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The 2004 Haiti Rebellion is a war presently being fought in Haiti, primarily over the issue of the presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, that is generally considered to have begun with the seizure of the country's fourth-largest city, Gonaives, by a group calling itself the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front on February 5, 2004.
The rebels are demanding the resignation of President Aristide, but Aristide has emphasized his determination to serve out the remainder of his term (which ends on February 7, 2006), insisting that Haiti should not continue its history of moving from "coup d'etat to coup d'etat," but should instead move from "elected president to elected president."
The causes of the violence are disputed. According to supporters of Aristide's government, the rebellion is the work of the old elite of Haiti in alliance with the now-disbanded army, which ruled Haiti from 1991 to 1994, seeking to put an end to Aristide's policies designed to benefit the poor. According to the rebels as well as many in the civilian opposition, however, the rebellion is a natural product of Aristide's poor governance and the alleged rigging of Haiti's 2000 legislative elections.
It is clear that some soldiers of the disbanded army are engaged in armed resistance to the government, since a low-level rebellion has been waged by some of them in the central part of the country since at least 2003, resulting in several dozen deaths. Furthermore, on February 14, 2004, a number of former soldiers, including a prominent former militia leader, returned from exile in the Dominican Republic and announced their intention to join the rebels based in Gonaives.
Another component of the rebellion are the armed gangs which have frequently been a source of violence in Haiti in recent years. The most prominent of these gangs, the "Cannibal Army," long acted as Aristide's primary support base in the city of Gonaives before turning against him in recent years. This gang, which has now reincarnated itself as the RARF, claims the weaponry it is presently using to fight the government was given to it by Aristide at a time when it still supported him; allegedly, the main purpose of this was to intimidate the opposition during the 2000 elections.
According to many supporters of Aristide, the country's civilian opposition is acting as a fifth column in support of these armed elements. The opposition denies this, but many of its members have acknowledged their support for the rebel cause, and have stated that they share with the rebels the common goal of Aristide's ouster: according to them, they disagree with the rebels only on the question of employing violent rebellion to that end.
Beginning in Gonaives with the capture of that city's police station on February 5, the rebellion quickly spread to the nearby port city of Saint-Marc. 150 policemen attempted unsuccessfully to retake Gonaives on February 8, losing between three and 14 officers in the battle. Saint-Marc was, however, recaptured by police and pro-Aristide militants by February 10, although sporadic fighting has continued in the area. Apparently in cooperation with the rebels in these northern and central cities, the south-western city of Grand-Goave was taken by rebels at around the same time, but it too was recaptured by police shortly thereafter.
Since then, the rebels have pursued an apparent strategy of advancing toward the city's second-largest city, Cap-Haitien, and the town of Dondon, just south of Cap-Haitien, has changed hands several times in the fighting. Furthermore, some of the rebels have reached the Dominican border, blocking the main road between the two countries and enabling the aforementioned exiled former soldiers to cross into Haiti. By February 17, the rebel forces had captured the central town of Hinche, near the Dominican border. These rebel successes have effectively cut Haiti in half, and consequently the north of the country has been facing serious shortages in food and fuel, since it can now only be resupplied by sea.
On February 19, the rebels declared the areas under their control an independent country with Buteur Metayer as president.
The United States, which intervened in Haiti in 1994 to restore Aristide to power, has publicly adopted an ambiguous stance on this issue. While condemning the rebellion and claiming that it does not support the violent overthrow of democratically elected leaders, it has also pointedly blamed Aristide for contributing to the violence and has suggested that an end to the crisis might require Aristide's absence from the political scene.
