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IN JUNE 2003, I wrote that if the three-year old political crisis between the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the organized political opposition forced Aristide to leave office before the end of his term in February 2006, only a foreign military intervention could prevent the country from descending into a full-fledged civil war. At the time, I thought, such an intervention could be led either by the United States or a joint force from the United States and the Dominican Republic. The intervening forces could then install a provisional government headed by leaders of the opposition or others allied with it. The primary task of that provisional government would be to restore order and security in the country and organize new elections. Before elections could be held, I maintained, the new government would have to crack down on Aristide's supporters and his Lavalas Family party (FL-Fanmi Lavalas in Creole) to lessen the latter's chances of winning again as it did in 2000 (Dupuy 2003:8). Except for some of the actors involved, subsequent events confirmed my general prognosis.
On February 29, 2004, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled Haiti for the Central African Republic (CAR) aboard an aircraft charted by the United States and escorted by U.S. military personnel and his own personal security provided by a San Francisco-based firm.1 He left the CAR for Jamaica on March 15, and remained there until the end of May when he flew to South Africa for an indefinite exile ( A.P. 2004). As happened when he was overthrown by the Haitian military in September 1991, seven months into his first term, Aristide's departure last month cut short his second five-year mandate by two years. Aristide was coerced into leaving Haiti after an armed insurgency erupted in the port city of Gona'ives in early February 2004. The rebellion was first led by a gang of chimères-the so-called Artibonite Resistance Front (FRA-Front de Résistance de l'Artibonite), formerly known as the Cannibal Army led by Butteur Metayer-that was once allied with Aristide but turned against him. Soon after, former members of the defunct Haitian army and its affiliated paramilitary death squad known as the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH-Front pour l'Avancement et le Progrès d'Haiti), and former rural...