HAITI: A WAY STATION FOR THE DRUG TRADE, HAITI AGAIN GETS THE WRONG KIND OF INTERFERENCE...
----- Original Message -----
From: Malaika Kambon
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2004 1:20 PM
Subject: [unioNews] HAITI: A WAY STATION FOR THE DRUG TRADE, HAITI AGAIN GETS THEWRONG KIND OF INTERFERENCE...
NEW AFRIKAN MILLENNIUM
11 MARCH 2004
This is a weird article...
war without terms
m
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 06:49:03 -0500
From: "Pan-African News Wire" <[log in to unmask]>
MONDO WASHINGTON
by James Ridgeway
Drug Through the Mud
A Way Station For Dope, Haiti Again Gets The Wrong Kind Of
Interference
March 10 - 16, 2004
Drug Through the Mud A Way Station For Dope, Haiti Again Gets
The Wrong Kind Of Interference
WASHINGTON, D.C. It was the junior senator from Massachusetts,
John Kerry, who came the closest to exposing raw political
power in Haiti when he led a Senate foreign relations
subcommittee's probe into the drug trade during the early
1990s.
For 10 years, the Haitian military had been deeply involved in
trafficking drugs from the Colombia cartels. Kerry's
subcommittee on terrorism heard Gabriel TABOADA, a former
MEDELLIN cartel operative, testify that "the cartel used
Haiti as a bridge so as to later move the drugs toward the
United States."
Haitian military leaders, including the then head of the
government, Lieutenant General RAOUL CEDRAS, along with Port-
au-Prince police chief Joseph Michel François and army chief
Philippe BIAMBY, even traveled to Colombia to meet with top
cartel dealers.
At the time, just before Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to
take up the presidency, there was speculation in Washington
that Clinton's Justice Department would indict these major
figures in a Noriega-style bust.
But this never happened, perhaps because airing the information
would have compromised U.S. intelligence and drug enforcement
operations in the area, putting agents at risk and wrecking ops
aimed at bigger fish.
Instead of a straight-up indictment, Clinton went for one of his
trademark fishy solutions, setting up a team of arbitrators consisting
of Jimmy Carter, Sam Nunn, and Colin Powell, who negotiated (if
that is the word) the flight of the ruling junta to safe haven in Panama.
Drugs weren't part of the deal. And that was unfortunate, because
among those who had attended the meetings in Colombia was
Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, who, before Aristide, was head of
something in the army called the civil-enforcement program.
He later became the key figure in a death-squad gang called FRAPH.
Alan NAIRN, writing in The Nation, subsequently exposed Constant
as a CIA asset in Haiti. On Aristide's return, Constant was
arrested, jailed in the U.S., and then quickly released and
deported back to Haiti. His current whereabouts are unclear,
perhaps in Queens or maybe in Haiti. But he's bound to be
behind the scenes in the planning of actions by the publicly
identified rebel leaders, Louis JODEL CHAMBLAIN, a killer
formerly in the army, and Guy Philippe, another army man.
Whether Constant is still hooked up with American
intelligence, who knows?
Under Aristide, the drug trade reportedly continued to
flourish as living conditions grew worse and worse. The
American intelligence agencies, which never liked Aristide
and portrayed him to the press as a nutcase, did their best
to straighten things out by setting up a national intelligence
service in Haiti. When Aristide managed to shut down the army,
the U.S. helped him create a weak national police force. And
the new intelligence service? It soon began trading drugs.
As for Haiti's economy, which the experts fuss over as if it
were some odd archaeological object, it's not all that
complicated. It is based on exports, which currently means
assembled goods, which produce little serious investment and
leave the people either just below or just above utter
poverty. The place once had a sort of sustainable small
agriculture, which the best minds of the first world
determined had to go; it was re-geared to mono-crop exports.
That degraded the environment. American bureaucrats wanted
things their way. They lost it when a few Haitian pigs got
swine flu and in the bureaucrats' hysteria over making sure
the sick pig meat never got to U.S. shores, the bureaucrats
insisted the Haitian pigs be killed. Instead, the Haitians
would get new, bigger, and better imported American pigs. But
American pigs wouldn't eat the garbage that the Haitian pigs
thrived on, and had to eat wheat-based, vitamin-laced food.
They were extremely expensive to have around, and villagers
began to fight with one another over who owned what pig. The
project was a disaster.
But there was light at the end of the tunnel, because the
ruined Haitian peasantry could move to the cities, live in
slums, and work in assembly factories. Aristide himself
capped this situation by accepting the IMF and other
international banking terms for loans through a restructuring
that essentially promised more of the same. What has happened
in Haiti is not a failure of American policy planners. It is
caused by a disgusting and irresponsible group of American
politicians. Haiti is only of interest to American
politicians when they can get something out of it. Since the
Haitians for the most part are black and poor, that's not
very often. The Bush freebooters are bad, but the Black
Caucus isn't much better.
The people interested in Haiti are few and far between. Among
them are members of Bush's favored base, the Christian right.
And they are appealing to the oligarchy that runs the place
if only because evangelicals offer an inexpensive solution:
Footing the bill for a wired-up preacher to get a couple of
miracles out of a huge crowd is a lot cheaper than building a
hospital. But when Christianity runs head-on into folk
religions, as it often does in Haiti, voodoo can sidetrack
it. Voodoo becomes a defense against American values, and a
valuable aspect of Haitian resilience.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Additional reporting: Alicia Ng and Ashley Glacel
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Distributed By: THE PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION CENTER
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