Posted on Sun, Feb. 29, 2004
FEW VENTURE OUTSIDE: A body lies in downtown Cap Haitien after the Resistance Front takes over. Most people stayed indoors, but the rebels say they killed eight. PETER ANDREW BOSCH/MIAMI HERALD | More photos...
HAITI JOURNAL # Seized in 30 minutes The shooting was over in minutse at Cap Haitien, then begant he looting, and the celebration BY PETER ANDREW BOSCH It was Sunday morning, about 10:30, when the first gunshots rang out on the outskirts of Cap Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city and its most important port on the north coast. From the Hotel Mont Joli, pillars of smoke from burning tires and barricades were visible on the horizon around the airport area. A group of foreign correspondents, tipped that Cap Haitien was about to be attacked, had landed at the airport just hours before on a flight from the capital, Port-au-Prince. The main streets were barricaded by rocks and old cars, and most people in the city of 500,000 appeared to be trying to stay indoors and out of harm's way. From the hotel balcony, it was easy to tell that the airport was hit first and that the shooting was nearing downtown. No one seemed to know for sure what was going on. Was it the rebels fighting to topple President Jean-Bertrand Aristide? Or was it government forces? By 11 a.m., the rebels had reached the police station just below the hotel. They were armed with everything from modern assault weapons to WWII M-1 Garands and M-14s, the U.S. military automatic rifle that preceded the Vietnam-era M-16. Some wore masks and bits of riot gear looted from other police stations they had overrun. The rebels attacked the Cap Haitien station as if it were occupied. They shot up everything. Once they discovered it was empty -- the police had already fled -- the rebels allowed the residents to loot the station. People grabbed everything from toilets to staplers and desk files. Then the rebels set the station on fire. Afterward, they went to the jail and released all the prisoners. They also torched a radio station and a television station owned by alleged Aristide supporters. KILLED EIGHT A mere 25 to 30 rebels riding aboard five trucks and cars had essentially captured the city in half an hour. They claimed to have killed eight men -- either policemen or armed supporters of Aristide. Another 25 to 30 arrived in the city's central area, Carenage, after the fighting was all over. The group, the Haitian Liberation Front, was led by Guy Philippe, a former Cap Haitien police chief accused by the government of drug trafficking and coup plotting. He has steadfastly denied those charges and says his band, mostly made up of former soldiers demobilized when Aristide abolished the army in 1995, are fighting to rid Haiti of a dictator. Once the police station had burned, people began to emerge from their homes. A crowd of 100 grew to thousands. People were celebrating in the streets, following the rebels, singing anti-Aristide slogans. They hugged the rebels as liberators from the pro-Aristide gunmen they said had been running the city with an iron fist. FOOD STORAGE LOOTED Then the looting spread. People raided the port, taking more than 17,000 50-pound bags of rice being stored there. They also hit the World Food Program warehouse on the road to the airport. The air was heavy with uncertainty. Would the government counterattack? Could the rebels hold the town? Haitians have lived with that kind of uncertainty for generations. The country has suffered 32 coups in 200 years of independence, after the world's first successful slave revolt, and nearly three decades of Duvalier family dictatorship. The family's rule came to an end in 1986, when Jean-Claude Duvalier, son of Francois ''Papa Doc'' Duvalier, was forced into exile, first to the Dominican Republic and then to France, Haiti's former colonial master. Aristide was a young Catholic priest working in the worst slums of Port-au-Prince and advocating a version of liberation theology that eventually got him kicked out of the Salesian order for advocating violence. He dreamed of making the Western Hemisphere's poorest country a place where every person had a voice, from the rich to the poor. He was elected president in 1990, and toppled by the army in 1991. He returned to power in 1994, on the shoulders of invading U.S. troops, and was re-elected in 2000. There are many in Haiti who say he lost that dream. They are the ones who were happy to see the rebels when they arrived in Cap Haitien.