Haiti

U.S. history in Haiti: hands-on or hands-off

U.S. policy changes to fit the crisis in the turbulent nation. This time, though, it may have been caught by surprise.

	[Times photos: John Pendygraft]
	A member of the National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti wears an American flag bandana Monday in Cap-Hatien, after rebels took the city.
	Haitians repatriated from the United States are counted as they arrive for processing Saturday in Port-au-Prince. More than 330 Haitians rescued at sea in separate operations were repatriated.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - If Yogi Berra were running U.S. policy in Haiti, you can be sure what he might say: "It's deja vu all over again."

A decade after 21,000 U.S. troops were sent to Haiti to restore democracy, the Caribbean nation is unraveling again. Analysts were predicting it for some time, of course, but was anyone paying attention?

When an armed rebellion broke out in the north of Haiti this month, the Bush administration had other matters on its plate, such as the war in Iraq. Haiti barely made a ripple in Washington.

The intelligence failure looked awfully apparent last week as the rebel army seized control of the north and began to place a stranglehold around the capital, Port-au-Prince. Phones suddenly started ringing Wednesday at federal agencies all over Washington, and officials began brainstorming.

According to interviews with several U.S. officials involved in Haiti policy in recent years, it shouldn't take long for the intelligence picture to become a lot clearer. In fact, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince and in Washington had all the relevant information at their fingertips, critics of the Bush administration say.

"The crisis in Haiti didn't just pop up on the radar screen yesterday or last week," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., pointing to a bitter and long political dispute over Haiti's flawed elections in 2000 and alleged misrule by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "And it is not as though some of us - my colleague Bob Graham and others - haven't been warning this administration that they are ignoring this problem at their own peril."

Diplomats, political analysts and human rights monitors had been warning for several years about the illegal funding and arming of pro-Aristide gangs of street enforcers - the notorious chimeres - currently running unchecked in the capital.

Furthermore, counternarcotics agents were busy uncovering large-scale drug trafficking networks in the country, involving massive police corruption. Among those who featured prominently in reports by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration were senior government ministers as well as the former Cap-Haitien police chief, Guy Philippe, who now heads the rebel army in the north, the National Resistance Front for the Liberation of Haiti.

As far back as 2001, those reports indicated that Aristide's ruling Lavalas Family Party was deeply involved in the drug trade. Evidence indicated that party officials and their close associates were receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks from the traffickers as a form of taxation for an "open door" policy to allow access to the country's airstrips and sea ports.

The crisis now confronting the Bush administration is one that has plagued U.S. foreign policy for more than a century. American troops first intervened militarily to quell Haitian violence in 1915, occupying the country for nearly 20 years. But over the years, U.S. efforts to help out in Haiti have consistently proved too short-sighted and short-lived to achieve lasting results, analysts say. In some aspects, the United States has only fueled the problems.

"The history of U.S. policy is Haiti is sandwiched between incredible intervention and not so benign neglect," said Timothy Carney, U.S. ambassador to Haiti in 1998 and 1999.

The United States had periodically made enormous efforts to build democratic institutions in the country, most recently after the 1994 invasion when U.S. troops intervened to restore Aristide to power. At other times, Washington had "left the country to rot," he said.

Now it appears the rot has truly set in. As senior administration officials continued to hold meetings over the weekend to find a way out of the current crisis - including the possibility of military intervention again - there are no easy answers. With the country teetering on the brink of a kind of anarchy unprecedented even by the standards of Haiti's turbulent history, observers warn that it is time for Washington - and the rest of the world - to realize a quick fix will not suffice.

"This is the latest example of the need for a U.S. or international capacity to respond effectively in nation-sustaining - even nation-building - after our military has successfully secured the territory," said Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla. "The failure to have such a capacity after the 1994 invasion is a primary reason why we are on the edge of the volcano in Haiti again - just 10 short years later."

Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged as much Thursday in comments about the post-1994 attempt to build democratic institutions in which he was deeply involved as part of a delegation led by former President Jimmy Carter.

"But unfortunately, it didn't stay together," Powell said. "Corruption came into play, inefficiency came into play, cronyism came into play and the whole political tapestry of the country came apart."

Powell might also have mentioned the oft-criticized decision by the United States to cut off direct financial support - withholding $500-million - to the Haitian government after the flawed 2000 elections. The Clinton administration cut back aid to Haiti during its last days in office.

"Clinton just wanted to leave office before Haiti fell apart," said Carney, the former ambassador.

He complained that officials at the National Security Council went as far as requesting that he "tone down" embassy cables reporting on the situation in Haiti.

Carney was furious: "I began my career in Saigon in 1967 and there was no way I was going to let that happen." If Washington had been willing to listen, he said, it could have been better informed of the deteriorating situation.

"The Haitian situation is firmly grasped at the working level," he said, "but they are too many people at the higher levels who didn't want to hear bad news from Haiti."

As the country's economic situation deteriorated, the Bush administration continued to restrict aid, funneling money directly to AIDS projects and a large food-for-the-poor program administered by CARE.

