[R-G] Bill Clinton Named New UN Envoy to 'Stabilize' Haiti, a Country He Helped Destabilize

[Anthony Fenton]

http://rebelreports.com/post/109822009/bill-clinton-named-new-un-envoy-to-stabilize-haiti-a

   Published on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 by RebelReports
Bill Clinton Named New UN Envoy to 'Stabilize' Haiti, a Country He  
Helped Destabilize
As president, Clinton forced neoliberal policies on Haiti, delayed  
President Aristide’s return after a US-backed coup and held Haitian  
refugees at Gitmo without rights.

by Jeremy Scahill
Former US President Bill Clinton has been named by United Nations  
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as his special UN envoy to Haiti.  
Clinton will reportedly travel to the country at least four times a  
year.

“[It’s] an opportunity to bring in resources to address the economic  
insecurity that plagues Haiti,” says Brian Concannon, a human rights  
lawyer who works extensively in Haiti. “But if the nomination is to be  
more than a publicity stunt, the UN needs to honestly shed a spotlight  
on the international community’s role in creating that instability,  
including unfair trade and debt policies, and the undermining and  
overthrowing of Haiti’s constitutional government.”

[Former US president Bill Clinton (left) and UN Secretary General Ban  
Ki Moon are seen here in Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, in March.  
Clinton is to be named UN special envoy to Haiti, a UN official said  
Monday, confirming a report carried by The Miami Herald daily. (AFP/ 
File/Thony Belizaire)]Former US president Bill Clinton (left) and UN  
Secretary General Ban Ki Moon are seen here in Haitian capital Port-au- 
Prince, in March. Clinton is to be named UN special envoy to Haiti, a  
UN official said Monday, confirming a report carried by The Miami  
Herald daily. (AFP/File/Thony Belizaire)
Shining such a spotlight on those who created the instability, as  
Concannon suggests, would mean examining Clinton’s own role as  
president of the US during one of Haiti’s most horrifyingly dark  
periods.

Reuters news agency quotes a diplomat as saying Clinton is “an  
‘excellent choice’ to help unlock Haiti’s potential as an investment  
target,” adding that his appointment “could attract investment in the  
Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation and help stabilize the country.”

That last statement about “stabiliz[ing]” Haiti would be humorous for  
its irony if the reality—and Clinton’s history in Haiti—wasn’t so  
deadly serious. The fact is that, as US president, Clinton’s policies  
helped systematically destabilize Haiti.

Dan Coughlin, who spent years as a journalist in Haiti in the 1990s  
for Inter Press Service, said he was “incredulous” when he heard the  
news. “Given the Clinton Administration’s aggressive pursuit of  
policies that profitted Haiti’s tiny elite, the IMF and big  
corporations at the expense of Haiti’s farmers and urban workers, the  
appointment does not bode well for the kind of fundamental change so  
needed in a country that has given so much to humankind,” Coughlin says.

In September 1991, the US backed the violent overthrow of the  
government of Haiti’s democratically-elected leftist priest President  
Jean Bertrand Aristide after he was in power less than a year.  
Aristide had defeated a US-backed candidate in the 1990 Haitian  
presidential election. The military coup leaders and their  
paramilitary gangs of CIA-backed murderous thugs, including the  
notorious FRAPH paramilitary units, were known for hacking the limbs  
off of Aristide supporters (and others) along with an unending slew of  
other horrifying crimes.

When Clinton came to power, he played a vicious game with Haiti that  
allowed the coup regime to continue rampaging Haiti and further  
destabilized the country. What’s more, in the 1992 election campaign,  
Bill Clinton campaigned on a pledge to reverse what he called then- 
President George HW Bush’s “cruel policy” of holding Haitian refugees  
at Guantanamo with no legal rights in US courts. Upon his election,  
however, Clinton reversed his position and sided with the Bush  
administration in denying the Haitians legal rights. the Haitians were  
held in atrocious conditions and the new Democratic president was sued  
by the Center for Constitutional Rights (sound familiar?).

