Going Badly for Papa Doc

"Welcome to Haiti," read the huge sign on Port-au-Prince's Main Street near Bowen Airport. Near by, tied to a wooden chair in a police pickup truck, was a bloated yellow corpse, covered with flies. The display, on view for 24 hours and set up just 15 days after Haiti kicked off a major tourist campaign, was one more warning from Dictator Franc,ois Duvalier to his fellow Haitians: stay tame, or else.

The body was the grisliest evidence yet that the guerrilla war in Haiti's backlands is not going well for Duvalier. According to reports filtering out of Haiti, three separate bands of rebels are fighting in southern and western Haiti--two groups, with about 80 men, calling themselves the "Haitian Revolutionary Armed Forces" and another independent band of 100. Since the first skirmishes eight weeks ago, the rebels have killed at least 80 Duvalier militiamen, have shot one of Duvalier's three AT6 patrol planes out of the sky, and have blown up roads, bridges and trucks. One night, they reportedly raided and looted an armory 38 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince, then two days later sacked another military post 20 miles away. Haitians crossing over into the neighboring Dominican Republic say that the rebels effectively control half a dozen villages in the rugged Massif de la Selle.

Whether the guerrillas pose a serious threat to Papa Doc's dictatorship remains to be seen. But his nerves are starting to show. His internal military radio in Port-au-Prince has been heard exhorting militiamen in the field to capture "just one--just one prisoner." The militia commander replied that he could not even get a clear view of the guerrillas, much less catch one. Duvalier claims that the rebels are Communists from Cuba, has asked the U.S. to run reconnaissance flights over the Windward Passage. The U.S. found no evidence of any Cuban invasion effort.

The fact is that the rebels are mostly the sons of middle-class Haitians driven into exile by Duvalier, and could come from anywhere around the Caribbean.

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