This year the administration asked Congress for only $55-million in aid for Haiti. The country will receive only about one 100th of the aid Iraq is receiving, critics say, even though Iraq's average per capita income is about 10 times higher than the average Haitian's.

When the country finally exploded in rebellion, Washington was caught napping.

Privately, officials say they had no idea a rebellion was coming. They blame the intelligence failure on shifting U.S. priorities and intelligence assets, partly as a result of the war on terrorism.

But the United States was not entirely in the dark. Philippe left Haiti under a cloud in October 2000 with a band of 10 other local police chiefs, known as the "Latin Group," because they had all studied in Ecuadoran police and military academies.

Philippe denies any ties to drugs and insists the officers left because of political disagreements with the government. But Haitian government officials say the group was under investigation for plotting a coup as well as using its posts to profit from the drug trade.

The DEA had also been actively investigating Philippe and had built up a large file on his alleged drug activities, some of which they shared with Haitian authorities. The investigation appears to have been mysteriously dropped after he fled to neighboring Dominican Republic.

"We have been telling them (the Bush administration) that this guy is a bad actor for a long time," said Ira Kurzban, a Miami lawyer who represents the Haitian government. "They knew it, they ignored it, and now it's blowing up in their face."

Kurzban said he suspected that Philippe had become a DEA informant during his time in the Dominican Republic.

Instead, the DEA focused its attention on other major Haitian traffickers, including Beaudoin "Jacques" Ketant and Eliobert Jasme, both alleged to have operated major trafficking networks with the cooperation of Haitian police and government officials.

Ketant, 40, was indicted in the United States in 1997, accused of smuggling 40 tons of cocaine between Haiti and Miami. But he continued to live a life of luxury, driving around in a Hummer and throwing big parties attended by Haitian politicians. Though Aristide apparently stayed away from the parties, the two men reportedly were close. Ketant claims to be the godfather of one of Aristide's children. (Clinton's former National Security Council director, Anthony Lake, is the godfather of the other.)

Aristide finally threw Ketant out of the country last June under U.S. pressure. The expulsion came after Ketant and his bodyguards were accused of beating an official at an elite Port-au-Prince school attended by Ketant's son and the children of U.S. diplomats.

It remains unclear why Aristide failed to take action sooner. "I don't have an answer to that," Kurzban said.

Ketant was sentenced by a Miami judge last week to 27 years in jail and was also fined $15-million and ordered to forfeit another $15-million. Prosecutors said his assets include an $8-million villa on a hill overlooking Port-au-Prince, four other houses and paintings by Monet and Picasso.

At his sentencing, Ketant lashed out at Aristide, accusing him of turning Haiti into a "narco-country" and of taking payoffs from drug traffickers.

"The man is a drug lord. He controlled the drug world in Haiti," Ketant said.

Kurzban dismissed the allegations as "garbage" concocted by "a lying, convicted drug dealer" who was trying to bargain for a reduced sentence.

"I defy anyone to provide proof about the nonsense he's telling the U.S. government to save his own skin," he said.

But Ketant could still prove an embarrassment to Aristide. DEA agents have expressed an interest in meeting with him to discuss the allegations in detail.

"Aristide makes (Gen. Manuel) Noriega look like a Boy Scout," said Ketant's Miami attorney, Ruben Oliva, referring to Panama's former drug-dealing dictator who was jailed in Miami after the 1989 U.S. invasion. "If called upon, he will testify that he personally paid Aristide on any number of occasions - it's in the millions."

Aristide could also face further incrimination by other accused Haitian drug traffickers recently extradited to the United States. Intense DEA investigations in recent years have led to some 40 indictments - mostly in Miami - and between 50 and 65 arrests.

Among them is Jasme, owner of a former construction business in Haiti, ED 1, who was extradited to the United States last year. Jasme has so far refused to cooperate with U.S. officials, according to his attorney, Frank Rubino, who also represents Gen. Noriega.

It is not known if U.S. prosecutors have considered indicting Aristide.

"I know they are interested in him," Rubino said. "But I don't know if they have the evidence they need."

Other attorneys representing accused Haitian traffickers said it was not clear how deeply Aristide was involved in the trade.

"I don't think he was an actual drug trafficker," said Richard Decobo, attorney for Wista Louis, one of the Haitians accused of trafficking. "But he may have been involved in taking drug money. It seems to me he was taxing drug dealers."

Attorneys and Haiti analysts say Aristide may have turned to the traffickers in desperation over the country's international aid cut-off.

"He did the only thing he could to keep the country afloat," Decobo said.

DEA officials point out that in the late 1990s the main drug trafficking routes between Colombia and the United States, via Mexico, were coming under intense pressure from law enforcement. Colombian traffickers began to switch routes to Haiti, attracted by the rampant corruption there.

Even so, most analysts still have a hard time believing that Aristide, a former priest, could have fallen into the same category as Panama's Noriega.

"I find it all very timely and difficult to believe," said Robert White, a retired U.S. diplomat who knows Aristide well. "He is blind and he is stubborn, but a drug trafficker? No!"

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