2004 Haiti Rebellion
From Wikinfo
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Date & Place of Origin Thursday, February 5, 2004 Date & Place of Conclusion Prelude Political dispute between government and opposition; general social tension. Aims Overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide; reconstitution of Haitian army. Rebel leaders Targets Capture of cities; neutralization of the Police Force. Results Ouster of Aristide. |
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| Opposing parties | |
| Assaulters | Defenders |
| National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti | Haitian police, pro-Aristide militants |
| Commands | |
| Guy Philippe | Government of Haiti |
| Strength | |
| 5,000 (estimated) | 5,000 (approximation) |
| Casualties | |
| Unknown | 50 (estimated) |
The 2004 Haiti Rebellion was a war that was fought for several weeks in February 2004 and ended in the ouster of the President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose second term in office was clouded by conflict regarding the nature of his election and administration.
With the capital of Port-au-Prince surrounded by rebels who had seized control of most of the country, Aristide resigned on February 29, 2004 and fled the country, first to the Dominican Republic and then to exile in the Central African Republic. There has been some dispute over whether Aristide's resignation was voluntary, with reports that Aristide considers himself to have been "kidnapped" by American forces.
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Background
The rebellion is generally considered to have begun with the capture of the country's fourth-largest city, [[Gona�ves]], on February 5, 2004, by a rebel group calling itself the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front. This group changed its name to the National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti on February 19.
The rebels had demanded the resignation of President Aristide, who was determined to remain in office until the constitutional expiration of his term on February 7, 2006, insisting that Haiti should not continue its history of moving from "[[coup d'�tat]] to coup d'�tat," but should instead move from "elected president to elected president."
According to the rebels and the civilian opposition, the rebellion is a natural consequence of what they consider Aristide's poor governance and the alleged rigging of Haiti's 2000 legislative elections. The opposition claimed that these elections were flawed due to what they considered to be unfair methods of counting the votes and determining seats, and consequently it boycotted the presidential election later that year, handing Aristide an easy victory with 92% of the vote. Supporters of Aristide dismiss the concerns over the legislative elections as a pretext to discredit Aristide, and note that the elections were generally deemed free and fair at the time.
According to supporters of Aristide's government, the rebellion is a coup attempt by former soldiers of the now-disbanded army (which ruled Haiti from 1991 to 1994) on behalf of the old elite of Haiti, which seeks to put an end to Aristide's populist policies and democratic rule.
It is clear that the rebellion was primarily fought and led by former soldiers of the Haitian army, and this has drawn a great deal of condemnation, since the army was responsible for civilian massacres during the early 1990s. Even prior to the widespread violence that engulfed the country, a low-level rebellion was waged by some ex-soldiers in the central part of the country since at least 2003, resulting in several dozen deaths. Furthermore, on February 14, 2004, a number of former soldiers (including the notorious former militia leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain) returned from exile in the Dominican Republic and announced their intention to join the rebels based in Gona�ves.
General information
The rebels attributed much of their rapid success to Aristide's failure to disarm the army when he disbanded it in 1995; however, they insisted that the popular support they enjoyed was an equally important reason. Haiti's police force of 5,000 proved too small and poorly armed to be effective in resisting the rebel advance, and in some places, such as [[Cap-Ha�tien]], the police seemed not have mounted any substantial resistance at all.
Another component of the rebellion were the armed gangs which have frequently been a source of violence in Haiti in recent years. The most prominent of these gangs, the "Cannibal Army," long acted as Aristide's primary support base in the city of Gona�ves before turning against him in recent years. This gang, which went on to become one of the main elements of the National Revolutionary Front, claimed the weaponry it used to fight the government during the rebellion was given to it by Aristide at a time when it still supported him; allegedly, the main purpose of this was to intimidate the opposition during the 2000 elections. The government, however, said that the rebels possessed firepower far greater than that of the Haitian police, and that the weaponry must therefore have a foreign origin.
To a large extent, Haitian politics has been defined by such gangs for the last decade. While it was an anti-Aristide gang that initiated the rebellion in Gona�ves, pro-Aristide gangs fought back on behalf of the president. Gangs on both sides have been accused of grim atrocities, such as executing supporters of the other side and setting fire to their homes.
