Febuary 8, 2004

Dear Everybody:

It has been only three weeks since I last wrote but it has been a very eventful three weeks. Haiti has been heating up for some time and as of this week I would say it is boiling over. I’m sure most of you have been hearing news from Haiti so I’ll make my political description brief. However, I have pasted in a very good article posted on Friday written by my favorite Haitian news reporter. Scroll to the bottom to read the article. Yesterday, the former Cannibal Army went still further. Either they, or members of some other loosly organized group took over the police station in Saint Marc and freed all of the prisoners held in the prison there. Saint Mark is too close for comfort – only 9 miles north of us. Yesterday Feb 7 was the anniversary of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier being forced to flee the country so many groups chose that day to act out. We await news of today’s developments.

The attached photo is a few weeks old but gives you an idea of how charged the atmosphere is in Haiti right now. Some police killed an anti-Aristide student protester and the protesters decided to march the man’s body to the National Palace in protest. The photo is of Haiti’s special police trying to disband the march after arriving outside the national palace.

We are being very careful about travel now. We listen to the radio to hear live reports of what is going on and avoid hot areas. We have been able to hear some international commentary too on the short-wave radio I was given for Christmas.

Two weeks ago we had some troubles here in Pierre Payen. Some gang affiliated thieves from Port-au-Prince came into the community during the night and robbed the home of Yones, a woman who works for us. She was preparing for her daughter’s wedding so unfortunately they found a lot of money. After that, the thieves moved through Pierre Payen and shot and wounded a child. They also shot and wounded another youth and hurt another one with a machete, putting all three in the hospital. We called the police at 4am when a shotgun from the property next door woke us all up. The police didn’t come (they never come if there’s guns involved) but some people in the community captured one of the thieves and killed and burnt him, I’m not sure in which order. It was a great shock to us and to the community. Many folks fear that the gang will seek retaliation on the community, but I find it unlikely that any of them would risk a fiery death now that they know the kind of reception they will have in Pierre Payen. The community has formed a community patrol supported by donations taken throughout the community and coordinated it with the local police. I am concerned, however, that especially now with prisons being opened left and right that the community will continue to choose to kill rather than incarcerate any thieves they might capture.

In less dramatic news, we recently had a successful training class for 5 new filter technicians. Four of them are starting to build filters in the town of Latiboliere which is in the extreme Southwest of Haiti and the remaining one is in Port-au-Prince. I am relieved that we finally have someone building filters in Port-au-Prince because it was embarrassing to have to tell people filters were not available in the capital. I have high hopes for this new technician and I believe he will succeed in establishing his business with the help of the training he received in the small business training class we gave. Also, my new friend Jude Mortel is planning to start his biosand filter sales business next month in Saint Marc. Unlike other technicians we have trained, Jude is a businessman already and having seen an excellent new produce with limitless demand he has decided to branch into the filter business. I met Jude through the Rotary Club of Saint Marc. I am currently being considered for membership in Saint Marc rotary, and I am very happy to know this group of Haitian businessmen who are helping their country to develop.

We have finished the new base we built to go with our new roller bit we hope will penetrate rock in well drilling. We will test the new equipment next week and make any necessary modifications before trying it out on a community well.

Recently we have been communicating with the United States Peace Corps to find out how we may work together. They have decided (as more and more organizations are doing) that water quality improvement should be their biggest effort. Clean Water for Haiti has the potential to direct Peace Corps Volunteers into productive areas of work immediately after they arrive in the country. We may even have two Peace Corps volunteers stationed in Pierre Payen to work with us and our local community directly. Unfortunately, the latest batch of volunteers has had their arrival postponed due to Haiti’s political troubles so we don’t know when we will have new volunteers to work with. We are meeting with a group of 6-8 volunteers who are already in country this week. Unfortunately, the Peace Corps has a policy that if it has to leave a country 3 different times it will never return again. They have already left Haiti twice, so I am hoping they won’t leave again now. By my own thinking, the U.S. government sends the Marine Corps into all kinds of dangerous places so why not the Peace Corps? Isn’t peace just as important as war? I’m not one to dictate policy to the U.S. government though.

I received some disappointing news last week. Over the past few years attendance and donations have dropped off at my church in Bellingham and they have now decided to disband. That makes me a missionary without a home church which is kind of depressing. I will miss the way my church encouraged me whenever I went back to visit. I would ask that the former members of the Bellingham Vineyard would continue to support me and Clean Water for Haiti even though we don’t meet as a church anymore.

Mission needs remain the same. We really need a couple more full time missionaries out here but I realize at the moment Haiti is very unattractive. Perhaps I should state that we need a couple adventuresome missionaries to come out here. As always we need money but at the moment we are almost out entirely. Tal is returning to B.C. on February 18 for a fundraising trip so please keep in mind that he would love to come speak to the Canadian churches, clubs and organizations you may be part of. Our fabrication shop will stop work next week for lack of money to buy materials. Also, we need prayer. I know God can keep us safe and prospering too.

