Haiti

Ending Haiti turmoil merely a beginning

Restoring order may be the first business of the United States, but solving the causes looks like an extended effort.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Arnold Faustin, a young gang leader, used to be a hired gun for the ruling Lavalas Family party of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Eyes hidden behind thick sunglasses, he crosses the street in the working-class Martissant district of the capital. The skinny young man with the shiny bald scalp looks cautiously both ways. Beads of sweat gather under the brow of his baseball cap.

Faustin is running scared. Now the tables are turned. Aristide is gone, and the hunters have become the hunted.

"The population is after us now," said Faustin. "They are looking for us because of what we did for Aristide."

As U.S. and French Marines beef up their presence in the Haitian capital, many residents wonder whether the country's dreaded political gangs, known as chimeres, will fade away. Bringing security to Haitian streets is the No. 1 priority for the U.S.-backed multinational force as the Bush administration begins the difficult political task of designing a policy for a new Haiti.

Disarming the population is one of a host of long-term problems the United States faces in Haiti. Roads are a wreck. Electricity is unreliable. The police force desperately needs training.

The current multinational force comes almost exactly 10 years after the last time U.S. forces landed here to restore Aristide to power. This time analysts fear that the White House, with a presidential election eight months away, will focus on quick fixes rather than long-term solutions.

"We can't let happen here what happened in the late 1990s, otherwise the (U.S.) military will be back here in another 10 years," said Adolfo Franco, who heads the Latin America section of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The lessons of 1994 were clear: "Stay there, and fix the problem," said Bob Shacochis, author of The Immaculate Invasion, about the 1994 invasion. Otherwise, he said, Haiti will continue to bedevil the United States like some "geopolitical Groundhog Day."

It is unclear exactly what Washington's plans are for Haiti this time. Strategy is still in the "consultation" and "assessment" phase, said Franco, visiting Haiti last week on a fact-finding mission.

In 1994, when the Clinton administration sent 21,000 troops to Haiti, Washington had plenty of time to prepare for Operation Restore Democracy. This time events unraveled so fast there wasn't even time to come up with a name.

"It seems to me this is very improvised at this stage," said Robert Maguire, a Haiti expert and former State Department official at Trinity College in Washington, D.C. "Washington doesn't fully know what it is doing."

The Bush administration is committed to a major increase in U.S. financial assistance, officials say. Though Haiti is the poorest country in the hemisphere, Washington slashed its annual aid budget in recent years to about $50-million. Almost all of that money went to health and food programs, channeled through nongovernmental aid agencies.

So far, the U.S. focus has not moved far beyond security. Marines were this week instructed to begin street patrols, on the lookout for gunmen, to disarm both the chimeres and a rebel army in the north of the country.

U.S. Marines have been confronted by several pro-Aristide demonstrations in the streets of Port-au-Prince since Aristide left for the Central African Republic. At least seven people were killed Sunday, including one Spanish journalist, when suspected pro-Aristide gunmen opened fire on demonstrators celebrating the president's week-old departure.

Aristide has refused to accept his removal from power, saying he was "kidnapped" in a U.S.-planned coup d'etat. He plans to travel back to the Caribbean next week, staying up to 10 weeks in Jamaica.

Aristide's presence in the region, only 293 miles from the Haitian capital, will inevitably provide a troubling distraction just as a new government is taking the reins.

Aristide's return to the region is especially unsettling for some of his own supporters. Pragmatists in the party had accepted Aristide's departure and were working with U.S. and French diplomats to appoint a new government.

Most of Aristide's chief loyalists fled the country soon after him, but a core of armed radicals appear determined to fight for his return.

One group of about 30 chimere soldiers in Martissant, agreed to meet reporters last week in an empty kindergarten. Mostly young men in their 30s, they sat at the students' desks threatening death to the enemies of Aristide and Haiti's American "invaders."

They vowed to continue acts of sabotage against "bourgeois" business owners and anti-Aristide demonstrators.

"We want the bourgeoisie to feel our misery," said Antoine Dieubon, a mid-level "base" leader. "Bush had no right to kidnap Aristide."

But, Dieubon's boss, Faustin, who stayed away from the meeting, later told reporters that he had no interest in fighting the Americans. The fighting talk of his underlings was "bulls---," he said.

Even assuming security can be quickly restored, Haiti needs much more than that.

A new police force needs to be trained, and current officers vetted. Besides millions of dollars in damage to looted businesses and government offices during a monthlong armed uprising, Haiti's infrastructure is suffering from long-term neglect.

For the time being, familiar short-term issues appear to dominate the agenda, such as shoring up the logistics of a Haitian refugee repatriation program. U.S. officials reportedly are considering plans to pay the salaries of up to 500 Haitian coast guard officers for up to three months to prevent a flood of boat people.

Shacochis is skeptical of all the talk from Washington of doing things right in Haiti this time. "Democracy doesn't need songbirds; it needs bricklayers," he wrote in an op-ed article for the Washington Post March 4.

In his book he describes in detail the excellent work done by U.S. Special Forces in Haiti to build democracy up from the ground. "They are democracy's best craftsmen, and proud of it," he wrote.

But the U.S. military withdrew from Haiti after only 18 months, well before their job was complete.

Many analysts now argue that this time the United States must consider staying in Haiti longer. "Sooner or later the U.S. will have to bite the bullet and start supporting Haiti institutionally," said Maguire.

- David Adams may be contacted at dadams@sptimes.com

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