiti over the past two decades were deeply linked to the ideological volte-face of the NGOs. Born of a cross-class alliance against the Duvalier dictatorship, the Lavalas movement began to fracture along class lines with the advent of democracy - a process accelerated by foreign funding. In the struggle that emerged between the Haitian elite and the popular classes, the shift in aid financing following the May 2000 elections that brought Aristide's Famni Lavalas party into power proved decisive. The Canadian government, along with the U.S. and the EU, redirected funds for the elected government to "civil society", thus tipping the scales in the elite's favour.[44]

Sections of the middle classes were "slowly co-opted by the steady trickle of project dollars flowing through the almost interminable list of NGOs infesting every corner of Haiti."[45] Development funding offered a rare opportunity for upward mobility, and led to greater control of Haitian NGOs by their internationally-connected leaderships. Increasingly, positions were "not derived from a vote of a dwindling membership, but rather reflect[ed] the sentiments of a small handful of paid leaders."[46]

These educated, French-speaking leaders now regarded their former ally Aristide as "worse than Cedras or Duvalier" and "aligned with the elite political movement" pushing for his overthrow.[47] They dismissed the government's supporters - overwhelmingly poor, uneducated and Creole-speaking - as nothing but a small group of "thugs" and "chimères". Aristide was pronounced a traitor and the popular movement dead.

Interestingly, the international architects of policy towards Haiti weren't beholden to such illusions about Aristide's popularity. Speaking with journalist Anthony Fenton, Fabiola Cordova, National Endowment for Democracy program officer responsible for Haiti, remarked that "one of the main problems in Haiti has been a very weak opposition . . . Aristide really had 70% of the popular support and then the 120 other parties had the thirty per cent split in one hundred and twenty different ways."[48]

Following the coup d'état of February 29, 2004, Haitian NGOs hailed the new "democratic opening" as many of their leaders obtained posts in the interim government. Rallying behind the interim authorities' repression of Lavalas supporters, these groups took up the "Operation Baghdad" label as another ideological stick to beat their opponents with.[49] Canadian NGOs absorbed the prejudices of their middle-class "partners" in Haiti, including unquestioning acceptance of the interim government's "Operation Baghdad" fiction.

***

In a review of Canada's "difficult partnership" with Haiti, CIDA concluded that their shift to "supporting civil society initiatives and Canadian NGO partners produced relatively good qualitative results." "Substantial support to non-governmental actors strengthened their ability to mobilize constituents" while "eroding legitimacy, capacity and will of the state to deliver key services" through the creation of "parallel systems of service delivery."[50] Canadian NGOs, in other words, played an integral part in bolstering the elite-led opposition while undermining Haiti's elected government.

CIDA's candid description of the Canadian NGOs' role in the imperial destabilization of Haiti clashes dramatically with their self-image. These organizations firmly believe that their CIDA project partners in Haiti "represent" civil society, are the "true" bearers of the popular movement, etc. The implicit assumption is that CIDA is in the business of funding progressive, empowering social change. Yet with the ascendancy of "all-of-government engagement" and counterinsurgency warfare concepts in Canadian foreign policy thinking, faith in a benevolent, empowering CIDA becomes increasingly untenable.[51] Indeed, the subordination of aid to larger foreign policy goals - goals absolutely hostile to popular empowerment - is an area where "Canada has made significant headway" in Haiti, as the CIDA report noted.[52]

To point out that, whatever delusions to the contrary, the empowerment of the poor may not be the ultimate aim of foreign aid is not particularly original. As James Ferguson observed in his 1990 book The Anti-Politics Machine: "In spite of the very common involvement of 'development' with counter-insurgency throughout the post-war period, a surprising number of Western progressives have been drawn to 'development' work by way of political commitments to and solidarity with Third World causes." While Ferguson allowed that "under certain circumstances" development work may fulfill such commitments, "it is all too easy to enter into complicity with a state bureaucracy [representing] the very social forces . . . that must be challenged if the impoverished and oppressed majority are to improve their lot."[53] The case of "Operation Baghdad" illustrates just how real this danger is.


