GONAIVES, Haiti — The armed uprising in this notoriously rebellious city consists of a scruffy band of about 100 young men with antiquated weapons and a few thousand townspeople with knives and machetes.
But this community, fiercely loyal to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide until September, is suddenly striking fear in the hearts of Haitians. Reports suggest that two senior figures from the country's former dictatorship and military junta have returned from exile to try to depose Aristide.
Guy Philippe, who fled to the neighboring Dominican Republic in late 2000 after Aristide's government accused him of plotting a coup, and Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former death-squad commander during the last days of dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, have returned to northern Haiti, said Wynter Etienne, a rebel leader.
The former regime figures and about a dozen other militants reportedly accompanying them were not in the city this weekend, Etienne said. But Associated Press quoted unnamed witnesses attesting to their presence. Their return would provide the government in Port-au-Prince with fresh incentive to attack and take back this city.
If true, the return of Philippe and Chamblain would highlight the chameleon-like nature of Haiti's armed rebels. Chamblain was deputy commander of the paramilitary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, which terrorized Aristide supporters after the 1991 military coup that ousted him during his first presidency. Dozens of Gonaives supporters of Aristide and his Lavalas Party were killed by the junta's hit squads. The rebels say those killings are bygones.
"Even if they killed your people before, if someone comes to your side in a crisis you have to work with them," said Buter Metayer, another rebel leader in Gonaives. This port city also was the place where rebellious slaves made their 1804 declaration of independence and where a revolt took off in the 1980s, eventually driving Duvalier into exile.
Unrest here began five months ago when Metayer's brother, Amiot, was slain, apparently by a Lavalas assassin. Members of Amiot Metayer's so-called Cannibal Army then turned against Aristide, who had reportedly armed the gang four years ago to attack political opponents.
