Word: haitiens
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...Limbe, a Haitian town of perhaps 20,000 on the road from Cap Haitien to Port-au-Prince, the chaotic interlude between the disintegration of the old order and the establishment of the new began last week with the spectacular helicopter landing of U.S. Marines. We heard stories of how townspeople began tentatively probing the extent of their new freedom. They dared to say the name Jean-Bertrand Aristide in public -- and were not beaten. Then, from hiding places under beds and inside suitcases, pictures of the exiled President emerged. Step by cautious step, people grew bolder. Friends formed groups...
...seconds it took to get outside, most of the police had run out the back, terrified of facing a fire fight like the one that had left 10 Haitian policemen dead in Cap Haitien three days before. I followed them and found eight hiding in other buildings of the compound. I told them to put their hands in the air. We were walking back to the main building when the Special Forces pushed in. It was over, and no one had died...
Meanwhile, out in the countryside the disintegration of the Haitian military left a yawning power vacuum. In the north, around the country's second largest city of Cap Haitien, civil authority virtually collapsed following the fire fight on Sept. 24 in which a company of Marines cut down 10 Haitian police officers. Since then, the army and police have evaporated throughout whole sections of the region...
...vast majority of Haitians who support Aristide, freedom from the hated military was something to be welcomed joyfully. In Cap Haitien, while residents celebrated the return of electricity for the first time in three years -- courtesy of the Marines -- only one uniformed Haitian soldier remained at his post. The rest of the garrison -- from Lieut. Colonel Claudel Josaphat, the feared and brutal regional military commander, to telephone repairmen who owed their jobs to the de facto government -- had fled. Shortly after U.S. forces arrived, a delegation of local dignitaries approached Marine commander Colonel Thomas Jones. "I guess...
...most surprising aspect of the collapse of civil authority outside the capital was the restraint exhibited by Aristide's supporters. In Cap Haitien, several attache thugs were escorted safely through an angry crowd by Aristide men, who warned that reprisals might be used as an excuse to block the return of their exiled President. The captives were passed over the razor-wire barricades and safely delivered into the hands of American sentries...