Having failed to wholly discredit Aristide and his party, from 2001 to 2004 the U.S. trained an anti-Aristide army in the Dominician Republic. The U.S. government funded and trained a paramilitary army of 600 anti-Aristide Haitians with the support of the Dominican Republic's president, Hipolito Mehia.
More than a million dollars in funds were directed to the IRI with the understanding that the funds would be used for "encouraging democracy in Haiti." The U.S. also shipped 20,000 M-16s for "the Jade Project" in 2002--a project where Dominican army people were secretly trained to fight in Haiti.
The Organization of American States (OAS), an organization that claimed it was "mediating" between the Convergence and Aristide, called for the removal of Aristide in 2003. And, a month later, five Haitian coup plotters were arrested indicating that Contra-like rebels were present (In addition to the arrest of plotters, it is found that the U.S. has stationed 900 U.S. soldiers to patrol with the Dominican army.)
By now, the U.S. had successfully convinced several European countries to suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in credit and aide and the IMF, World Bank, and the European Union had been instructed in some way or another to deny lines of credit to Haiti until Aristide reaches an agreement with the Convergence.
In February 2004, rebels take over cities in north Haiti and move toward the capital, Port-au-Prince. Led by a former death squad leader, the rebels close in and Aristide is flown out of the country or kidnapped by the U.S. at the end of February in 2004. (The U.S. immediately sends forces in to secure and stabilize the country.)
Jean Bertrand-Aristide, now exiled, maintained he was kidnapped. On March 1, 2004, Congresswoman Maxine Waters said on Democracy Now! :
"He said that he was kidnapped; he said that he was forced to leave Haiti. He said that the American embassy sent the diplomats; he referred to them as, to his home where they was lead by Mr. Moreno. And I believe that Mr. Moreno is a deputy chief of staff at the embassy in Haiti and other diplomats, and they ordered him to leave. They said you must go NOW. He said that they said that Guy Phillipe and U.S. Marines were coming to Port Au Prince; he will be killed, many Haitians will be killed, that they would not stop until they did what they wanted to do. He was there with his wife Mildred and his brother-in-law and two of his security people, and somebody from the Steel Foundation, and they're all, there's five of them that are there. They took them where-- they did stop in Antigua then they stopped at a military base, then they were in the air for hours and then they arrived at this place and they were met by five ministers of government. It's a Francophone country, they speak French. And they were then taken to this place called the Palace of the Renaissance where they are being held and they are surrounded by military people. They are not free to do whatever they want to do. Then the phone clicked off after we had talked for about five--we talked maybe fifteen minutes and then the phone clicked off. But he, some of it was muffled in the beginning, at times it was clear. But one thing that was very clear and he said it over and over again, that he was kidnapped, that the coup was completed by the Americans that they forced him out."
Guma wrote of the private interests that drove Aristide to be kidnapped:
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
