Is Haiti facing a coup or is it anarchy?

The reasons why it's so hard to pin down what is happening on the streets of Haiti goes back to the way Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide first built his support to attain power.

The infamous rule of first Papa and then Baby Doc Duvalier had been enforced by the feared Ton Ton Macoutes henchmen, whose networked secret crackdown on anything smacking of dissidence came to be known internationally.

To counter the political void caused when Baby Doc Duvalier had to flee Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide had used support he'd built up as a Catholic priest in the country's poor areas to get to power in 1990.

So loyal was this following that people stood in the hot sun, risking being shot by the leftover Ton Ton Macoutes forces just to get a chance to vote in a democratic leader for Haiti.

This popular support remained even after President Aristide was ousted by a coup a year later in 1991 and only returned to power with American backing.

'Aristide has changed'

But those observing Haiti up close say that, since then, opponents claim that President Aristide too has fallen into the corruption and good life that Haiti's leaders had come to represent before him.

President Aristide maintains that the people love him as much as ever and that the opposition comes from groups who have failed to prove or accept the results of their popularity at the polls.

Things came to a head in 2000 elections when several foreign observer groups and opposition spokesmen denounced the electoral process.

The international community then cut aid to Haiti making a bad economic condition even worse.

It's since these elections that the opposition has taken a leaf out of President Aristide's own book to oppose him - they formed a loosely-knit coalition of community and neighbourhood groups, disillusioned shanty town residents, businessmen and religious spokesmen.

This structure of community versus community - now being used by both supporters of and opponents of the president means that both sides can now threaten to make Haiti ungovernable for whoever's in power.

Add to that, President Aristides's dissolution of the army and emasculation of the police after the 1991 coup to make sure there couldn't be such military action against him ever again, and you have the current situation in Haiti - both sides refusing to talk, divided communities... an ungovernable and lawless situation.