According to many supporters of Aristide, the country's civilian opposition acted as a fifth column in support of the rebels. The opposition denied this, but many of its members acknowledged their support for the rebel cause, and stated that they share with the rebels the common goal of Aristide's ouster: according to them, they disagreed with the rebels only on the question of employing violent rebellion to that end.
Timeline
Beginning in Gona�ves with the capture of that city's police station on February 5, the rebellion quickly spread to the nearby port city of Saint-Marc. 150 policemen attempted unsuccessfully to retake Gona�ves on February 8, losing between three and 14 officers in the battle. Saint-Marc was, however, recaptured by police and pro-Aristide militants by February 10, although sporadic fighting continued in the area. Apparently in cooperation with the rebels in these northern and central cities, the south-western city of Grand-Goave was taken by rebels at around the same time, but it too was recaptured by police shortly thereafter.
In the following days, the rebels pursued a strategy of advancing toward the country's second-largest city, Cap-Ha�tien, and the town of Dondon, just south of Cap-Ha�tien, changed hands several times in the fighting. Furthermore, some of the rebels reached the Dominican border, blocking the main road between the two countries and enabling the aforementioned exiled former soldiers to cross into Haiti. By February 17, the rebel forces had captured the central town of Hinche, near the Dominican border.
On February 19, rebel leader Buteur Metayer declared himself president of the areas under his control, with former Cap-Ha�tien police chief Guy Philippe as commander of the rebel army. On February 22, the rebels captured Cap-Ha�tien with surprisingly little bloodshed: the city's police had already made clear their reluctance to fight, and the well-armed and trained rebels had little difficulty sweeping aside the resistance of the city's pro-Aristide militants. On February 24, the rebels followed this success with the capture of the northwestern city of Port-de-Paix and with the capture of Tortue Island, off the northern coast, the next day. These gains effectively ended government control in northern Haiti.
On February 26, a new band of rebels captured the country's third-largest city, Les Cayes, in the southwest. More rebel successes followed, as they captured the strategic crossroads of Mirebalais, 30 miles from the country's capital, Port-au-Prince. Many foreigners were evacuated from Haiti in anticipation of an assault on Port-au-Prince, but an estimated 20,000 U.S. citizens remained in Haiti as of the end of February.
A foreign-backed peace plan, which would have allowed Aristide to serve out his term but with substantially reduced powers and alongside a prime minister from the civilian opposition, was proposed on February 20. It was quickly accepted by Aristide but rejected by the opposition, which continued to demand the president's resignation. France blamed Aristide for the violence and suggested that he should leave office in favor of a transitional government; however, many governments in the region were more supportive of Aristide, alarmed at the precedent that would be set by the overthrow of a democratically elected leader by armed rebels.
The United States, which intervened in Haiti in 1994 to restore Aristide to power, publicly adopted an ambiguous stance on this issue. While condemning the rebellion and claiming that it did not support the violent overthrow of democratically elected leaders, it also pointedly blamed Aristide for contributing to the violence and has suggested that an end to the crisis might require Aristide's absence from the political scene. For its part, the Haitian government accused the U.S. of supporting the rebels and planning Aristide's ouster.
Some American politicians strongly criticized the Bush's administration's stance on Haiti, on the grounds that it was failing to take a moral stand in defense of Haitian democracy. On February 25, for instance, U.S. Congresswoman Corrine Brown called the Bush Administration's non-intervention in Haiti racist.
President Bush refused to soften U.S. policy on Haitian refugees. During the week ending February 27, the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 867 refugees.
Consequences / Results / Achievements
Media reports suggested that under huge pressure from the rebels as well as from the United States and France, Aristide left office on February 29 as well as the country, escaping first to the Dominican Republic and then to the Central African Republic. Aristide first claimed he was kidnapped by U.S. Marines, then later claimed that a group of Haitians and civilian Americans forced him to resign and then flee into exile (a claim the United States vigorously denied). Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre succeeded him as interim president and petitioned the United Nations Security Council for the intervention of an international peacekeeping force; the Security Council met within the day to authorize such a mission. As a vanguard of the official UN force, United States Marines arrived in Haiti within the day, and Canadian and French troops arrived the next morning; the United Nations indicated it would send a team to assess the situation within days.
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "2004_Haiti_Rebellion" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Haiti_Rebellion, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
