My own ignorance of the political and social history of Haiti is profound. I have no one but myself to blame for it, I speak French and could take the time to review the literature if I chose to. I will offer the excuse that the last six years have kept me busy with reading about what is happening in my own country, and in our latest colonial acquisition of Iraq.

So instead of commenting on the "controversial" statements in this interview, I'm going to point out those passages that have a certain ring to them, and I expect to reverberate with many of you. We've followed events in Iraq, much of what we've seen suggests that little there has to do with the projects of democracy or the construction of an autonomous state. In this interview, former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide speaks about his journey from priest and teacher to elected president to exile, and of the role two American administrations played in the continuing drama of Haitian "independence."

In the mid-1980s, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a parish priest working in an impoverished and embattled district of Port-au-Prince. He became the spokesman of a growing popular movement against the series of military regimes that ruled Haiti after the collapse in 1986 of the Duvalier dictatorship. In 1990 he won the country’s first democratic presidential election, with 67 per cent of the vote. He was overthrown by a military coup in September 1991 and returned to power in 1994, after the US intervened to restore democratic government. In 1996 he was succeeded by his ally René Préval. Aristide won another landslide election victory in 2000, but the resistance of Haiti’s small ruling elite eventually culminated in a second coup against him, on the night of 28 February 2004. Since then, he has been living in exile in South Africa.

According to the best available estimates, around five thousand of Aristide’s supporters have died at the hands of the regime that replaced the constitutional government. Although the situation remains tense and UN troops still occupy the country, the worst of the violence came to an end in February 2006, when after an extraordinary electoral campaign, René Préval was himself re-elected in a landslide victory. Calls for Aristide’s immediate and unconditional return continue to polarise Haitian politics. Many commentators, including several prominent members of the current government, believe that if Aristide was free to stand for re-election he would win easily.

This interview was conducted in French, in Pretoria, on 20 July 2006.
PH: The coup of September 1991 took place even though the policies you pursued once in office were quite moderate, quite cautious. So was a coup inevitable? Was the simple presence of someone like you in the presidential palace intolerable for the Haitian elite? And in that case, could more have been done to anticipate and try to withstand the backlash?

JBA: What happened in September 1991 happened again in February 2004, and could easily happen again soon, so long as the oligarchy who control the means of repression use them to preserve a hollow version of democracy. This is their obsession: to maintain a situation that might be called ‘democratic’, but which consists in fact of a superficial, imported democracy imposed and controlled from above. They’ve been able to keep things this way for a long time. Haiti has been independent for two hundred years, but we now live in a country in which just 1 per cent of the people control more than half of the wealth.

It's important to keep in mind how many members of the new Iraqi government are wealthy ex-pats with strong ties to Western industry and political groups. If one reviews Riverbend's blog, see how often she is disparaging of the current Iraqi government, for which her favorite label seems to be "puppets." It seems an apt term. Alternet reminds us of what the "Iraqi" government has decided will happen to the one resource that should be used to fund the reconstruction of Iraq, oil:

Among the provisions in the Constitution, unlike those of most oil producers, is a requirement that the government "develop oil and gas wealth … relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment." The provision mandates that foreign companies would receive a major stake in Iraq's oil for the first time in the 30 years since the sector was nationalized in 1975.

Herbert Docena, a researcher with the NGO Focus on the Global South, wrote that an early draft of the constitution negotiated by Iraqis envisioned a "Scandinavian-style welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq's vast oil wealth to be spent upholding every Iraqi's right to education, health care, housing, and other social services." "Social justice," the draft declared, "is the basis of building society."

What happened between that earlier draft and the constitution that Iraqis would eventually ratify? According to Docena:

While [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad and his team of U.S. and British diplomats were all over the scene, some members of Iraq's constitutional committee were reduced to bystanders. One Shiite member grumbled, "We haven't played much of a role in drafting the constitution. We feel that we have been neglected." A Sunni negotiator concluded: "This constitution was cooked up in an American kitchen not an Iraqi one."

With a constitution cooked up in D.C., the stage was set for foreign multinationals to assume effective control of as much as 87 percent of Iraq's oil, according to projections by the Oil Ministry. If PSAs become the law of the land -- and there are other contractual arrangements that would allow private companies to invest in the sector without giving them the same degree of control or such usurious profits -- the war-torn country stands to lose up to 194 billion vitally important dollars in revenue on just the first 12 fields developed, according to a conservative estimate by Platform (the estimate assumes oil at $40 per barrel; at this writing it stands at more than $59). That's more than six times the country's annual budget.

I have no doubt that just enough of this money is used to massage various members of the Iraqi government to help them forget their duties to the Iraqi people. Indeed, Aristide relates a tale of what happens when indigenous leaders think to act with autonomy, in the face of pressure to conform to neo-liberal economic demands:

JBA: In 1993, the Americans were perfectly happy to agree to a negotiated economic plan. When they insisted, via the IMF and other international financial institutions, on the privatisation of state enterprises, I was prepared to agree in principle – but I refused simply to sell them off, unconditionally, to private investors. That there was corruption in the state sector was undeniable, but there were several different ways of engaging with it. Rather than untrammelled privatisation, I was prepared to agree to a democratisation of these enterprises, so that some of the profits of a factory or firm should go to the people who worked for it, be invested in nearby schools or health clinics, so that the workers’ children could derive some benefit. The Americans said fine, no problem.

