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Haiti The Post-Duvalier Period
Jean-Claude Duvalier left behind a hastily constructed
interim junta, controlled by the armed forces. Lieutenant
General
Henri Namphy, army chief of staff, became head of the
interim
National Council of Government (Conseil Nationale de
Gouvernement--CNG). Colonel Williams Regala, the head of
the
Military Academy; Lieutenant General Prosper Avril of the
Presidential Guard; and Colonel Jean-Claude Paul of the
regular
army were also key figures in the interim government. The
CNG
officially disbanded the VSN a few days after Duvalier's
departure, but it avoided the politically difficult
measure of
effectively halting the VSN's activities. This nonfeasance
prompted angry mobs to murder known members of the VSN and
set in
motion a cycle of instability from which Haiti had yet to
recover
in the late 1980s. Despite the popular backlash, some
members of
the VSN managed to survive by integrating themselves into
military circles.
The consequences of the army's failure to dismantle the
VSN
became obvious in the bloody events leading up to the
aborted
elections of November 1987
(see Background: From Duvalier to Avril, 1957-89
, ch. 9). The CNG's attempt to balance
demands for,
and resistance to, reforms gave way to chaos. By 1987 the
armed
forces had lost the favorable reputation they had enjoyed
a year
earlier. Worse, the senior military command appeared to be
doing
little to stop attacks against the electoral process. The
disastrous elections of 1987 and 1988 isolated the Haitian
military from the international community, which had grown
skeptical about the role of the armed forces.
The situation unraveled further in 1988, under the
shortlived civilian government of Leslie Manigat (February-June
1988),
who was overthrown when he retired the Port-au-Prince
police
chief and attempted to reshuffle the army command. CNG
leader
Namphy returned as head of government, with the support of
other
commanders. In September 1988, another coup brought
Prosper Avril
to power. Avril was an experienced officer with a career
dating
back to the Duvalier era.
The armed forces continued to face problems, however,
even
after Avril came to power. From September 1988 through
March
1989, 140 officers reportedly were retired or were fired,
some
because they were suspected of drug smuggling. Allegations
that
government officials were involved in drug trafficking
became
widely known after a United States court indicted Colonel
Paul,
then commander of the Dessalines Battalion, on charges of
cocaine
distribution. Paul's wife had previously been arrested in
Miami
on cocaine charges. Paul's mysterious death in the fall of
1988
only partially resolved the issue of military involvement
in drug
trafficking. At about the same time, United States
authorities
arrested and convicted a former CNG associate of Namphy,
Colonel
Gary Léon, on drug-trafficking charges.
Avril's attempts to purge the government of Duvalierist
forces included ousting individuals who had graduated from
the
Military Academy in 1973. The move reflected additional
political
rifts within the senior command. Sensing the low stature
of the
Avril government, segments of the senior command split
into
warring factions in April 1989. Reports alleged that proDuvalierist elements had helped to provoke dissension
within the
officer corps. The loyalty of the Presidential Guard and
support
from many NCOs helped Avril prevail in a week of
internecine
conflict with the officer corps. The conflict, however,
left the
military in a state of crisis. Duvalier's collapse
initially had
enhanced the national standing of the FAd'H. But the
group's
senior commanders, when thrust by events to the forefront
of
governance, had reverted to the traditional use of force
to carry
out a vaguely defined political program. Other actors,
such as
the Roman Catholic Church or political parties, remained
divided
in the post-1986 period, and they were therefore generally
ineffectual politically
(see Interest Groups
, ch. 9). The
failure
of Haiti's civilian leadership to negotiate an alternative
political course further reinforced the FAd'H's selfcharacterization as the decisive agent of Haitian affairs.
Data as of December 1989
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