Twenty years ago today Canada helped overthrow the president of Haiti and thousands of other elected officials. The coup increased foreign influence and sent the country on a downward spiral that continues to this day.
On February 29, 2004, Canadian special forces “secured” the airport from which elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was bundled (“kidnapped” in his words) onto a plane by U.S. Marines. The former liberation theologist priest was deposited in the Central African Republic. Almost immediately after Aristide was removed, 500 Canadian troops were dispatched to patrol the streets of Port-Au-Prince.
The ouster of a leader whose redistributionist policies angered the small number of largely light skinned families who ran the economy was the culmination of a U.S.-led and Canadian-supported destabilization campaign, which included “civil society building,” military and paramilitary interventions, an aid embargo that would cripple the country’s economy, a full-scale disinformation campaign waged by Haitian elite-owned and international corporate media, and concerted diplomatic efforts directed at guaranteeing regime change would be both acceptable to the international community and believable to a confused public. Ottawa’s role in overthrowing Haiti’s most popular ever government is the penultimate case of two dozen coups detailed in my and Owen Schalk’s just released Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy.
Incredibly, the 2004 coup against Aristide began with an effort to discredit elections he neither participated in nor oversaw. In the May 2000 legislative and municipal elections, Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas won more than 70% of the vote. The party took an unprecedented 89 of 115 mayoral positions, 72 of 83 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 18 of 19 Senate seats. Immediately afterwards, OAS observers called the elections “a great success for the Haitian population, which turned out in large and orderly numbers to choose both their local and national governments.” According to the OAS, 60% of registered voters went to the polls and there were “very few” incidents of either fraud or violence.
In response to its crushing defeat, the opposition accused the electoral commission of organizing a “massive fraud.” Realizing there was little chance Fanmi Lavalas would be defeated at the ballot box in the foreseeable future, the US and Canadian-dominated OAS Observation Mission legitimated the opposition’s protests. The OAS challenged the calculation of majorities in some Senate seats, claiming Lavalas should have only won seven senate seats in the 1st round, not the 16 announced by the electoral council.
The electoral council determined the 50 percent plus one vote required for a first-round victory by calculating the percentages of the top four candidates. The OAS contended that the count should include all candidates. However, OAS concerns were disingenuous since they worked with the electoral council to prepare the elections and were aware of the counting method beforehand. The same procedure was used in prior elections, but they failed to voice any concerns until Lavalas’ landslide victory. Finally, the tabulation method proposed by the OAS would probably not have altered the outcome of the Senate seats.
In effect, the OAS jumped on a technicality in the counting of some Senate seats to subsequently characterize an election for 7,000 positions “deeply flawed”.
The Canadian government played an important role in this OAS electoral mission. Ottawa put up more than $300,000 for the OAS Observation Mission and many Canadians were part of it.
Canada worked to discredit the May 2000 election outside of the OAS structure as well. Ottawa supported some in the opposition’s demand for a “revision” of the elections.
Canada and the US threatened to cut off assistance to the country to protest the formula used to determine the winners of the senate seats. In September 2000, Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright convened a meeting of “the friends of Haiti.” The meeting resulted in a US declaration that they would withdraw assistance for Haiti’s November presidential election. Ottawa also decided not to finance or participate in the observer mission to the presidential election.
Polls predicted a landslide victory for Aristide who had won Haiti’s first ever democratic election only to be ousted by the military eight months later. Unsurprisingly, Aristide won the subsequent poll with 92% of the vote. Though most of the opposition parties boycotted the presidential poll, no analyst seriously doubted Aristide’s overwhelming popularity.
Given Aristide’s electoral victory, the “international community” had little choice but to recognize him as legitimately elected. But at Aristide’s first international event, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien reportedly “lectured” him on the “shortcomings” of the May elections. At the April 2001 Summit of the Americas in Québec City, Lavalas was blamed for failing “to end the deadlock in negotiations with opposition parties that followed last year’s elections, which were widely condemned as flawed.”
