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THE FORMATION OF FRAPH FRAPH was established by Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, who went on the CIA payroll as an informant and spy in early 1992 (according to the Agency, this relation ended in mid- 1994 , but the following October the American Embassy in Haiti was openly acknowledging that Constant – now a born-again democrat – was on its payroll). According to Constant, shortly after Aristide's ouster, Colonel Patrick Collins, a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), attache who was stationed in Haiti from 1989 to 1992 , pressured him to organize a front that could balance the Aristide movement and do intelligence work against it (it is believed that members of FRAPH were working, and perhaps still are, for two social service agencies funded by the Agency For International Development , one of which maintains sensitive files on the movements of the Haitian poor). {Link without Title} U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN HAITI During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, candidate Bill Clinton had promised to restore democracy to Haiti if elected. Inaugurated in 1993 , the administration had to deal with a continuing refugee problem in Florida. Condemning FRAPH and the military regime as nothing more than "armed thugs," the administration cooperated with a multinational force and dispatched 15,000 troops sent and a high-level negotiating team ( Jimmy Carter , Sam Nunn , and Colin Powell ) to force the military to step down, restoring Aristide to power in August 1994 after international sanctions and pressure had failed to produce any results. Although the presence of U.S. and UN peacekeepers helped restore calm and security, this success, claims researcher Lisa A. McGowan, was undermined by their refusal to disarm the disbanded Haitian military and paramilitaries. As McGowan wrote, :'' is providing funding and technical assistance to strengthen Haiti’s judicial system, yet the U.S. has refused Haitian government requests to deport FRAPH leader Constant, who was imprisoned in the U.S. and wanted in Haiti on murder charges. Instead, the U.S. Justice Department released him from prison. Furthermore, the Clinton administration refuses to give the Haitian government uncensored copies of the documents seized from FRAPH headquarters, raising suspicions that the documents contain incriminating information about CIA and other U.S. collaboration with Haitian paramilitaries. Documents that were obtained revealed, for example, that the CIA knew that Constant was directly implicated in the 1993 murder of Justice Minister Guy Malory, yet kept him on their payroll until the return of Aristide in 1994. [http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol2/v2n3hai_body.html It subsequently emerged that the US government had in fact played a significant role in establishing and funding FRAPH. The investigative journalist Allan Nairn broke the story in an article published in '' The Nation '' in 1994. Nairn based his findings on interviews with military, paramilitary and intelligence officials in Haiti and the United States as well as Green Beret commanders and internal documents from the U.S. and Haitian armies. Nairn spoke directly with Constant himself, then being held in a Maryland jail, shortly before he was due to be deported to Haiti. According to Constant, he started the group that became FRAPH at the urging of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and that even after the U.S. occupation got under way in September 1994, "other people from my organization were working with the DIA.", aiding in operations directed against "subversive activities". [http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/HaitiJan96_Nairn.html When Nairn tried to follow up (Constant insisted on a face-to-face meeting), the U.S. Immigration And Naturalization Service denied him access, explaining that Constant had had a change of heart and no longer wanted to talk. {Link without Title} Constant later confirmed in 1995 on CBS's "60 Minutes" that the CIA paid him about $700 a month and that he created FRAPH while on the CIA payroll. According to Constant, the FRAPH had been formed "with encouragement and financial backing from the DIA and the CIA." (''Miami New Times'', 26 February 2004) {Link without Title} In February 1996, the New York-based Center For Constitutional Rights (CCR) announced that it had obtained thousands of pages of newly declassified U.S. documents, which they claim revealed that the U.S. government recognized the brutal nature of FRAPH but denied it in public. Describing the attitude of US government officials, CCR lawyer Michael Ratner said : ''they were talking out of both sides of their mouth. They were talking about restoring democracy to Haiti, but at the same time, they were undermining democracy in the coup period -- at times supporting a group that committed terrorist acts against the Haitian people. {Link without Title} According to Ratner, U.S. suspicions of Aristide’s leftist populism prodded them to seek support from even the most brutal anti-Aristide elements. Observers such as Ratner, Nairn and Lisa McGowan have argued that covert assistance to antidemocratic forces such as FRAPH was used to pressure Ariside into abandoning his ambitious program for social reform and adopt harsh economic reforms when the U.S. returned him to power. According to Bill O'Neil, consultant for the New York-based National Coalition for Haitian Rights, though the CIA and the Pentagon encouraged FRAPH early on, "within a few weeks or a few months, support was largely jettisoned." O'Neil, though, expressed concern that the U.S.'s reluctance to completely sever relations with FRAPH until 1995 (when Constant was arrested) may have allowed several high-profile figures to go into hiding. {Link without Title} BIBLIOGRAPHY
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