Blessings, Chris Rolling
info-at-cleanwaterforhaiti.org

Clean Water for Haiti

Opposition movements in Haiti threaten country's stability

BY TIM COLLIE
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

FORT LAUDERDALE , Fla. - (KRT) - The violent takeover of Haiti's fourth largest city by a slum gang offers a frightening glimpse of one possible future for the impoverished nation: Chaos.

Many Haiti watchers now fear a prolonged collapse similar to failed states like Somalia or Liberia - especially if the United States and the international community do not take a greater role in resolving Haiti's many problems.

Wracked by worsening poverty and political violence, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government may be losing control over key areas of the country. Gonaives has been the scene of periodic violence since September, when a major figure, Amiot "Cubain" Metayer, was murdered. In the Central Plateau, another group known as the Motherless Army, composed of former army members, has carried out assassinations of government officials and sacked villages.

Meanwhile, the country's capital has been the scene of frequent large protests by coalitions of students, civic groups, business leaders and other members of the urban elite. They have been pushed together by the continuing economic decay, as well as attacks on their ranks by gangs linked to the government.

Though Aristide's government labels them all as one opposition movement, there seem to be few links between these groups, and that's what makes the situation so dangerous, some experts say.

There is no figure of Aristide's stature to counter Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected leader. There is no rival who commands anywhere near the following that the former priest still has among the poor.

If Aristide was overthrown, the various groupings of gang leaders, politicos, urban elites and intellectuals could easily turn on each other.

"That's why this is a very dangerous moment in Haiti, dangerous both for the government and the peaceful opposition," said Robert Fatton, a leading authority on Haiti at the University of Virginia. "If what is happening in Gonaives is the opposition's vision for Haiti, then the future is pretty grim indeed.

"I don't think these various groups are linked, but what happens in Gonaives encourages the forces in Port-au-Prince, which then holds marches and rallies and inspires the army in Gonaives to go that much further," said Fatton, author of "Haiti's Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy." "But the only thing that unites these groups is their hatred of Aristide. If he left tomorrow, you'd have all kinds of struggles among the opposition. The whole country could easily fall apart."

The resulting fragments would run the gamut from dedicated democratic activists on one end of the political spectrum to a dark force of drug traffickers and armed thugs whose alliances continually shift based on power and money.

With only a national police force under his control - the army was disbanded under international supervision in the 1990s - Aristide has maintained power over Haiti's streets with armed gangs known as chimere. These young toughs knock skulls and run drug and kidnap rings in exchange for political patronage - many can be found working as luggage handlers at the international airport.

That formula has worked for Aristide, diplomats and other observers say, but it's unclear whether he or his political party still have control over these gangs. Their clout swelled by drug money, many chimere gangs now may be a power unto themselves. A similar situation exists in Jamaica, where political parties lost control of their street wings, which became the notorious drug posses.

"If the United States does give more support to the peaceful opposition, the Group of 184 and other groups, then this is what they're going to end up with - groups like the Cannibal Army," James Morrell, a onetime Aristide adviser who now heads the Washington-based Haiti Democracy Project. The Group of 184 is a leading civic opposition group based in Port-au-Prince.

Thursday's uprising was led by a group formally known as the Cannibal Army, now renamed the Artibonite Resistance Front. Based in the shanty town of Robateau, they are a hardcore mix of former Aristide supporters and elements of the FRAPH, a paramilitary squad that menaced Haiti during the early 1990s, after Aristide was overthrown during his first administration.

"These are not democrats by any means - they don't have a political philosophy other than power and money," said Fatton.

When Aristide returned to power, he used them to menace his opponents. Led by Metayer, the group controlled Gonaives as a stronghold for Aristide's Lavalas Family Party for years. In 2002, under international pressure, the government arrested Metayer. But using a bulldozer, his supporters busted Metayer out of prison a month later. The jailbreak also freed a slew of notorious prisoners, including Jean Tatoune, who was serving a life sentence for a massacre of Aristide partisans in 1994, during a period when some 5,000 Aristide partisans were murdered.

Metayer and Tatoune joined forces. The militia leader seemed to have reached some arrangement with the government. Despite a warrant for his arrest, he openly held court in Gonaives while the police claimed to be searching for him. But in September, after an alleged meeting with an Aristide emissary, his mutilated corpse was found with both eyes shot out. Gonaives has been in a tense state ever since.

A revolt in Gonaives touches a nerve in Haiti, which is enjoying only its first decade of democratic government after 200-year history of instability and 30 military coups. It was there that Haiti's independence was proclaimed January 1, 1804. In 1985, the city also saw the first revolt against Jean-Claude Duvalier, which ultimately led to that dictator's downfall in February, 1986.

"Right now I can't tell you where this is all going to go, but it doesn't look good," said Alex Dupuy, a sociologist who has written extensively on Haiti at Wesleyan University. "The opposition, in my view, is not acting in the interests of the Haitian people. But Aristide isn't acting in their interests either."