Notes:

[1] "One protester killed as demonstrations grow in Haiti," Haiti Information Project, April 4, 2008.
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/4_4_8/4_4_8.html
[2] Étienne Côté-Paluck, "Haïti - Derrière les émeutes, le spectre d'Aristide," Le Devoir, April 12-13, 2008.
http://www.ledevoir.com/2008/04/12/184765.html
[3] See Jim Naureckas, "Enemy Ally: The Demonization of Jean-Bertrand Aristide," Extra!, November/December 1994, and Ben Dupuy, "The Attempted Character Assassination of Jean-Bertrand Aristide", Peter Philips & Project Censored ed. Censored 1999: The news that didn't make the news, Seven Stories Press, 1999.
[4] "What Dupuy means by the word 'immaterial', presumably, is that when he repeatedly accuses Aristide of creating and directing these [gangs], it is immaterial whether or not such accusations are in fact correct." Hallward is here reviewing Alex Dupuy's The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community and Haiti. Peter Hallward, "Aristide and The Violence of Democracy", Haiti Liberté, July 2007.
[5] "South Africa to Become Permanent Home for Aristide," Washington Post, March 25, 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23769-2004Mar25_2.html
[6] Reuters, March 23, 2004.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/670.html
[7] Tom Griffin, "Haiti Human Rights Investigation: November 11-21", Center for the Study of Human Rights, p. 18-24.
[8] Amnesty International, "Haiti: Breaking the cycle of violence: A last chance for Haiti?".
http://www.amnesty.org/en/report/info/AMR36/038/2004
[9] Laura Flynn, Robert Roth and Leslie Fleming, "Report of the Haiti Accompaniment Project," June 29-July 9, 2004.
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/hap6_29_4.html
[10] James Painter, "Haiti's Escalating Violence," BBC News, October 14, 2004.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_3743000/3743376.stm
[11] Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, "Haiti Human Rights Alert: Illegal Arrest of Political Leaders," October 8, 2004.
http://www.ijdh.org/articles/article_human_rights_alerts_oct8.html
[12] Ibid.
[13] "Aristide supporters step-up protest", Associated Press, October 2, 2004.
http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/879
[14] "Haiti violence death toll rises to 46," China Daily, October 13, 2004.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-10/13/content_382028.htm
Other sources would claim this significantly undercounted the number of deaths: "On October 15, it was reported that the State Morgue in Port au Prince had issued an emergency call to the Ministry of Health to remove the more than 600 bodies that had been piling up in the previous two weeks," Anthony Fenton, "Media Disinformation on Haiti," Znet, October 25, 2004.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6492
[15] Press Release from the Communication Office of the Prime Minister, October 22, 2004.
http://www.haiti.org/general_information/communiqu%E9%20de%20presse102204_en.htm
[16] Reed Lindsay, "Police Terror Sweeps Across Haiti," The Observer, October 31, 2004,
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1340274,00.html
and Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, "Caught in Their Own Trap", Haiti Action Committee, November 9, 2004.
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/LPA/11_9_4.html
[17] IJDH, "Haiti Human Rights Alert".
[18] Griffin, p. 39.
[19] Lindsay.
[20] Griffin, p. 39
[21] e.g. Marc-Arthur Fils-Aimé, "Haïti dans la violence des chimères," AlterPresse, November 12, 2004.
http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article1919
[22] "Violence in Haiti," U.S. Department of State Press Statement, October 12, 2004.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2004/37018.htm
[23] Griffin Report, p.31.
[24] "'Operation Baghdad' brought to you by AP," Haiti News Watch, October 3, 2004.
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HNW/10_3_4.html
[25] Paul Chery interviewed by Kevin Skerrett, "A Situation of Terror", Znet, November 4, 2005.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9060
[26] "Massive Protest demanding Aristide's return in Haiti's second largest city," Haiti Information Project, December 16, 2004.
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/12_16_4.html
[27] "Street Resistance to Occupation Regime Surges," Haiti Progrès, October 6 - 12, 2004.
http://www.ijdh.org/articles/article_ijdh_in_the_news-11-12-04.htm
[28] "Haiti: Rebellion in Bel Air," Revolutionary Worker, October 17, 2004.
http://rwor.org/a/1255/haiti_current_situation.htm
Rosean Baptiste interviewed by Lyn Duff, "We Won't Be Peaceful and Let Them Kill Us Any Longer," November 4, 2004.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9059
"Resistance in the Slums of Port-au-Prince," Black Commentator, October 14, 2004.
