# Storm Gathers in Haiti

By Reed Lindsay
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
February 16, 2004
Gonaives, Haiti - An armed anti-government gang that seized this port city a week and a half ago has joined forces with former military and paramilitary leaders, an ominous sign for the besieged government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
At the same time, Aristide's political opposition attempted to at least partially distance itself from the rebels yesterday, holding a scantily attended demonstration in Port-au-Prince that dissipated when a handful of Aristide supporters started throwing rocks and riot police intervened.
The rebellion in Gonaives, followed by similar takeovers in several other towns, is the most severe threat to Haiti's shaky democracy since Aristide was returned to power by U.S. troops in 1994 after being ousted by the military in a 1991 coup only seven months into his first term as president. It fuels an escalating political crisis marked by the freezing of international aid since 2000 and by the opposition's refusal to participate in elections and in parliament.
Opposition politicians accuse Aristide and his Lavalas party of corruption, fomenting class hatred and relying on gangs from the slums to crack down on protesters and critics.
And, like every upheaval in this impoverished nation of 8 million, the latest protests raise fears in the United States of a new flood of impoverished immigrants in precarious rafts washing up on Florida's shores.
The uprisings do not seem to be coordinated and, initially, the Gonaives revolt appeared to be a personal vendetta of gang leader Butteur Metayer against Aristide, not an attempt to overthrow the government. But on Friday, Metayer announced his alliance with Louis Jodel Chamblain, former co-leader of a murderous paramilitary group called the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, which operated during the 1991-1994 military government, and Guy Phillippe, a former military officer and police chief who is wanted by the government for an alleged coup attempt in 2001.
Both Chamblain and Phillippe had fled to the Dominican Republic, where they were in exile before returning to Gonaives to help facilitate the latest uprising. Government officials fear they could have the military capacity and political ambition to extend the revolt from Gonaives to other major cities, and even to Port-au-Prince, the capital.
Metayer, Chamblain and Phillippe held an impromptu press conference Friday in a dirt-floored shack made of corrugated tin and wooden planks in a seaside slum.
"There is only one way to negotiate with Aristide: He has to go," said Metayer, a stout, bald man with a goatee. He blames Aristide for ordering the killing of his brother, Amiot Metayer, a Gonaives gang leader who long supported the president, but was found murdered in September.
"Right now we have control of Gonaives," said Metayer, wearing sunglasses and a Nike T-shirt and flanked by a dozen stone-faced men dressed in camouflage and brandishing a hodgepodge of aging AK-47s, M-16s, shotguns and other weapons. "Before the government couldn't take us, and much less now because of Guy Phillippe."
The rebels have blocked traffic on the two-lane road connecting Haiti's two largest cities, Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien, bisecting the nation. The United Nations warned this weekend that the blockade has cut off essential food aid to 268,000 people in northern Haiti.
Police were repelled when they tried to take back Gonaives Feb. 7. Nearly 50 people have been killed there and in several other towns since, with the severely understaffed national police being driven out.
Meanwhile, in Port-au-Prince, long a bastion of support for Aristide, many poor Haitians continue to back the government despite the escalating conflicts and worsening economic conditions.
A week ago, thousands marched in support of the government. On Thursday, the opposition was forced to cancel its protest march after hundreds of Aristide backers blocked streets with burning tires, broken blocks of cement and rusted hulks of abandoned refrigerators. Some observers speculated that the opposition's poor showing was due to fear of attack by pro-government gangs called chimères.
Opposition leaders repeated their call for Aristide's resignation last week. Andre Apaid, a New York-born millionaire businessman who leads Group 184, the most prominent opposition group, described a recent Aristide speech as "his very intelligent way to speak softly and to incite violence."
The Port-au-Prince-based political opposition is led by a range of business leaders, student groups and small political parties.
Haiti, which has long held the ignominious distinction of being the poorest country in the Americas, has seen its economy deteriorate even further since Aristide took office in February 2000. He has blamed the worsening conditions on the freezing of hundreds of millions of dollars in promised international aid from the United States and international lending agencies. The Haitian government operates on a budget of less than $300 million a year, according to authorities.
The aid was blocked after the Organization of American States deemed that legislative elections in 2000 were partly flawed. The opposition, which boycotted the 2000 presidential election, has since refused to participate in any election, instead insisting that Aristide resign.
The Port-au-Prince-based opposition groups have been gaining in force in the last two years, staging increasingly large protest marches, although still much smaller than those in favor of Aristide. Now, it seems, they have been upstaged by the rebels in Gonaives.
Opposition leaders insist they are independent of the armed gang in Gonaives, but they have expressed sympathy for the rebellion.
"The people are in their right to request Mr. Aristide's resignation ..." said Apaid. "We propose a nonviolent approach. Mr. Aristide has armed people to terrorize the opposition and the society. [Now] they turned against him."
Still, both the political opposition and the Gonaives rebels share the same unyielding demand: the president's immediate resignation.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.