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> Armed businessmen take on gangs
> They work with police to dig out hit squads
> Steven Dudley, Chronicle Foreign Service
> Tuesday, March 2, 2004
> ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ

> URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/a/2004/03/02/MNGNM5C3EC1.DTL

> Port-au-Prince, Haiti -- They are businessmen. Nearly all of them speak English from years spent vacationing in Miami or studying in New England. Some have military training; a few were in ROTC in college. All of them have weapons.

> Now, instead of sitting behind desks, running their businesses, they are out on patrol, their M-4s, M-14s, Tech-9s and 9mms at the ready.

> "We don't want to do this, but we have no choice," 35-year-old Peter Calixte explained as shots rang out in the neighborhood behind him and the patrol leader radioed for police reinforcements.

> "Unless we get backup, we can't go in there," he said pointing to the ramshackle houses that form a ring of slums around this port city.

> While much of Port-au-Prince paraded through the city streets Monday to celebrate the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Calixte and about 20 others in his patrol unit went looking for the pro-Aristide gangs that remain ensconced in these seaside slums, known collectively as Cite Soleil.

> Calixte and his crew are not part of the Liberation Front rebels, the group of former Haitian soldiers who swept through the countryside and arrived in the capital Monday to thousands of cheering citizens. They are urban paramilitaries who say they are simply protecting their property, their families and their country.

> Most are light-skinned -- or "bluh," as they say -- and are members of the 1 percent of Haiti's population who own property. On Monday, their first mission was to secure the R-Sassine port, one of the few businesses near Cite Soleil that had not been looted in the mayhem that led up to Aristide's flight into exile.

> Calixte and his men fanned out to the edge of the port, trying to ignore the steady rat-a-tat-tat of automatic weapons fire.

> "The weapons aren't the problem," Calixte said, referring to the weapons in the hands of the pro-Aristide gangs. "It's the munitions. They got a lot of bullets. ... This is going to take a couple of weeks."

> Just a half mile away, a separate team of paramilitaries, working in concert with the police, was fighting off an assault by paramilitary gangs allied with Aristide in Port d'Haiti.

> For years, human rights groups say, Aristide armed groups of young men to attack opposition parties, kidnap wealthy citizens and assassinate political foes. In return for their loyalty, they ruled with impunity over entire neighborhoods and, at times, this entire city of close to 3 million people. Their armed attacks and perceived immunity from prosecution earned them the name chimeres, or ghosts.

> In the days leading up to Aristide's departure Sunday, the chimeres set up barricades of burning tires, old trucks and used appliances as they prepared to fend off an expected assault by Liberation Front rebels. They stole cars and torched gasoline stations. But by Sunday afternoon, with their president in exile, their reign of terror appeared to be ending.

> So as darkness settled Sunday, Calixte and dozens of other paramilitaries went out in groups of 10 to 15 men to finish the job.

> "We went down every alley, every street -- we're cleaning up the neighborhoods," said one of Calixte's colleagues, Thomas Hyppolyte.

> There were reports Monday that at least 20 leaders of the chimeres had been assassinated Sunday night. When asked about the deaths, the 30-year-old Hyppolyte, who wore a black shirt with a red polo emblem, smiled.

> "I'm not a mercenary," he said. "It's not in my nature."

> In Haiti, where the central government is weak and the justice system ineffective, repression has traditionally been left to paramilitary groups like these.

> For 30 years, the Duvalier family dictatorship used the Ton Ton Macoutes, a macabre band of killers that mixed voodoo and machetes to keep the Duvaliers' enemies in check. After dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier fled in 1986 amid widespread protests and rioting, the military regimes that followed used attaches, well-armed death squads who often patrolled with the police. Aristide's chimeres emerged in the mid-1990s. This new band of paramilitaries doesn't have a name yet.

> "We're tired of this thing," said Sean St. Remy, 32, who went to college at Northeastern University before transferring to a college in Miami. "The only thing we are is businessmen who want a change in our country."

> St. Remy is the unofficial leader of this unlikely band of paramilitaries. Most of them are married with children and reside in the posh hillside suburb of Petionville. St. Remy has three boys and owns an auto parts store. Calixte's family owns restaurants. Hyppolyte inherited a dry-cleaning service.

> St. Remy says his wife's garment factory was looted last weekend, and when he heard that people were ransacking the local police station, he was the first to arrive with his M-16 assault rifle.

> "After the (looters) left, we put the (national) flag up," he said, recounting the group's sudden appearance. "Now, we put in a new police chief until they can take over themselves."

> Monday, this new band of paramilitaries worked closely with the poorly armed police, patrolling and fighting together in Cite Soleil against the chimeres. Throughout, the two forces kept in constant radio contact.

> St. Remy said his group was not well-trained and called them "just a group of friends." But another member, who did not wish to be identified, said they had been organizing for several months and hoped to spread the model to other neighborhoods.

> Back at R-Sassine port, gunfire erupted from the outskirts of the property. A fire truck filled with police sped past the front gate but skidded to a halt when it faced bursts of fire from the slums. Inside the gates, the port's owner, 50-year-old Jean-Pierre Sassine held his ground.

> "If the state can't protect it, we have the right to defend our property, " he said. "You work for it. You fight for it. Your grandfather sweats for it. Goddamn, I'm going to protect it."

> He reached for his gun and walked toward the gate.

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