It was a strangely unimpressive victory procession into the capital. In all, there were perhaps only half a dozen vehicles, and most of those belonged to TV networks and their cameramen.

Flanked by two pick-up trucks carrying a handful of his soldiers armed with ageing weapons, the hero of the hour, Haitian rebel leader Guy Philippe, dressed in green combat fatigues, waved from the sunroof of his Jeep to the crowds of supporters who had gathered around the National Palace.

This was no Castro entering Havana after the overthrow of the Batista regime . This was a revolution that never was. A stage-managed coup d'état, whose real instigators - the US military - had only to stand on the steps of the same National Palace where just a few days earlier President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had held his last press conference, and watch as 'regime change' was implemented in Haiti yet again.

What really happened during the final hours of Aristide's rule has become almost as controversial as what he did during his decade or so as leader. Did the so-called 'savior' of Haitian democracy really jump from power to avoid a bloodbath, or was he pushed, having outlived his usefulness and political malleability? And just what was the extent of the US role in his demise?

Let's be clear about this, what happened in Haiti was a coup d'état, and coups in a country like this don't just happen, especially when the army has been disbanded for nearly a decade. The emergence of Philippe's rebel army and his triumphant entry into Port-au-Prince had to be organized, his men retrained, resupplied and supported. Someone has to organize a coup.

It is not only by bombing and invasion that the neoconservative side of the Bush administration is able to get rid of governments it doesn't like. Economic sanctions, political coercion and outright subversion can also be the order of the day.

"At least twice I was present when the president [Aristide] hung up the phone on some US official, making demands during these last days," said one of Aristide's personal Haitian security guards, who asked to remain anonymous .

As Aristide himself stepped from his plane into exile in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, he made a remark that cannot fail to have resonance with many ordinary Haitians.

"In overthrowing me, they cut down the tree of peace, but it will grow again, because its roots are well planted," he said, alluding to a famous statement by the fabled leader of Haiti's revolution, former slave and stable boy Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was entrapped by the French, bound, and hustled away from Haiti on a ship never to see his country again.

"They have felled only the trunk of the tree. Branches will sprout again, for its roots are numerous and deep," Toussaint had similarly once said.

But the fact is that the roots of peace have been well and truly ripped up in the latest crisis in Haiti. In comparing himself with Toussaint, Aristide was making a connection between the French betrayal of the great revolutionary and the Americans' betrayal of his own presidency.

The US, after all, has form in the Caribbean and Latin America, and just as the neocons around President Bush have long viewed Aristide as another potential Castro they were probably equally adamant in their appreciation of rebel leader Philippe, who lists as his heroes the former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet and ex-US president Ronald Reagan. But for many ordinary Haitians, Philippe's arrival is perceived as little more than the return of military rule.

"When Philippe was police chief, he bumped off loads of gang members. Who do you think is responsible for many of the fresh bodies lying on our streets since he came to Port-au-Prince?" said one former policeman, who like many Haitians prefers anonymity when expressing such views.

"I used to play ping pong with Philippe. Did you know he was a champion? He was as ruthless in that game as he is in dealing with his political enemies."

Certainly, as paramilitary leaders go, Philippe has all the formal credentials. Having been trained by US Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s, Philippe would no doubt have sanctioned and understood the role of the mysterious non-Haitians bristling with state-of-the-art weaponry who mingled with his ramshackle rebel group. Mercenaries? US Special Forces? Or that strange hybrid of both, that enables official US government spokesmen to deny the existence of such operatives should they ever overstep the mark?

The Bush administration, of course, has gone to great lengths to avoid direct complicity in a coup, with defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of state Colin Powell and White House press secretary Scott McClellan all calling that claim "absurd" and "nonsense".

Most coups - as the French word suggests - means a sudden cut or blow. The coup against Aristide, and by extension against the Haitian people, was by contrast prolonged and cynically finessed. However, for Aristide to say he was abducted as he alleged is probably disingenuous.

One man who knows what happened is Jim Refinger. A former Jacksonville police sniper and retired marine, Refinger was part of the San Francisco-based private security team, the Steele Foundation, hired to protect Aristide.