Chrétien pressured Aristide to negotiate with the opposition, putting the onus on him to resolve the dispute over the May 2000 elections. But, even after Aristide caved to pressure and convinced multiple Fanmi Lavalas senators to resign, the destabilization campaign continued. As part of the destabilization campaign against Aristide’s government, the donors sought to strangle the country economically. At the behest of the US and Canada the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank blocked $500 million in already-approved loans. These loans were equivalent to over half the Haitian government’s annual budget. Once Aristide took office, Canadian aid to the country dropped by more than half and the funds going to the government all but dried up.
Concurrently, the US and Canada united the political opposition. Under the guidance of the International Republican Institute, a US government agency affiliated with the Republican Party, an eclectic mix of social democratic, neo-Duvalierist, rightwing fundamentalist Christian, and business-linked parties merged to create the Convergence Democratique (CD). The CD demanded the May 2000 elections be annulled, Aristide resign and the military be revived. Washington and Ottawa insisted the elected government reach a settlement with CD over the “disputed” May elections before they would restore aid. Privately, however, they instructed CD leaders to maintain their intransigent attitude.
Due to the unpopularity of the defeated political opposition, the US, Canada and EU also funded a parallel “independent” civic opposition movement. They funneled money to “human rights, democracy, and good governance” projects that fueled vociferous NGO criticism of alleged human rights abuses by the Lavalas government. In a December 2004 assessment of Canada’s “difficult partnership” with Haiti, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA); remarked that by “engaging a coalition of key players” and “providing sufficient resources”, Canada’s support for “civil society initiatives and Canadian NGO partners produced relatively good qualitative results.” The shift to civil society “contributed to building the capacity of non-governmental actors to generate grassroots demand for reform.”
USAID also channeled tens of millions of dollars into unifying and galvanizing “civil society” opposition to Aristide’s government. In December 2002, the crown jewel of the “civic” wing of the opposition was unveiled. The Group of 184 presented itself as a broad-based citizens movement encompassing 184 organizations representing human rights groups, women, peasants, labour, intellectuals, students and more. Claims of pluralism notwithstanding, the Group of 184 was dominated by a small segment of Haitian society. Light-skinned sweatshop owners who opposed raising the minimum wage, Andy Apaid Jr. and Charles Henri Baker, dominated the Group of 184’s leadership.
Ottawa supported the Group of 184 and its member organizations. CIDA spent $13 million on “civil society, democracy and human rights” themed projects implemented by NGOs affiliated with the Group of 184 and Canadian aid money helped pay to elaborate the Group of 184’s “social contract.” The Group of 184 and CD staged numerous demonstrations denouncing the government and calling for Aristide to resign.
Echoing the Canadian-financed Haitian NGOs, many CIDA-funded Canadian NGOs called for Aristide’s overthrow. On December 15, 2003, Québec’s NGO umbrella group, Association québécoise des organismes de coopération internationale (AQOCI), called for the Canadian government to “publicly denounce” Aristide and his “regime,” which was “rife with human rights abuses.” Two months later the Concertation Pour Haiti, an informal group of half a dozen NGOs including AQOCI, branded Aristide a “tyrant,” his government a “dictatorship” and “regime of terror,” and called for Aristide’s removal.
But the systematic human rights violations and political repression that characterized the Duvalier dictatorship and military juntas was completely absent under Aristide. Aristide’s popularity also remained solid in spite of a deteriorating economic situation and relentless vilification by NGOs and the political opposition. Polls commissioned by USAID from 2002 and 2003 obtained by New York Times journalist Tracy Kidder showed consistent popular support for Aristide. Six months after the coup, a poll “showed that Aristide was still the only figure in Haiti with a favourability rating above 50%,” admitted US Ambassador James Foley in a confidential cable.
