Exactly as Abreu Report predicted back in February, the Central Intelligence Agency's go-to-man in Haiti, the rebel warlord Guy Philippe, was building an army and setting his sights on Haiti's neighbor, the Dominican Republic.
Diplomatic cables leaked to Wikileaks by former US Army Private Chelsea Manning establish how forces allied to Mr. Philippe took part in a conspiracy to kill the President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez, during one of his visits to the Caribbean nation. News about the assassination attempt was suppressed at the behest of Mr. Fernandez, who feared that it could lead to a pogrom of Haitians in Santo Domingo, reviving ultra-nationalism in ways not seen since the US invasion of 1965.
A strongman in the shadows. LN |
In the years since Mr. Philippe nearly ignited the whole-scale persecution of Haitians in the Dominican Republic, he has gotten involved in politics, and is now using the fact that he's a candidate for the Haitian Senate to prevent the authorities from going after him, even as evidence clearly indicates that a group led by him was directly responsible for a raid on a Haitian police station where one officer was killed, two wounded, and regulation-issued weapons were stolen.
According to the New York Times, Mr. Philippe's lawyer claims that his client is innocent, and that it was the interim government of Jocelerme Privert who orchestrated the latest raid on one of the few remaining institutions in the failed Caribbean state, which is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.
Since Haiti disbanded its army in 1995, Mr. Philippe is now essentially piecemeal disarming the last institution in the state, besides the United Nations stabilization force, still able to rally an armed law-enforcement unit.
In recent days, foreigners in Port-Au-Prince and businesses in the more-affluent Petionville district have been targeted nearly at random by unidentified assailants who seemingly just want to cause chaos that will completely lead to an implosion of the few functioning Haitian economic entities.
It now seems that Mr. Philippe is the prime suspect for these attacks against foreigners and businesses, and it is also evident that Mr. Philippe wants to delegitimize the transitional government of Mr. Privert, with the most likely objective of presenting himself as the only man capable of saving Haiti.
Considering how Mr. Philippe was instrumental in US State Department plans to overthrow the democratically-elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, it is likely that once he predictably rescues Haiti from itself, the Hillary Clinton State Department will rush to recognize his coup government as legitimate.
Mr. Philippe already enjoys the international backing needed to establish a dictatorship in the tropics, and he seems to be implementing the step-by-step plan utilized by former dictators who emerged from the ether to "save their people."