First, President Michel Martelly got rid of
Prime Minister Garry Conille in February. Now, he is trying to
fire the Director General of the Haitian National Police (HNP)
Mario Andrésol. But the police chief is refusing to step down.
The showdown for control of
Haiti’s only official armed force, and the crux of state power,
is part of a larger, complex class struggle between three
sectors: Washington, Martelly’s neo-Duvalierists, and the
Haitian masses.
Andrésol is a key pawn of
Washington on Haiti’s political chessboard, as was Conille (see
“Class Analysis of a Crisis: What Lies Behind PM Conille's
Resignation?” in Haïti Liberté, Vol. 5, No. 33,
2/29/2012). Since becoming Haiti’s police chief in 2005, he has
been viewed by Washington as “trustworthy,” according to
numerous secret U.S. State Department cables obtained by the
media organization WikiLeaks and provided to Haiti Liberté.
Martelly’s sector, which came
to power through an illegal March 2011 election, is not considered
trustworthy. The new president borrows inspiration, officials,
and tactics from the dictatorships of Presidents “for life”
François and Jean-Claude Duvalier (1957-1986). Martelly’s
principal gambit today is to reconstitute a repressive force
similar to the Duvalier’s Volunteers for National Security (VSN),
better known as the Tontons Macoutes. Toward this end, he has
tolerated (and some reports say organized) the re-arming of
former and would-be soldiers and paramilitaries now occupying
several former Haitian Army bases around Haiti. Remobilization
of the Haitian Army, disbanded by former President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide in 1995, was one of Martelly’s campaign promises.
On street corners and radio
shows, Haitians now express their apprehension about Martelly’s
embryonic but still unofficial “Pink Army” (lame wòz), a
reference to the color of Martelly’s campaign posters.
Washington, along with its
junior partners France and Canada, also opposes reestablishment
of the Haitian Army (Forces Armées d’Haïti or FAdH), because the
force would not be under its control as are the HNP and the
9,000 foreign military occupation troops known as the United
Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti or MINUSTAH.
Following Conille’s forced
resignation on Feb. 24, Andrésol, 51, is the last high-ranking
Haitian official who is loyal to Washington’s agenda of making
Haiti a thoroughly obedient neocolony. He began his career as a
Haitian Army captain with posts in the Traffic corps and at the
Port-au-Prince airport. After the FAdH’s dissolution, he joined
the Interim Police Force, becoming close to its chief Dany
Toussaint, and later he became an HNP police chief in
Pétionville.
Under the first administration
of former President René Préval (1996-2001), Andrésol became a
protégé of Robert “Bob” Manuel, the Secretary of State for
Public Security, and was soon promoted to the chief of the
Central Direction of the Judiciary Police (DCPJ), the third most
powerful police post. There, he worked closely with U.S.
officials, particularly those of the U.S. Embassy’s Narcotics
Affairs Section (NAS).
Aristide took office for a
second time in February 2001. In August 2001, Aristide’s
government arrested Andrésol, alleging that he was involved in a
deadly Jul. 28, 2001 attack on Haiti’s Police Academy and two
police stations, in which at least eight cadets and policemen
were killed. It was the first incursion by the so-called “rebel”
force based in the Dominican Republic and headed by Guy
Philippe, another former soldier and police chief whom Andrésol
worked with closely under Bob Manuel.
But the U.S. government
intervened after Andrésol was detained. The Los Angeles Times
wrote a Aug. 24, 2001 piece that decried Andrésol’s arrest,
calling him “a super-cop” and “a rare Haitian hybrid
of Frank Serpico and Eliot Ness.” Soon, Andrésol was freed,
going into exile in Miami.
He would soon be recalled to
service. After Philippe and his “rebels” succeeded, with the
help of U.S. Special Forces, in overthrowing Aristide on Feb.