Ottawa played an important role in consolidating the international forces that would carry out the coup. On January 31 and February 1, 2003, Jean Chrétien’s government organized the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” to discuss that country’s future. Brought to public attention by prominent Quebec journalist Michel Vastel in the March 15, 2003, issue of l’Actualité, no Haitian officials were invited to this assembly where high-level US, Canadian and French officials decided the elected president “must go,” the army be recreated and the country put under UN trusteeship. Alongside international diplomatic efforts and civil society opposition, a low-intensity war was waged against the government. Dozens of Lavalas members and supporters were killed in Belladere and other towns on the border with the Dominican Republic between 2001 and 2003. On July 28, 2001, several police stations were attacked. In a more serious coup attempt, more than three dozen gunmen stormed the national palace on December 17, 2001. With a helicopter and 50 mm caliber machine gun, they killed four and briefly occupied the building. Five attackers were killed by police. The attackers announced via radio that Aristide was no longer president and that Guy Philippe now commanded the police.[viii] The attack was reportedly prepared in Santo Domingo by former police chiefs Philippe and Jean-Jacques Nau.
At the end of 2003, Philippe and some former soldiers from an army Aristide disbanded at the end of his first term intensified their cross-border attacks against government targets. They were subsequently joined by a coalition of gangs in Gonaives led by a former death squad leader. On February 5, 2004, the insurgents seized Gonaïves, the country’s fourth largest city. The heavily armed force rampaged across Haiti, killing police, emptying jails, and burning public buildings.
Initially Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham denounced the rebellion, saying Canada supported the elected government. “Aristide has been elected and he must complete his term,” explained Graham in a mid-January 2004 La Presse article titled “Caricom tells Paul Martin about Aristide’s popularity in Haiti.” “If new elections were held today, he would probably be re-elected.”[ix]
At the same time that they criticized the rebels, US and Canadian officials strengthened their hand. They demanded Aristide negotiate with an intransigent political opposition working in parallel with the rebels. In mid-February 2004, Ottawa sent a delegation to Port-au-Prince to deliver a “firm message to Mr. Aristide, that he must respect his obligations,” explained Canada’s foreign minister. Graham claimed the mission’s objective was “to create a situation where the opposition can enter into discussions,” but the actual aim was to further weaken the elected government.
On February 22, the insurgents took Cap Haïtien, the country’s second largest city. Scores of police officers were killed and many more simply abandoned their posts to the better-armed rebels. As the insurgents made their way to Port-au-Prince, the international community ignored the elected government’s requests for “a few dozen” peacekeepers to restore order in a country without an army. On February 26, three days before Aristide’s removal, the OAS permanent council called on the UN Security Council to “take all the necessary and appropriate urgent measures to address the deteriorating situation in Haiti.” CARICOM called on the UN Security Council to deploy an emergency military task force to assist Aristide’s government. This appeal for assistance was flatly rejected by the world’s most powerful nations.
By the end of the month, gunmen had overrun all major cities except Port-au-Prince and rebels set up on the outskirts. Supporters of the president built barricades across the capital. They blocked the main arteries of the city of two million and prepared to fight. Even with most of the country in rebel hands, the government’s prospects began to improve as pro-government police recaptured several cities. A shipment of guns, bulletproof vests, and ammunition was in Kingston, Jamaica, on route from South Africa at the request of CARICOM. Rumors were swirling that Venezuela had agreed to send soldiers to protect the constitutional government. Most important, Port-au-Prince’s size made it difficult for a few hundred men to capture.
But the battle for Port-au-Prince never took place. In the early hours of February 29, 2004, US soldiers, with 30 members of Canada’s elite JTF2 “securing” the airport, escorted Haiti’s elected president and his security staff onto a jet and out of the country. US officials insisted the president had resigned to avoid a bloodbath. This version of events was accepted by most of the world’s media despite Aristide’s contradictory account.
An interim government was appointed by a council of “wise people” put together by France, Canada and the USA. This illegal interim government was headed by Gérard Latortue, a man from Florida who had not lived in Haiti for 15 years.
Canada, along with France and Chile, provided troops for the subsequent US-led and UN-approved Multinational Interim Force. As part of the force, 500 Canadian troops patrolled the streets of Port-au-Prince for six months.
The coup led to the creation of the Core Group, an alliance of foreign ambassadors that has heavily shaped Haitian politics over the past two decades. Nearly three years ago the Core Group appointed current leader Ariel Henry through a tweet! To maintain his rule the US and Canada recently put up $300 million to send a Kenyan-led force to Haiti.
February 29 is a horrible day in Haitian history and one that should shame all Canadians.
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