Haiti, 2001 — dissident coup attempt
Event Summary
On 17 December 2001 a group of armed men, reportedly former Haitian soldiers, launched a coup attempt against President Jean Bertrand Aristide, assaulting the National Palace in Port au Prince in a pre dawn raid before being repelled by loyalist forces. Aristide, who had returned to the presidency in February 2001 after the disputed elections of 2000, faced deepening political crisis, international isolation, and the persistent hostility of elements tied to the army he had disbanded in the 1990s. In the December raid, the attackers, numbering around a dozen, stormed the palace grounds with automatic weapons, killing several people in a firefight before the assault was beaten back and the raiders fled.
Aristide, who was not harmed, and his Lavalas movement blamed the opposition and former military figures, and the coup attempt triggered a wave of reprisals: pro Aristide militias attacked opposition party offices and homes in the aftermath. The episode deepened Haiti's spiral of instability and violence, which would culminate two years later in the armed rebellion of early 2004 that finally drove Aristide from power and into exile.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
04112172001
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Jean Bertrand Aristide survived the December 2001 palace raid by ex-soldiers, which triggered reprisals.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CBS News
New York Times
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Wikipedia
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →