In February 2004 the insurgents attacked, crossing into Haiti and laying siege to its second largest city, Cap-Haitien. Rather than send troops to stop them, the Bush administration sent Noriega on Feb. 18 to attempt to stanch the violence with a power-sharing deal between Aristide and the opposition, which was represented by Group of 184's Apaid. That afternoon, Noriega presented the proposal to Aristide, accompanied by his general counsel, Ira Kurzban. "Within two hours," Kurzban said, Aristide agreed to the proposal.

But when Noriega sat down with Apaid that evening, he handled him with kid gloves. "Once we explained to Noriega the situation in Haiti, he understood. I cannot say that he pushed us," said Charles Baker, Apaid's brother-in-law and a Group of 184 board member who was briefed on the meeting by Apaid.

"This guy's an American citizen," Kurzban said of Apaid, who was born in New York. "You don't think if the U.S. wanted to put pressure on him, they couldn't put pressure on him? So it's like, OK, Andy,' with a wink and a nod, 'Take another couple of days to decide.'" Needless to say, Apaid rejected the compromise.

The following day, Phillippe and a band of 200 insurgents armed with vintage rifles and M-16's (some of which, according to Le Monde's Caroit, were provided by the U.S.-armed Dominican military) captured Cap Haitien and began their advance on Port-au-Prince.

On Feb. 28, Bush's top foreign policy officials, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, held a teleconference meeting and, according to the Washington Post, decided to press for Aristide's ouster. The next day, with Haiti's police in full retreat and the insurgents bearing down on Aristide's residence, U.S. Embassy officials presented Aristide with a stark choice: stay in Haiti without protection or accept a U.S.-chartered plane into exile. He took the plane. The following day, Phillippe marched into the capital, greeted cheering supporters and boasted to foreign reporters that he was "the chief."

According to the Post, Bush was not involved in the decision to press for Aristide's ouster nor was the president aware a decision had been made to ferry Aristide into exile. When Aristide was flown out of the country on Feb. 29, Bush had to be awakened from his slumber by a late-night phone call from Rice to inform him. It was only then that he authorized the deployment of U.S. Marines to quell the violence in Haiti.

Aristide's corruption and authoritarianism may have justified his ouster in the eyes of his opponents, but now that he is gone, is Haiti any better off?

The answer, at present, is that by giving anti-Aristide figures in Washington and Haiti a free hand, the Bush administration has created a situation worse than the one it inherited -- and one reminiscent of Iraq after the fall of Saddam. In the wake of Aristide's departure, widespread looting erupted across Haiti; well-armed thugs terrorized businesses and ravaged the country's public infrastructure. Virtually every prison in the country was emptied, freeing both common criminals and human rights violators -- including Stanley Lucas' notorious cousin, Remy.

Many Haiti experts, including Trinity College's Maguire, project the next elections there will be held sometime in the next two years. For now, Haiti's president is Gerard Latortue, a former World Bank official hailed by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a March 23 Washington Post editorial for his "integrity and selfless service." Yet with no domestic constituency, Latortue has had to kowtow to Phillippe and the insurgents, whom he has publicly called "freedom fighters." Like another Bush-installed leader -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose shaky administration relies on U.N. peacekeeping forces concentrated in his country's capital -- Latortue's government wields little authority: According to a June 15 press release from the nonpartisan Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, in addition to many hundreds of Aristide supporters murdered inside Port-au-Prince itself, convicted criminals, former paramilitary leaders and other vigilantes retain effective control of most of the Haitian countryside.

And, as it did with European governments on Iraq, the Bush administration's Haiti policy has provoked a diplomatic crisis in the Caribbean basin: Over four months after Aristide's departure from Haiti, the 15-nation Caribbean Community still refuses to recognize Latortue's government, and in June the OAS opened an investigation into Aristide's ouster. U.S. troops handed over control of the peacekeeping mission in Haiti to the U.N. on June 20.

"One has to be very concerned with the country's direction," says Maguire. "An awful lot of people who have been discredited in the past for abusing power and people have been climbing back into government. So far there is no sign that the new government or the U.S. will confront these antidemocratic forces."

An April press release from the independent Haitian factory workers' union, Batay Ouvriye, made an urgent plea:

"There is no person legitimately in charge anywhere. A whole series of upstarts have taken advantage of this situation to set themselves up as the authorities, as chiefs, and, in the process, the people are really suffering. THIS SITUATION CANNOT CONTINUE!"

Recent Stories