"Everything was done with the full knowledge and co-operation of the president. There was no forcing the president to go anywhere. We protected our principal without a shot fired and he is safe."

Perhaps not, but the story of US diplomat Luis Moreno tapping on Aristide's car window as he waited on the tarmac of Port-au-Prince Airport early last Sunday morning also comes from the horse's mouth.

"Mr President, with all due respect, the plane is 20 minutes away, I really need the letter," Moreno had said, meaning Aristide's letter of resignation. The president then pulled a letter from his wife Mildred's handbag, as she sat by his side. Once its contents were confirmed, Moreno apologized to Aristide and his wife. "I said I was very sorry to see things end this way," he said.

To which Aristide had replied in English: "Well, that's life."

Aristide was then told he would be flown to a place of his choice, but which turned out to be the Central African Republic (CAR), the former homeland of fabled killer and diamond collector Jean-Bédel Bokassa, a country where, according to the CIA country report on the internet, the elected civilian government of 10 years was recently replaced in a military coup . But unlike this quick coup, the one against Aristide was more like a slow death by strangulation.

Perhaps the most important question remaining over the US's involvement in Aristide's removal, however, is not so much the mechanics of it but what Washington has to gain by it.

In a country of almost unbelievable poverty, where 85% of the people live on $1 a day, nearly all the raw materials are controlled by US corporations, and companies such as Disney which use it as a source of cheap manufacturing.

A one-time preacher of liberation theology, Aristide had said his main goal was the alleviation of poverty. To this end he did have some success, doubling the minimum wage and claiming to have "built more schools in six years than had been built in the previous 190".

Hardly surprising then, that certain US commercial interests would view Aristide and his motives with some disdain. Likewise the so-called Haitian elite have similar vested interests. There is "a growing enthusiasm among businessmen to use the rebels as a security force" said a report from the Los Angeles Times after the remnants of the Haitian army that helped engineer the coup descended on the capital.

Combine this with the crippling suspension of aid from the IMF and World Bank following alleged irregularities in legislature elections in 2000, and Aristide's government was arguably already on life-support.

All of which is not to say that Jean-Bertrand Aristide is an angel. Far from it. Only last week I saw what remained of victims of "necklacing." In Port-au-Prince's general hospital morgue lay the charred bodies of two anti- Aristide activists, their hands frozen in a last horrific moment of pain after being necklaced with a car tire doused in petrol and set alight. It was a style of punishment Aristide is said to have approved of.

Many people have died under Aristide's government who shouldn't have. Very few who perpetrated such crimes have been brought to justice under his rule. But it is probably fair to say he didn't start out to be a brutal dictator , but history, events, the international community and his own flawed character conspired against him.

Aristide might not have delivered the democracy he promised, but the former death squad leaders and army thugs whose undisciplined forces seized power in a succession of cities before marching into Port-au-Prince are men who have never accepted democracy and now menace Haiti's democratic future.

In the coming weeks the US government might well find itself in another military mire. With US interventions in Haiti in 1916, 1994 and now in 2004, it is becoming a tragic routine.

When Marine Sergeant Christopher Smith easily ran off some poorly armed Haitian rebels last week he saw one side of the peacekeepers' task here: the ridiculous.

When marines guarding Haiti's National Palace were harangued by protesters on Friday, they saw another: the resentment.

When the peacekeepers try to stand this country on its feet for the third time in a century they will probably see another enemy: the rot, born of poverty and lawlessness.

And when the international peacekeeping force enters the seaside slums of Cité Soleil or Saint Martin - which they have yet to do in force - they will likely see another side: the resistance.

In the next few weeks the Haitian people, who have featured so prominently in media reports - those running the gauntlet of demonstrations, the looters, those cowering as shots rang out or lying sprawled on a pavement as blood ran from their wounds - will fade from the scene.

In this, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and less than two hours' flying time from the bright lights of Miami, few will remember how they were used by the masters of Haiti's coup.

© © newsquest (sunday herald) limited

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