But when I was back in office, they went back on our agreement, and then relied on a disinformation campaign to make it look as if I had broken my word. It’s not true. The accords we signed are there, people can judge for themselves. Unfortunately we didn’t have the means to win the public relations fight.

Keep in mind this happened during the Clinton administration.

Aristide has something to say about "security" and the military forces that enforce it.

We had an army of some 7000 soldiers, and it absorbed 40 per cent of the national budget. Since 1915, it had served as an army of internal occupation. It never fought an external enemy. It murdered thousands of our people. Why did we need such an army, rather than a suitably trained police force?

Hmmm. That sounds familiar. Why is it that security forces seem to be so expensive, and at the same time, so worthless when it comes to keeping the peace, and so effective at brutalizing their own citizens? Aristide offers a clue:

The problem lay with the resentment of those who were determined to preserve the status quo. They had plenty of money and weapons, and they work hand in hand with the most powerful military machine on the planet. It was easy for them to win over some former soldiers, to train and equip them in the Dominican Republic and then use them to destabilise the country.

-snip-

Unlike the previous coups, the coup of 2004 wasn’t undertaken by the ‘Haitian’ army, acting on the orders of our little oligarchy, in line with the interests of foreign powers. No, this time these all-powerful interests had to carry out the job themselves, with their own troops and in their own name.

Again and again, we read of how the Iraqis "can't maintain security" and that despite all our paternalistic efforts to teach them how to use guns and patrol the streets, only the American military and private contracting forces can "get the job done." At the same time, many of our leaders repeat the mantra that what we are doing in Iraq is training the Iraqis to take up this job, and that it is only a matter of time before they will "be ready."

Oddly, the amount of time that the Iraqis will "be ready" has stretched on and on: six more months, twelve, eighteen, three years. And the American taxpayer keeps on footing the bill. A billion here, a billion there; the latest figures on what we've spent on "security" in Iraq run into the hundreds of billions. I can understand why army members Aristide describes as disgruntled would be upset at being disbanded, if they money they were making was anything like what contractors in Iraq are being paid.

Aristide describes the efforts of his government to bring the Haitian people out of desperate poverty:

In 1990, there were only 34 secondary schools in Haiti; by 2001 there were 138. We built a new university at Tabarre, a new medical school. Although it had to run on a shoestring, the literacy programme we launched in 2001 was also working well; Cuban experts who helped us manage it were confident that by December 2004 we’d have reduced the rate of adult illiteracy to just 15 per cent, a small fraction of what it was a decade earlier. Previous governments had never seriously tried to invest in education, and it’s clear that our programme was always going to be a threat to the status quo. The elite want nothing to do with popular education, for obvious reasons.

It is worth noting that the Iraqi people under Saddam, for all his many faults, were among the most educated and advanced of the peoples of the Middle East. Universities allowed women students, there was an established middle class, people had the opportunity to educate their children and enroll them in professions that brought about the "civilized" consumer lifestyle.

But since the invasion and occupation, despite all of the "schools painted," universities are among the more regular targets of bombing attack. here is just one of many reports of bombings at universities I've read. Here is a list of articles discussing the topic of how the middle class is fleeing Iraq today. It's almost as if someone is seeking to create conditions like those of impoverished Haiti, in which the poor are kept poor, uneducated and powerless, and the options for advancing in social stature are only found in military service.

One thing you almost never hear about in Iraq is what kinds of opportunities are being created for Iraqis as the "reconstruction" proceeds. Indeed, if you have heard about or read books like these it's very clear that Iraqis were actively shut out of business and economic activities in favor of Western cronies. Adding insult to injury, these cronies import foreign labor from poor countries and employ them as near-slaves, all while Iraqis are told they cannot work for American reconstruction firms due to "security" concerns.

Aristide discusses the American-backed opposition to his government, and their treatment of the populist movement:

They detest and despise the people. They refuse absolutely to acknowledge that everyone is equal. So when they behave in this way, part of the reason is to reassure themselves that they are different. It’s essential that they see themselves as better than others. I’m convinced it’s bound up with the legacy of slavery, with an inherited contempt for the common people, for the petits nègres. It’s the psychology of apartheid: it’s better to get down on your knees with whites than to stand shoulder to shoulder with blacks. Don’t underestimate the depth of this contempt. One of the first things we did in 1991 was abolish the classification, on birth certificates, of people who were born outside Port-au-Prince as ‘peasants’. This kind of classification, and all sorts of things that went along with it, served to maintain a system of rigid exclusion.

