washingtonpost.com

Aristide's Supporters Fighting Back

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 11, 2004; Page A22

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 10 -- Militant supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide mounted a vigorous defense of Haiti's second-largest city Tuesday in an effort to keep an armed insurrection from spreading.

Aristide's supporters erected burning barricades made of car chassis, rocks and other debris at the entrance to Cap-Haitien, a day after rebels briefly took control of a police station on the outskirts of the northern city, according to radio reports from the region.

Insurgents seeking to oust Aristide attacked and burned three police stations in the north, including a post they had occupied and lost the previous day in the town of Dondon. In retaliation, pro-Aristide groups reportedly set afire several opposition-owned restaurants, lottery stands and homes in Dondon and the town of St. Raphael.

The fresh violence shifted the focus of Haiti's insurrection, which began Thursday with an armed uprising in the central coast city of Gonaives, to a northern region with a history of rebellion. Much of the violence, in which an estimated 42 people have been killed over the past five days, had been centered along the country's western coast and in scattered cities in the south.

In Geneva, the U.N. World Food Program on Tuesday warned of imminent food shortages in northern Haiti because aid shipments that sustain much of the impoverished country could not pass through roadblocks. The report was an indication of the insurgency's success at holding territory and the challenge that Aristide's cash-poor government faces as it tries to dislodge the rebels from several key regions.

Aristide, a former priest who helped topple the Duvalier family dictatorship, became Haiti's first freely elected president in 1990, only to be ousted by a military coup seven months later. The United States invaded Haiti in 1994 to restore him to power. In November 2000, Aristide was elected to a new five-year term that was viewed as legitimate by election monitors. But the Bush administration has criticized the populist president and questioned his commitment to fair elections and political reform.

The rebels call themselves the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front, taking their name from the country's central valley. The insurgency is led at least in part by former members of Haiti's defunct military and the paramilitary group that opposed Aristide's return. Government officials refer to the group as the "armed wing" of the civic opposition, a coalition of business associations, university students and others. That group has planned a street demonstration in the capital for Thursday.

U.S. officials have discounted the government claim of a link between the rebels and the civic opposition.

"The political opposition has not been associated with these gangs," said Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman. "The gangs themselves have, you know, many origins and different members. But I think this whole climate of violence that's been created over time in Haiti has contributed to what we're seeing now."

Another State Department official, at a briefing for reporters in Washington, said Aristide and his government "will have to think very seriously about what to do to preserve themselves in power."

But officials played down the possibility that the United States would press Aristide to step aside.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Tuesday that the United States has no plans to intervene. "We have no plans to do anything," Rumsfeld said at a news conference. "Everyone's hopeful that the situation, which tends to ebb and flow down there, will stay below a certain threshold."

Opposition rallies have turned violent after coming under attack by armed pro-government groups, which in recent days have joined Haiti's meager police force to drive rebels from at least two towns. News reports said Haiti's police force, which has dwindled from 5,000 officers to roughly 3,000 in recent years, resisted insurgent attacks Tuesday in the northern town of Plaisance.

Elsewhere, Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, remained in rebel control. In St. Marc, the central coast town about 50 miles north of here, about two dozen anti-riot policemen expected a counterattack.

Communications equipment at one police station had been stolen, an official said, and another had been torched and looted. The official said rebels had released prisoners from the two jails.

"The armed gangs can come back to attack us here, at any time," said the commander of one unit, cradling a Galil assault rifle in his lap. "We're just trying to be ready when it comes."

Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company