Language

Knowing Who Your Friends Are

Submitted March 16, 2004 - 8:47 am by Erik Siegrist
Thabo Mbeki is in some hot water at home over an arms and supplies shipment he tried to get to Aristide in the final hours before he was forced out of Haiti.

The shipment contained "150 R-1 rifles, 5,000 bullets, 200 smoke grenades and 200 bullet-proof vests" -- given the relatively small numbers involved in the coup, that could have made a huge difference.

This jumped out at me at the end of the article though:

He said Mr Patterson (the Jamaican PM) had confirmed that the SAAF Boeing 707 that left South Africa on 29 February 2004 had landed in Jamaica the same day.

The South African military plane however never reached Haiti because of the resignation and departure of Mr Aristide.

So my question is -- is the plane still in Jamaica? Or at least its contents?

I can't imagine, with US Marines stationed in Port-au-Prince, that immediate military action will get anywhere, but if world opinion should turn and the US withdraws... well...

Maybe Latortue has a good reason to be in panic mode.

Reply

Our Policy on Comment Submissions: Co-publishers of Narco News (which includes The Narcosphere and The Field) may post comments without moderation. All co-publishers comment under their real name, have contributed resources or volunteer labor to this project, have filled out this application and agreed to some simple guidelines about commenting.

Narco News has recently opened its comments section for submissions to moderated comments (that’s this box, here) by everybody else. More than 95 percent of all submitted comments are typically approved, because they are on-topic, coherent, don’t spread false claims or rumors, don’t gratuitously insult other commenters, and don’t engage in commerce, spam or otherwise hijack the thread. Narco News reserves the right to reject any comment for any reason, so, especially if you choose to comment anonymously, the burden is on you to make your comment interesting and relevant. That said, as you can see, hundreds of comments are approved each week here. Good luck in your comment submission!

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.

More information about formatting options

User login