http://blackcommentator.com/109/109_haiti.html
[29] IJDH, "Haiti Human Rights Alert".
[30] Lindsay: "'We fought to bring democracy to Haiti, but since this government took over, it's been a dictatorship,' said Mario Joseph, a lawyer who worked to bring past human rights abusers to justice under Aristide and is now representing 54 people he says are political prisoners. The prison was emptied by armed groups led by former military officers after Aristide's departure, and Joseph believes the majority of the new prisoners are Lavalas members."
[31] Griffin, p.12-13.
[32] "A New Chance for Haiti?" International Crisis Group, November 18, 2004, p.15.
[33] Lindsay, and Griffin, p. 53.
[34] IJDH, "Haiti Human Rights Alert".
[35] Steve Fainaru and Karl Vick, "British Hostage Beheaded in Iraq," Washington Post, A23, October 9, 2004.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17349-2004Oct8.html
[36] Baptiste interview.
[37] Lindsay.
[38] Concertation pour Haïti, "Haïti : de l'insécurité à la terreur," Alterpresse, October 22, 2004.
www.medialternatif.org/alterpresse/spip.php?article1834
[39] Tania Vachon, "Les victimes politiques de Jeanne," Journal d'Alternatives, 19 October, 2004.
www.alternatives.ca/article1499.html?lang=en
[40] Robert Muggah, "Securing Haiti's Transition: Reviewing Human Insecurity and the Prospects for Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration," Small Arms Survey, 2005, p. 10-12.
[41] "Martin says violence preventing democracy from taking hold in Haiti," CBC News, November 14, 2004.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/11/14/haiti041114.html
[42] The CPH's members include Development and Peace, Entraide Missionaire, Centre international de Solidarite ouvriere (CISO), Centre Canadien de Coopération Internationale (CECI), the FTQ and CSQ union federations, and the Quebec chapter of Amnesty International. Co-signers of subsequent CPH statements concerning Haiti have also included Solidarité Union Coopération (SUCO), AQOCI, the umbrella group of Quebec's development NGOs and the Canadian government-controlled group Rights & Democracy.
[43] Pierre Bonin and Amelie Gauthier, "Haiti: Voices of the actors," Alternatives and FRIDE, p. 13, fn 63.
www.fride.org/download/WP52_Haiti_Voices_ENG_feb08.pdf
[44] Canadian International Development Agency, "Canadian Cooperation With Haiti: Reflecting on a Decade of 'Difficult Partnership'," December 2004, p. 8.
www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/45/34095943.pdf
[45] Stan Goff, "A Brief Account of Haiti," Black Radical Congress News, October 22, 1999.
www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/399.html
[46] Anne Sosin quoted in Tom Reeves, "Haiti's Disappeared," Znet, May 5, 2004.
[47] Reeves, "Haiti's Disappeared".
[48] Anthony Fenton, "Declassified Documents: National Endowment for Democracy FY2005," Narcosphere, February 15, 2006.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2006/2/15/205828/741
Little has changed since the election of Rene Preval in 2006, according to David Malone, then-Assistant Deputy Minister (Global Issues) at Foreign Affairs Canada: "To the distress of the Group of Friends [i.e. Canada, the US and France], Aristide remains the most potent political force within Haiti." Sebastian von Einsiedel and David M. Malone, "Peace and Democracy for Haiti: A UN Mission Impossible?" International Relations, Vol 20(2): p. 153-174.
[49] E.g. "Depuis le 30 septembre 2004, le peuple haïtien en général, les populations de Port-au-Prince en particulier, vit sous la coupe réglée des bandes armées exécutant les ordres de Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ces bandits ont enclenché une opération baptisée « Opération Bagdad » dont la finalité ouvertement déclarée est le retour physique de Jean-Bertrand Aristide au pouvoir." "Pétition citoyenne pour réclamer la mise en accusation de Jean-Bertrand Aristide et de ses partisans en Haïti," Alterpresse, July 22, 2005. Signed by PAPDA, GARR, EnfoFanm, and SOFA, Haitian NGOs with numerous ties to Canadian NGOs.
[50] CIDA, "Canadian Cooperation With Haiti," p. 12.
[51] Ibid, p. 18. "As the head of the army, Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie, recently told journalists in Vancouver, the Canadian Forces work 'hand in glove with the folks from the Canadian International Development Agency [as well as] reinforce the diplomatic activities and efforts of Foreign Affairs.'" Jon Elmer and Anthony Fenton, "Development Aid as Counterinsurgency Tool," Inter-Press Service, March 23, 2007.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37063
[52] CIDA, "Canadian Cooperation With Haiti," p. 18.
[53] James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 283-284.

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