29, 2004, Washington installed the government of de facto
Prime Minister Gérard Latortue. In mid-2005, Latortue brought
Andrésol back to Haiti as the HNP’s Director General (DG) to
whip into shape the force, which had been ineffective and
faltering in the face of stiff popular resistance to the 2004
coup d’état. WikiLeaked U.S. Embassy cables show that the
appointment delighted Washington.
Andrésol “has proved himself
committed to radical overhaul and reform of the HNP, and we have
no reason to believe he will not continue to fully support
critical aspects of international oversight, especially vetting
and certification of HNP officers,” gushed a Mar. 8, 2006
“Confidential” dispatch from Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Douglas
Griffiths.
Washington was not just the HNP’s overseer, but its paymaster. “Our role in supporting
the HNP... remains central,” explained Chargé d’Affaires
Thomas Tighe in a
Nov. 3, 2006 cable. “[O]ur material support
for the HNP, which ranges from arms and ammunition to the
uniforms on their backs and the food their cadets eat at the
academy, is the critical factor enabling the HNP to assume
greater responsibility for basic security and to even
contemplate utilizing MINUSTAH resources in implementing more
ambitious reform.”
Above all, Tighe concluded, “we
are heartened by the commitment of DG Andrésol... to reform the
HNP, attack corruption, and re-establish law and order
throughout Haiti.”
In a Nov. 3, 2006 meeting with
President Préval, his Prime Minister, his Justice Minister,
Andrésol, and U.S. Embassy officials, Anne W. Patterson, the
Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Bureau of International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) “highlighted the
importance of the USG [U.S. government] assistance to the police
and praised the leadership of DG Andrésol,” reported U.S.
Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson in a Nov. 13, 2006 secret
cable.
Andrésol earned this praise by
working closely with the U.S. and the MINUSTAH in organizing the
crackdown on popular resistance cells to the coup and occupation
(called “gangs” by the Embassy) in Cité Soleil, particularly the
deadly joint MINUSTAH/HNP assault of Dec. 22, 2006. In her Dec.
21, 2006 cable about the operation, Sanderson concluded: “Decisive
action against the gangs will also hopefully, three years after
Aristide's departure, allow the international community and the
GoH [Haitian government] to make good on promises to deliver
assistance to the most needy of Haiti's poor.”
Furthermore, “Andrésol
enthusiastically welcomed” among other things “the
possibility of more U.S. police officers coming to MINUSTAH to
assist the HNP” and said “he needed more assistance from
the U.S. for the special HNP units such as the SWAT team,”
Sanderson reported in a Jan. 25, 2007 cable.
Two of Andrésol’s advisors “are
funded by [the Embassy’s] NAS,” noted Tighe in a Jul. 15,
2009 dispatch approving of Andrésol reappointment as police
chief. “Post views the renewal of Andrésol's mandate as the
best possible result,” he concluded. “As DG he has worked
well with the USG on reform of the HNP and no other candidate
was viewed by Post as viable or trustworthy.”
“Andrésol has not only
promoted honesty and integrity within the HNP, but has
undertaken significant initiatives,” Sanderson wrote in
another typical Jun. 16, 2006 cable which reveals Washington’s
control of the HNP. “We look forward to maintaining our own
close bi-lateral cooperation through him and expanding overall
multi-lateral coordination as we intensify our efforts to
rebuild the HNP.”
But even President Préval and
his Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, who kept a friendly
front with the U.S. Embassy, were worried about how the U.S.
Embassy was working “through” Andrésol. “[P]ost also
learned that the PM [Alexis] privately warned Andrésol... of
‘being too close to the Americans,’” Tighe reported in a
Dec. 26, 2006 cable.
As Martelly has veered from the
control of the U.S. officials who facilitated his rise to power
last year, his relations with Andrésol have deteriorated.
Last year, Martelly asked
Andrésol to appoint one of his partisans, Godson Orélus, as the
HNP’s Inspector General, the force’s number two post, a former
high-ranking police official told Haïti Liberté. This
would have made Orélus “the next in line to act as the HNP’s
chief,” according to the source. Instead, Andrésol appointed
Orélus as head of the DCPJ, the number three post.
