Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haïti

The Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH) (French: Front pour l'Avancement et le Progrès Haitien) was a far-right paramilitary group organized in mid-1993. Its goal was to undermine support for the popular Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who served less than eight months as Haïti's president before being deposed, on 29 September 1991, by a coup. The group received covert support and funding from the United States government.

FRAPH was established by Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, who went on the Central Intelligence Agency payroll as an informant and spy in early 1992 (according to the Agency, this relationship ended in mid-1994, but the following October the US embassy in Haïti was openly acknowledging that Constant – now a born-again democrat – was on its payroll). According to Constant, shortly after Aristide's ouster, Colonel Patrick Collins, a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), attache who was stationed in Haiti from 1989 to 1992, pressured him to organize a front that could oppose the Aristide movement and do intelligence work against it.

During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, candidate Bill Clinton had promised to restore democracy to Haiti if elected. Inaugurated in 1993, the administration had to deal with a continuing refugee problem in Florida. Condemning FRAPH and the military regime as nothing more than "armed thugs," the administration cooperated with a multinational force and dispatched 15,000 troops sent and a high-level negotiating team (Jimmy Carter, Sam Nunn, and Colin Powell) to force the military to step down, restoring Aristide to power in August 1994 after international sanctions and pressure had failed to produce any results. Although the presence of U.S. and UN peacekeepers helped restore calm and security, this success, claims researcher Lisa A. McGowan, was undermined by their refusal to disarm the disbanded Haitian military and paramilitaries. As McGowan wrote,

...
Wikipedia