US embassy cables reveal how anxious the US was to enlist Brazil to keep the deposed Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti
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Minustah's commander, Brazilian Army General Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2005. In January 2006, Bacellar was found shot dead on his balcony, after what his government described first as a 'firearm accident' and then as 'suicide'. Bacellar had earlier resisted calls to use his UN peacekeeping force to crack down on pro-Aristide rebels. Photograph: AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos |
Confidential US diplomatic cables from 2005 and 2006 released this week
by WikiLeaks reveal Washington's well-known obsession to keep exiled
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti and Haitian
affairs. (On Thursday, Aristide issued a public letter
in which he reiterated "my readiness to leave today, tomorrow, at any
time" from South Africa for Haiti, because the Haitian people "have
never stopped calling for my return" and "for medical reasons",
concerning his eyes.)
In a 8 June 2005 meeting of US Ambassador to Brazil John Danilovich,
joined by his political counsellor (usually, the local CIA station
chief), with then President Lula da Silva's international affairs
adviser Marco Aurelio Garcia, we learn that:
"Ambassador
and PolCouns ... stressed continued US G[overnment] insistence that all
efforts must be made to keep Aristide from returning to Haiti or
influencing the political process … [and that Washington was]
increasingly concerned about a major deterioration in security,
especially in Port au Prince."
The ambassador and his
adviser were also anxious about "reestablishing [the] credibility" of
the UN Mission to Stabilise Haiti (Minustah), as the UN occupation
troops are called. The Americans reminded Garcia that then US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice had called "for firm Minustah action and the
possibility that the US may be asked to send troops at some point".
Careful reading between the lines of the cable shows that Garcia was a
bit taken aback by the Americans' "insistence"; he reassured the duo
"that security is a critical component, but must move in tandem with",
among other things, "an inclusive political process". Garcia also noted
that "some elements of Lavalas [Aristide's political party] are willing
to become involved in a constructive dialogue and should be encouraged",
although there was "continued Brazilian resolve to keep Aristide from
returning to the country or exerting political influence".
Aristide
"does not fit in with a democratic political future" in Haiti, Garcia
is quoted as saying. However, he was "cautious on the issue of
introduction of US forces" into Haiti, and "would not be drawn into
discussion".
The American duo then met on 10 June with Brazilian
Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Antonio de Aguiar Patriota. They
told him, and he acknowledged, that "Minustah has not been sufficiently
robust." All this dismay was over the leadership of Brazilian General
Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, then Minustah's military commander. Heleno had
repeatedly voiced trepidation about causing unnecessary casualties and,
more importantly, being hauled before an international court for war
crimes. (At the time, there was an independent International Tribunal on Haiti
preparing to hold hearings on the crimes committed by UN troops,
Haitian police and paramilitaries during the 2004 coup and the runup to
it.)
Less than a month after these meetings, on 5 July 2005, a
browbeaten Heleno would lead Minustah's first deadly assault on the
armed groups resisting the coup and occupation in Cité Soleil. Attacking
in the middle of the night with helicopters, tanks and ground troops,
the Brazilian-led operation fired tens of thousands of bullets and
dropped bombs, killing and wounding many dozens of innocent civilians,
including children and infants.
Later that month, Heleno was
cycled out of Minustah and replaced by 57-year-old General Urano
Teixeira da Matta Bacellar. Like Heleno, Bacellar was reluctant to use
force in Haiti's shanty towns. But pressure from Washington for "robust"
action continued, and in late December 2005, "Bacellar had tense
meetings with UN and coup regime officials and the rightwing business
elite," reported the Haiti Action Committee at the time:
"They
reportedly put 'intense pressure' on the general, 'demanding that he
intervene brutally in Cité Soleil,' according to AHP. This coincided
with a pressure campaign by Chamber of Commerce head Reginald Boulos and
sweatshop kingpin Andy Apaid, leader of Group 184 [the civic front that
took part in the 2004 coup against Aristide]. Last week, Boulos and
Apaid made strident calls in the media for a new UN crackdown on Cité
Soleil."
On 6 January 2006, Minustah's then civilian
chief, Chilean Juan Gabriel Valdès, said that UN troops would "occupy"
Cité Soleil, which UN troops already surrounded.
"We are going to
intervene in the coming days," Valdès said. "I think there'll be
collateral damage but we have to impose our force, there is no other
way."
But some UN officials said that Bacellar "had opposed
Valdès' plan", according to Reuters. "The general had insisted that his
job was to defend the Haitian constitution, but not to fight crime," the
Independent of 9 January reported.
Then,
on 7 January 2006, General Bacellar was found dead in his suite at
Pétionville's deluxe Montana Hotel, a bullet through his head. He had
been sitting in a chair on his balcony, apparently reading. Initially,
Brazilian army officials called the shooting a "firearm accident". After
a few days, they changed the official verdict to "suicide".
Four
days later, US State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Patrick Duddy
met with Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, who "inquired about the
circumstances surrounding the death" of Bacellar, another WikiLeaks-released cable reveals.
Duddy said that it looked like suicide, but "Fernandez expressed
skepticism. He had met General Bacellar; to him, suicide seemed unlikely
for a professional of Bacellar´s caliber."
Fernandez suspected
Bacellar had been assassinated by "a small group in Haiti dedicated to …
creating chaos; [and] that this group had killed Minustah members in
the past (a Canadian and a Jordanian, and now the Brazilian General) …
The President said he knew of a case in which a Brazilian Minustah
member had killed a sniper."
When Duddy asked who might be in this
group, the only name Fernandez suggested was that of former soldier and
police chief Guy Philippe, the Haitian anti-Aristide "rebel" leader in
2004. A former Dominican general, Nobles Espejo, told a March 2004
fact-finding delegation (on which I travelled) that Philippe's contras
had been armed by the US. Philippe had staged guerrilla raids and then
invaded Haiti from the Dominican Republic under Fernandez's predecessor,
Hipòlito Mejia.
While Fernandez wouldn't rule out "an accidentally self-inflicted wound", the cable explains:
"He
believes that the Brazilian government is calling the death a suicide
in order to protect the mission from domestic criticism. A confirmed
assassination would result in calls from the Brazilian populace for
withdrawal from Haiti. Success in this mission is vital for President
Lula of Brazil, because it is part of his master plan to obtain a
permanent seat on the UN security council."
Fernandez's
suspicions – if that's all they were – seem well-founded. It seems
unlikely that a decorated army veteran, parachutist and instructor would
be careless enough with a pistol to accidentally shoot himself in the
head. Furthermore, Bacellar was a very religious man, with a wife and
two children in Brazil. He had just returned to Haiti four days earlier
from a Christmas visit home. Even if suicide cannot be ruled out, one
would have expected such a man to leave behind a message of some sort.
Yet,
according to the sources of Brazilian journalist Ana Maria Brambilla,
Bacellar "did not display any signs of depression during his last days".
He was accustomed, after "39 years of service, to pressure far worse
than he had seen in his four months in Haiti," his military colleagues told the Independent.
According to the South African newspaper Beeld,
"the latest reports in the Dominican media questioned the feasibility
of suicide, as no bullet casing was found near the body … He would have
been an easy target for a sniper." Most incongruously, Bacellar's
T-shirt and boxer-clad body was reportedly found with a book on his lap,
according to the Dominican daily El Nacional, as he had apparently been
reading and relaxing in his underwear on his balcony when the urge to
shoot himself came on.
Is it possible some interested party may
have wanted to kill Bacellar for his reluctance to crack down on the
rebellious shanty town of Cité Soleil? We can only hope that further
documents from the WikiLeaks cache will discover the truth.
guardian.co.uk