In February, according to
another police source, Martelly asked Andrésol to transfer the
heavy weapons of units like the Company for Intervention and
Maintenance of Order (CIMO) and SWAT team to the Palace Guard,
which is under the command of former “rebel” leaders Godwork
Noel and Jacky Nau. Andrésol refused.
“Relations between the HNP’s
Director General and President Martelly are worsening from day
to day,” reported Robenson Geffrard in the daily Le
Nouvelliste. “Mario Andrésol practically does not respond
to phone calls from the National Palace nor to those from the
Ministry of Justice and Security, according to a very
influential member of the government. ‘He doesn’t respond to
anybody.’”
In a slap to Andrésol,
President Martelly has made several visits to various police
units like the CIMO and SWAT team, without informing or
including the police chief, as is customary.
Last week, acting Justice
Minister Michel Brunache reportedly called on Andrésol to make
an “honorable exit” from his post, but Andrésol has vowed
to remain in his post until the end of his mandate on Aug. 18.
According to Geffrard’s
high-placed anonymous government source, Andrésol “thinks
that he has the support of the international community.”
Now Martelly is trying to turn
the tables on Andrésol. Under pressure from Washington, the
president is pretending that he wants the Pink Army’s training
camps closed and is asking Andrésol to do it.
“Paradoxically, the
government knows perfectly well that the police would not be
able to dislodge the ‘former soldiers,’” Geffrard reports. “There
is a disproportionate rapport of force. ‘The HNP cannot do it,’
acknowledged this influential government official.”
But another formerly
high-placed police source told Haïti Liberté that
Andrésol wouldn’t go after the proto-FAdH’s camps even if he
could. “Andrésol sees that Martelly is under pressure from
the so-called international community to shut down the camps and
that he is giving the problem to Andrésol, trying to make him
look ineffective,” the source said. “But Andrésol is
playing smart too, not taking the bait. In effect he’s telling
Martelly: you made this problem, you fix it.”
On Mar. 29, the 25th
anniversary of the ratification of Haiti’s 1987 Constitution,
Guy Philippe will leave his redoubt in the southern town of
Pestel to lead a march of former soldiers in the northern city
of Cap Haïtien demanding reestablishment of the FAdH. This is
the neo-Duvalierist sector flexing its muscle in Andrésol’s
face.
What will be Andrésol’s
reaction to his former comrades-in-arms who are now arrayed
against him? Just three years ago, Andrésol was hunting for Guy
Philippe, according to the U.S. Embassy. “Two separate
deployments of HNP SWAT officers took place to Pestel,
stronghold of wanted drug trafficker and disqualified Senate
candidate Guy Philippe,” wrote Ambassador Sanderson in a May
22, 2009 secret cable. “The initial deployment of 15 HNP on
April 7 was to ensure that the polling place, closed by Philippe
following his disqualification, would open on April 19 for the
Senate election as scheduled. In reality, it was also intended
to establish a stronger HNP presence in Pestel to facilitate
active efforts to arrest Philippe. 18 additional SWAT officers
were deployed on April 18. HNP DG Andrésol has vowed to keep
them there until Philippe is arrested.” Will Andrésol (or
the DEA or MINUSTAH) dare to try to arrest Philippe on Mar. 29?
Interestingly, some of the
Lavalas base groups which might have once been the targets of HNP crackdowns a few years ago are now defending Andrésol since
they see him as a temporary ally in the fight to stop the
establishment of Pink Army. They fear Martelly’s new force could
be as savage and deadly as the Tontons Macoutes. Lavalas base
leaders like Franco Camille and Ronald Fareau have gone on the
radio to champion Andrésol as an honest and well-meaning cop.
The stakes in this struggle are very high, and the
possibility of bloodshed cannot be ruled out. The HNP chief is
as aware of this as anyone. Andrésol was “frank about his
status in Haiti after his term ends,” wrote Sanderson in a
Feb. 22, 2007 secret cable, “saying that he would have to
live in exile to stay alive.” |