Historic Roots of the Haitian Civil War

Have you ever wondered: Why are things the way they are in Haiti?

The present civil war has brought Haiti back into the news again, along with its many problems that have afflicted the country for over a century. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and now is stricken with a civil war that threatens to bring about a humanitarian catastrophe. The civil war has also prompted the Bush administration to consider military intervention in Haiti. Haiti’s problems to a great extend are due to interventions by foreign powers, mainly France and the United States. Further interventions cannot fix Haiti’s problems; they are one of the main sources of its problems.

Haiti was formed as the result of a slave uprising against their French owners two hundred years ago. Inspired by enlightenment ideology, they waged a decade long revolutionary war which succeeded in ending slavery in Haiti and obtaining independence from France. They named their new country Haiti, which is what the original inhabitants, the Arawaks, called the island. The United States feared that Haiti’s revolution might inspire a similar revolution in the US and, along with France and many other countries, became extremely hostile towards Haiti. France demanded that they pay reparations for all the slaves that were freed in the revolution. In 1825 Haiti was pressured into agreeing to pay France reparations for daring to infringe on French property by freeing the slaves. Schools, healthcare and other social programs were shut down in what some have called the first Structural Adjustment Program in the western hemisphere. France's insistence on this debt, and the decision of the Haitian elite to go along with it, plunged the country into deep dept and is part of the reason the country is so poor today. It's legacy lives on.

In 1915 the United States invaded Haiti and occupied it until 1934. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who won election with a platform critical of the imperialist policies of his Republican predecessors, was President during the invasion. US troops broke into Haiti’s treasury, stole all the gold and shipped it to the First National City Bank in New York. The US installed a puppet government, writing a new constitution for Haiti favorable to US investment & control and forcing the government to accept a treaty ratifying American control. The US employed a policy of forced labor against the population; Haitian peasants were forced at gunpoint to build railroads, buildings and other infrastructure for American companies and the neocolonial administration. Charlemagne Péralte and Benoit Batraville organized and led a guerilla army called the Cacos against the US occupation. The US brutally suppressed the insurgency. Haitians who resisted were forced into concentration camps and innocent civilians mercilessly slaughtered. There were several massacres committed by US troops; in 1929 US marines gunned down 264 protesting peasants in Les Cayes.

The United States built up a brutal proxy army that was used to suppress resistance and maintain Haiti as an American satellite state after the occupation ended. The US supported several dictators after the end of the occupation, including Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Under their rule over 30,000 Haitians were killed and even more tortured by their death squads. As Haiti became the poorest country in the hemisphere they enriched themselves by exploiting the population and stealing foreign aid, including $16 million from a $22 million 1980 IMF loan. Baby Doc turned the country into a trans-shipment point for cocaine trafficking.

In 1986 Baby Doc was forced out of power. In 1990 elections were held. The United States supported Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official, and gave him millions of dollars plus all sorts of resources to win. The priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, running on a left-wing reformist platform, won with 67% of the vote. Bazin only got 12%. The military didn't like this and launched a coup, with the quiet support of the US. Aristide was forced to flee Haiti. Over the next three years Haitian soldiers and paramilitaries launched a reign of terror and murdered several thousand Haitians.

In 1994 the US invaded and restored Aristide to power, on the condition that the new regime would implement neoliberal "free market" reforms such as IMF structural adjustment programs, privatization, and the like. The US gained by having Aristide implement neoliberalism because he had popular support and so would encounter less resistance than a military dictatorship trying to do the same. Due to these "free enterprise" policies 80% of Haitians live in abject poverty and sweatshops have proliferated. In the mid-90s Aristide allowed an ally to take over the Presidency, and in 2000 Aristide became President again.

Because Aristide’s policies have failed to improve the lives of most Haitians he has lost the popular support he once had. Now that he has worn out his usefulness, the US has allowed the old oligarchy to launch a campaign to overthrow him and restore themselves to power. Several leaders of the rebellion were previously leaders and death squad commanders in the military dictatorship of the early ‘90s, including Jean “Tatoune” Pierre, Louis Jodel Chamblain, Andre Apaid Jr., and others. Congresswoman Maxine Waters had alleged that the right-wing rebellion is covertly supported by the United States. One of their leaders, Guy Phillippe, told British reporters about the decision to wait on attacking the capital that "I heard the United States asked our men to stop their advance to Port-au-Prince. It’s on the news on the Net ... If they ask us, it’s because they have a better option, option for peace, and we always give peace a chance here, so we’ll wait to see for one or two days ... We will keep on sending troops but we won’t attack Port-au-Prince until we understand what the US means." This is basically an admission that the rebels are following orders from the US. After the US invaded in 1994 the Haitian army was disbanded, which has made it very easy for the current rebellion to defeat the government.

Some reports from the capitalist media have described the current civil war as “anarchy,” which is obvious nonsense. Neither the government nor the rebels have any intention of abolishing capitalism or the state. The rebels are simply replacing the current state with another one. There are no workers councils, no popular assemblies, no self-managed workplaces or anything else remotely resembling anarchy. No attempt has been made to abolish capitalism. Sweatshops, bosses, and many other hierarchies still exist. The media is just continuing a long tradition of slandering anarchism by pointing to hellholes and civil wars as “anarchy.” A few centuries ago similar slander was directed against “democracy” and “republics,” both of which were associated with chaos. Fortunately, the media’s description of the civil war as “anarchy” is not as common as it has been in other cases.

To think that any intervention by the United States into Haiti will be motivated by humanitarian concerns is totally a-historical and absurd. The United States has a long history of intervention in Haiti, none of which was designed to actually help Haitians. American interventions, from setting up concentration camps to supporting murderous dictators, have just brought death and misery. To talk of US humanitarian interventions is like suggesting that the Soviet Union was only engaged in humanitarian interventions in all of its client states of Eastern Europe. Haiti is an American satellite state, just as Poland, et al. were Russian satellite states. Any intervention will be undertaken to protect American imperial interests, not for humanitarian purposes.