Awaiting Rebels With Fear, Defiance

Loyal to his country’s beleaguered president, Jean-Robert Fabre was feeling a bit abandoned Thursday.

“We’ve been left on our own,” said the wiry 33-year-old man in a worn, red baseball cap. “Yet we’ve got to watch out, because we know the rebels are coming.”

In the market town of Bon Repos, which straddles National Highway 1 near the capital, Port-au-Prince, supporters and foes of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were bracing for violent clashes, even large-scale bloodshed.

Armed insurgents who have vowed to topple Aristide are likely to take that road if they move on Haiti’s capital from Cap Haitien, Gonaives and other cities they have captured in the country’s north.

Although the worst may lie ahead, this dusty town of more than 20,000, whose name suggests a restful locale, already has been buffeted by the spreading disorder. Its squat, single-story police station was shot up 12 days ago by unknown assailants -- at lease five bullet pockmarks were visible on its blue-and-white facade -- and people in Bon Repos said it had been days since officers were seen on the streets. Electricity and telephone service haven’t functioned for two weeks. Schools and banks remain closed.

Jonas Remusier, who owns a small roadside stall selling padlocks, watches and other goods, said many residents refused to go outdoors for fear of being robbed or questioned about their political loyalties by pro-Aristide thugs.

“We are not living in peace. We have nothing to eat, and we don’t dare go out in the street,” Remusier said.

Jean-Robert Pierre, a schoolteacher, said a man he knew was abducted earlier in the day as he walked to a shop to change money. “He was pushed into a car and kidnapped,” Pierre said.

Yet some residents said life seemed more normal Thursday than previous days, perhaps because many people had no choice but to shop for food.

“Everybody would love to stock up on food, but nobody has the means,” Guy Lajeune said. People hauled bunches of green bananas to market in Japanese pickup trucks. One group of townspeople shared a snack of boiled manioc root from a plastic bag as they discussed what might happen.

“We’re in a serious crisis,” said Georges Dessalines, a bookkeeper. “I hope an international force will come to restore peace.”

Pierre blamed Washington for fomenting the anti-Aristide uprising. “The United States doesn’t want to see the black people of Haiti advance,” the 42-year-old teacher said.

Fabre, who belongs to a pro-Aristide organization called the Popular Organization of Militants of the Plain, said that he could muster up to 400 die-hard supporters to barricade the highway and prevent rebels from pressing on.

Before sundown Thursday, Fabre said, he and fellow presidential loyalists would strew mounds of tires, concrete culvert sections, boulders and other junk across the undivided two-lane highway, as they have taken to doing every day around 5 p.m. The next morning, he said, the road would be cleared so townspeople could come to market.

“The attackers won’t get this far,” Fabre said. “If they want to take Aristide, they will have to kill us first.”

By Fabre’s admission, the effort to save the Haitian leader seemed to lack coordination as pressure intensified for Aristide to resign and leave the country. Though Bon Repos is about 12 miles from downtown Port-au-Prince, Fabre said he and other Aristide loyalists had received no explicit orders from the capital for days.

“It’s like we don’t exist,” Fabre said, taking shelter from the midday sun behind a market stall. His only weapon, the leader of local pro-Aristide forces said, is debris to block the highway. Fabre said he recovered two rifles and a handgun when police fled the Bon Repos station, but police from a neighboring town came and took them away.

“People here are devastated. They are worried about an attack that could come at any time,” said Jo Jacques, 72, a faith healer and dispenser of traditional herbal remedies. Haiti’s chaos had so disrupted his business, Jacques said, that he had gone two days without eating.

In midmorning, driven by hunger pangs, the elderly man walked to a roadside shop to spend some of his few remaining gourdes, Haiti’s currency, to purchase charcoal. At least he and his wife, Eliatide, 68, would drink a cup of hot tea.

“We are too poor to gather stocks of food to be ready if there is an attack, and we have to stay indoors,” Jacques said. “The only precaution we can take is not to go out into the street, and to pray to God.”