Military history of Haiti
Without viable civilian institutions, Haiti was vulnerable to military personalities, who permanently shaped the nation's authoritarian, personalist, and coercive style of governance.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Haiti's military had become little more than an undisciplined, ill-fed, and poorly paid militia that shifted its allegiances as battles were won or lost and as new leaders came to power.
The Gendarmerie attempted to secure public safety, initially by subduing the cacos; to promote development, particularly road construction; and to modernize the military through the introduction of a training structure, a health service, and other improvements.
On the surface, it succeeded; the organization, the training, and the equipment of the Garde all represented improvements over the military conditions existing before the occupation.
Some professionalization of the army continued for a few years after the United States occupation, but Haiti's political structure deteriorated rapidly after 1934, weakening civilmilitary relations and ultimately affecting the character of the armed forces.
This development divided the army internally, and it set the stage for François Duvalier's ascent to power in late 1957 (see Politics and the Military, 1934–57, ch.
The leadership of the former Garde d'Haïti, trained by the United States Marines, was aging and was slowly giving way to a younger cadre of Military Academy graduates from the 1940s.
Drawn initially from the capital city's slums and equipped with antiquated small arms found in the basement of the Presidential Palace, the civilian militia, commonly known as the "Tonton Macoutes",[2] became the VSN after 1962.
The armed forces yielded political power to the new regime and lost many of their institutionalized features, developed during the previous thirty years.
Duvalier's ruthlessness and suspicion caused members of his own security apparatus to turn against him - most notably Clément Barbot, one of the original VSN chiefs.
In addition, they played a crucial political role for the regime: they countered the influence of the armed forces, historically the nation's foremost institutional power.
François Duvalier went farther than any of his predecessors in his efforts to reduce the ability of the military to influence selection of the country's leaders.
Furthermore, Jean-Claude's half-hearted attempt to open Haiti to the outside world and to secure renewed foreign assistance from the United States suggested a need to restrain the abuses of the VSN, which included more than 9,000 members and an informal circle of thousands in early 1986.
The armed forces entered the 1980s as a mere shadow of the powerful, disciplined, trained institution that had existed forty years earlier.
Although the army successfully repelled a number of attempts against the regime, it ultimately failed to prevent Duvalier's fall under pressure from his own populace.
With lastminute assistance from the United States, the army's senior leadership provided the political transition required to ease Duvalier out of power in February 1986.
These rumors, however, proved incorrect; still, Duvalier's inability to contain the widespread rioting through political measures and the VSN's failure to control the unrest placed the military in a pivotal position.
Lieutenant General Henri Namphy, army chief of staff, became head of the interim National Council of Government (Conseil Nationale de Gouvernement—CNG).
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.
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.
The situation unraveled further in 1988, under the short-lived civilian government of Leslie Manigat (February–June 1988),[5] who was overthrown during the June 1988 Haitian coup d'état when he retired the Port-au-Prince police chief and attempted to reshuffle the army command.
Allegations that government officials were involved in drug trafficking became widely known after a United States court indicted Colonel Jean-Claude Paul, then commander of the Dessalines Battalion, on charges of cocaine distribution.
At about the same time, United States authorities arrested and convicted a former CNG associate of Namphy, Colonel Gary Léon, on drug-trafficking charges.
The loyalty of the Presidential Guard and support from many NCOs helped Avril prevail in a week of internecine conflict with the officer corps.
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.
The failure of Haiti's civilian leadership to negotiate an alternative political course further reinforced the FAd'H's self-characterization as the decisive agent of Haitian affairs.
