Former “rebel” leader Guy Philippe and politician Evans Paul (Konpè Plim) are today leading the charge against interim Haitian President Jocelerme Privert, playing much the same roles they did 15 years ago in the prelude to the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’état against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

From 2001 to 2004, Philippe headed the opposition’s military wing, waging a guerrilla war, mostly from the Dominican Republic, against Aristide’s government with a few dozen “rebels” known officially as the Front for Liberation and National Reconstruction (FLRN).

During the same time, Paul became a prominent leader of the U.S.-supported political opposition front known as the “Group of 184,” headed by assembly industry owners Andy Apaid, Jr. and Charles Henri Baker and backed by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Today, the Haitian government has issued a warrant for Philippe’s arrest following a deadly May 16 paramilitary attack on the Aux Cayes police headquarters, which killed one policeman and wounded five others. Philippe has publicly defied the warrant, mocking and taunting President Privert and the Haitian police in a radio and internet message.

"We are ready for war," Philippe said in the days just prior to the Feb. 7 stepping down of his ally, former President Michel Martelly. "We will divide the country."

Since May 16, there have been numerous other killings of civilians, tourists, and policemen, as well as drive-by shootings on several corporate headquarters and Haiti’s Marriott Hotel. Government and police officials believe Philippe’s paramilitaries are carrying out the violence aimed at fomenting panic and terror.

Meanwhile, Evans Paul has launched an opposition political front called the Democratic Agreement (ED). It is spearheading an operation against Privert called “Depose.”

In the 1,918 secret diplomatic cables that the media organization WikiLeaks provided to Haïti Liberté for publication in 2011, about 40 talk about Philippe and Paul. The cables, which span almost seven years (from April 2003 to February 2010), paint a picture of two unscrupulous individuals, whom even the U.S. Embassy regarded warily.

By February 2004, the Haitian and international press had extensively covered how Guy Philippe’s “rebels” had been operating out of the Dominican Republic for three years, launching hit-and-run attacks in Haiti. The media also covered Philippe’s march across the north of Haiti to Cap Haïtien, where the FLRN set up its base.

As if oblivious to the bloody contra-war that Philippe, with Dominican complicity, was waging across the border, U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic Hans Hertell (perhaps disingenuously) sent a formal diplomatic note to the Dominican military and Foreign Ministry “emphasizing the need to prevent Dominican territory from being used by persons seeking to oust President Aristide by violence,” he reported in a Feb. 20, 2004 cable to Washington.

In the same message, Hertell reports that: “There are now 500-600 Dominican troops assigned to the northern border close to rebel-held areas of Haiti, more than the usual 300-350.  On February 20 when defense attache (DATT) delivered reftel demarche [the formal diplomatic note], Secretary of the Armed Forces LTG [Lieutenant General] José Soto Jiménez replied that the Dominican military would do whatever necessary to maintain control of the border.”

In fact, according to researcher Jeb Sprague, in his book “Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti,” a Dominican government narcotics investigator and a spokesman for Dominican President Lionel Fernández told him that Jiménez, at the very least, helped funnel guns to the Haitian “rebels.”

“Around the same time, Jiménez, owner of the luxury resort Guaraguao in the town of Jarabacoa, was suspected of trafficking arms and drugs,” Sprague wrote.

The Economist wrote about the DR’s connivance with Philippe at the time: “The theory is that Dominican generals wanted a military rival next door to justify their own budget (the Dominican armed forces are one of the largest in the hemisphere on a per capita basis). There are also questions about how much the Americans knew about this collusion. A Pentagon official conceded that a rebel military camp on the Haitian-Dominican border was identified a year before the revolt began. Critics say the Americans could easily have snuffed out the plot by leaning on the Dominican government, but that — although there were some pretty disreputable characters in the rebel ranks  — they chose not to.”

Hertell also reported that Deputy Foreign Minister Miguel Pichardo “observed to Charge that throughout the [President Hipólito] Mejia administration the GODR has tried to alert the international  community about Haiti.”  With feigned innocence, Pichardo claimed “the Dominican Republic wants to avoid the disintegration of the Haitian government” and proposed “an international force should work with Haitian authorities and restore order.”

Hertell then writes that: “Regarding opposition fighter Guy Philippe, Pichardo said the military told the Ministry that Philippe had crossed the border without arms or any fighting force.”

In truth, Hertell could not have been as clueless as he appeared. In the same cable he reports that Juan Artola, the director for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), was “in daily contact” with embassy officials and “forwarded reports of preparations by armed anti-Aristide groups to attack Haiti's second city Cap Haïtien and of GOH concern over having underestimated the rebels' arsenal.” His officials had also interviewed Haitian Consul Jean Baptiste who “accused rebel Guy Philippe of killing people in Haiti. Baptiste did not say exactly where on the border Philippe had crossed, but insisted he was in Haiti.”

Perhaps the most illuminating assessment in Hertell’s Feb. 20, 2004 cable came from Haitian expatriate Jean Bertin, the former Deputy Director of Civil Aviation in Haiti (1991-92) and the widower of Mireille Durocher Bertin, an outspoken Aristide opponent who was shot to death in her car in a never-solved hit in downtown Port-au-Prince in March 1995. Jean Bertin, who founded the International Alliance for Recuperation in Haiti (AIRH), was an ally of Philippe and the Group of 184 but had some very damning things to say about them in a Feb. 18, 2004 meeting with U.S. Embassy political officers.

“Bertin said many Haitians believe Aristide would step down only if the United States intervened to remove him,” Hertell wrote. (That is eventually what happened too.) “When asked about Guy Philippe's recent return to Haiti, Bertin claimed that he had known of the plan beforehand and that Philippe crossed the border with a dozen men.” But Bertin also presciently warned that Philippe and the political opposition to Aristide “have no vision and are ill-prepared to run the country.”  The Group of 184, of which Evans Paul was one of the spokesmen, needed to be "less emotional and more political."

(To be continued)