While Clinton and his advisers publicly expressed their dismay with  
the coup, they simultaneously refused to support the swift  
reinstatement of the country’s democratically elected leader and  
would, in fact, not allow Aristide’s return until Washington received  
guarantees that: 1. Aristide would not lay claim to the years of his  
presidency lost in forced exile and; 2. US neoliberal economic plans  
were solidified as the law of the land in Haiti.

“The Clinton administration was credited for working for the return to  
power of Jean Bertrand Aristide after he was overthrown in a military  
coup,” says author William Blum. “But, in fact, Clinton had stalled  
the return for as long as he could, and had instead tried his best to  
return anti-Aristide conservatives to a leading power role in a mixed  
government, because Aristide was too leftist for Washington’s tastes.”  
Blum’s book “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since  
World War II” includes a chapter on the history of the US role in Haiti.

The fact that the coup against the democratically-elected president of  
Haiti was allowed to continue unabated for three full years seemed to  
be less offensive to Clinton than Aristide’s progressive vision for  
Haiti. As Blum observed in his book, “[Clinton] was not actually  
repulsed by [coup leader Raoul] Cédras and company, for they posed no  
ideological barrier to the United States continuing the economic and  
strategic control of Haiti it’s maintained for most of the century.   
Unlike Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a man who only a year earlier had  
declared: ‘I still think capitalism is a mortal sin.’”

Blum added: “Faced ultimately with Aristide returning to power,  
Clinton demanded and received — and then made sure to publicly  
announce — the Haitian president’s guarantee that he would not try to  
remain in office to make up for the time lost in exile. Clinton of  
course called this ‘democracy,’ although it represented a partial  
legitimization of the coup.” Indeed, Haiti experts say that Clinton  
could have restored Aristide to power under an almost identical  
arrangement years earlier than he did.

When Aristide finally returned to Haiti, as Blum notes, “Jean-Bertrand  
Aristide’s reception was a joyous celebration filled with optimism.   
However, unbeknownst to his adoring followers, while they were  
regaining Aristide, they may have lost Aristidism.”

As The Los Angeles Times reported at the time:

     In a series of private meetings, Administration officials  
admonished Aristide to put aside the rhetoric of class warfare … and  
seek instead to reconcile Haiti’s rich and poor. The Administration  
also urged Aristide to stick closely to free-market economics and to  
abide by the Caribbean nation’s constitution — which gives substantial  
political power to the Parliament while imposing tight limits on the  
presidency. … Administration officials have urged Aristide to reach  
out to some of his political opponents in setting up his new  
government … to set up a broad-based coalition regime. … the  
Administration has made it clear to Aristide that if he fails to reach  
a consensus with Parliament, the United States will not try to prop up  
his regime. Almost every aspect of Aristide’s plans for resuming power  
— from taxing the rich to disarming the military — has been examined  
by the U.S. officials with whom the Haitian president meets daily and  
by officials from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and  
other aid organizations. The finished package clearly reflects their  
priorities. … Aristide obviously has toned down the liberation  
theology and class-struggle rhetoric that was his signature before he  
was exiled to Washington.

“While Bill Clinton oversaw the return of President Aristide in 1994,  
he also put significant constraints on what Aristide was able to do  
once back in power,” says Bill Fletcher, Jr, the Executive Editor of  
BlackCommentator.com and the immediate past president of TransAfrica  
Forum. “Clinton advanced a neo-liberal agenda for Haiti thereby  
undermining the efforts of an otherwise progressive populist  
administration (Aristide’s). There is no reason to believe that [as a  
UN envoy] ex-President Clinton will introduce or support efforts to  
radically break Haiti from under the thumb of the USA and the dire  
poverty which has been a significant consequence of said domination.”
© 2009 Jeremy Scahill