Despite the fact that for generations, Iraqis of different ethnicities and religions married, lived as neighbors, and worked together, our media constantly portrays the situation there as "one of ancient ethnic strife and hatreds." Further, despite the fact that some of our leaders don't even know the difference between Sunni and Shia, we're told that there are only three kinds of Iraqis- Sunni, Shia and Kurd. The narrative excludes the many Iraqi Christians, Jews, communists, secular humanists and the other ethnicities who also make up the very diverse population in Iraq. I won't even try to make sense of the way in which we are told that the Sunnis are behind the insurgency one day, the Shias the next, the Iranians the next, the Sadrists the next... All that matters is that we understand that they are fighting because of "ancient hatreds" and only the paternalistic force of the American occupation can ever bring harmony to these forever squabbling and infantile wogs.

I found this passage of the interview chilling:

Meanwhile, powerful economic interests were quite happy to fund criminal gangs, to put weapons in the hands of vagabonds, in Cité Soleil and elsewhere, in order to create disorder and blame it on Fanmi Lavalas. These same people also paid journalists to present the situation in a certain way, and among other things promised them visas – recently, some of them who are now living in France admitted having been told what to say in order to get their visas. So you have people who were financing misinformation, on the one hand, and destabilisation, on the other, and who encouraged small groups of hoodlums to sow panic on the streets, to create the impression of a government losing control.

In Iraq, we are told that it would be "irresponsible" and "deadly to long term security in the region" if we were to pull out and "let the violence continue." Yet the violence does continue, and we continue to fund an occupation that never seems to be any closer to establishing a government that has actual control. We already know about "embedded" members of the media who live in the Green Zone. Reflecting on Aristide's account, I find myself reevaluating much of what I'm told about who is behind the violence in Iraq and why.

As if all this wasn’t enough, rather than allow police munitions to get through to Haiti, rather than send arms and equipment to strengthen the government, the Americans sent them to their proxies in the Dominican Republic instead. You only have to look at who these people were – people like Jodel Chamblain, a convicted criminal, who escaped justice in Haiti to be welcomed by the US, and who then armed and financed these ‘freedom fighters’ waiting over the border in the Dominican Republic. That’s what really happened. We didn’t arm the chimères, the US armed Chamblain and Philippe. The hypocrisy is extraordinary. And then when it comes to 2004-6, suddenly all this indignant talk of violence falls silent. As if nothing had happened. People were being herded into containers and dropped into the sea. That counts for nothing. The endless attacks on Cité Soleil, they count for nothing. I could go on and on. Thousands have died. But they don’t count, because they are just chimères, after all.

How many times have we read about dozens of bodies turning up on the streets of Baghdad, covered with signs of torture? How many times have we wondered about shady characters put forth by the administration as the "right" person for jobs in government and the Iraqi military? How many times has the administration told us that one group of "good" Iraqis is getting support from the US military, only to later be described as "bad" and with the forces of the insurgency? Through it all, how much concern has the occupation leadership shown for the actual dead of Iraq, people who are not "fighters?" The military doesn't even keep count of them, and disputes any study that suggests that there are more than a few thousand Iraqi dead, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This got my attention as well:

There had been recent attempts at a coup, one in July 2001, with an attack on the police academy, and another a few months later, in December 2001, with an incursion into the national palace.

-snip-

There was no great insurrection: there was a small group of soldiers, heavily armed, who were able to overwhelm some police stations, kill some policemen and create a certain amount of havoc. The police had run out of ammunition, and were no match for the rebels’ M16s.

Sound familiar? It seems like I read about police stations being bombed in Iraq every week. I've also read about missing munitions and arms, and of poorly equipped security forces, shipments of supplies that never arrive, or are incomplete. Just as accounts of "heavily armed" unknowns are common, who engage in kidnapping and torture and are seemingly invisible to the US forces in Iraq, or at least able to operate with a kind of impunity that suggest our military is unable or unconcerned with stopping them.

I don't doubt that much of the violence in Iraq is committed by Iraqis, for the purpose of driving out the occupying forces and taking control of a government that is seen by many as puppets of Western power. The American military must make an appealing target, and constant American assaults upon Iraqi towns and neighborhoods cannot make for good relations and warm feelings of gratitude. I know that many gangs of armed Iraqi men answer to theocrats and thugs, interested in of carving out their own little kingdoms in Iraq, and enforcing their own system of social organization. I know that increasingly, outside actors from Iran and other nations are using the battles of the occupation for their own purposes, training their fighters there and stirring up romantic notions of jihad.

But beyond all that, I read the Aristide interview and find myself wondering about the shadowy forces who are at the receiving end of so many billions. Many people here have provided links and information about these contractors, these security forces that are beyond any law, and who receive virtually no scrutiny in our press. As Lambert and others have recently pointed out, the Plan is Chaos. Because so much can be accomplished under the cover of chaos. So much.

I'll end by saying that I don't give the Bush administration itself much credit here. In many ways, they are a distraction, brainless demagogues who spout infuriating rhetoric while wallowing in incompetence and ignorance. I would be surprised if that gang could plan its way out of a paper bag. But one thing I do believe is that they believe their own bullshit. Reality has had little effect, and they keep making the same ridiculous promises of a golden future for Iraq just one more Friedman from now. It's painful to read the Aristide interview not only because of what he recounts, but because he is a man of such intellect and compassion, I cannot help but compare him with the morons in the White House and weep.