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Rebels Nearing Haitian Capital, Deepening Panic (LYDIA POLGREEN and CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS, 2/28/04, NY Times)

Among the possibilities the Pentagon is considering, Defense Department officials and military officers said, is to send a force of 2,200 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., aboard Navy ships from Norfolk, Va., to take up positions off Haiti. But they said such a deployment, similar to what was done to stabilize Liberia last year, could take several days to organize.

In the gathering chaos in Port-au-Prince, no one could say for sure if that would be soon enough.

Truckloads of armed men, many in ski masks, patrolled the city on Friday, vowing to kill anyone who challenged Mr. Aristide's presidency. Looters pillaged warehouses at the port, and at least four people were killed in violence sweeping through the city. The bloodshed was set off by rumors that rebel soldiers would soon march in to remove Mr. Aristide by force.

Insurgents have already seized several large cities, and some moved Friday into Les Cayes, the nation's fourth largest town, The Associated Press reported. Rebel troops also took control of Mirebalais, an important crossroads town 25 miles northeast of the capital, The A.P. reported.

A rebel leader, Guy Philippe, told reporters that his plan was not to attack the capital immediately but rather to put it under siege. "We want to block Port-au-Prince totally," The A.P. quoted him as saying. "Port-au-Prince now, it would be very hard to take it. It would be a lot of fight, a lot of death."

With shouts of "Viv Titid!" — Titid is a Creole diminutive of Aristide — armed troops loyal to the president and his party, Lavalas, vowed to stop the rebel advance, brandishing M-16 rifles and semiautomatic handguns at barricades of flaming tires.

The port was a mad scene of looting, with thousands of people streaming into a narrow entrance that had been pried open. Just outside the gate lay the body a man killed earlier in the day, dressed in a pink shirt and black pants, a stream of blood congealing next to his head.

Like most men, or at least those in Nick Hornby novels, we believe that all of life should have a soundtrack. In this case, try Revolution, by Boukman Eksperyans. The band, which originally supported Aristide and even played his Inauguration, is now calling for him to step down.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 28, 2004 9:54 AM