15677: Ewen: Reuters -" U.S. nation-building in Haiti founders amid turmoil" (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Stephen Ewen <stephenewen@character4success.com>

      20 May 2003 01:05:45 GMT
      FEATURE-U.S. nation-building in Haiti founders amid turmoil

By Jim Loney

PORT-AU-PRINCE, May 20 (Reuters) - Shortly after the United States invaded
Haiti in 1994, the U.S. military built Route 9, a highway intended to link
the capital and the Cite Soleil slum with the north of the
poverty-stricken Caribbean nation.

Route 9 was the start of an ambitious U.S. plan for hundreds of miles (km)
of roads to help resurrect Haiti's moribund economy and firmly establish
democracy in a nation that had known only dictatorship and merciless
military rule.

Today, many Haitians are afraid to use Route 9, an unfinished highway
preyed upon by armed bandits. Not long ago, Haitian police stopped traffic
on the road to allow a Colombian drug plane to land and unload a tonne of
cocaine, police officials said.

The decline of a road paved with good intentions typifies nation-building
efforts in Haiti nine years after the United States restored exiled
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office -- long on ambition, short on
stamina.

As the United States launches its nation-building project in Iraq,
analysts say Haiti holds few lessons in success.

The poorest country in the Western hemisphere is stumbling toward its
200th anniversary of independence next year as troubled as ever, mired in
political turmoil, burdened by poverty and unable to solve its own
problems.

"Haiti is the perfect example of the failed state," said Ken Boodhoo, a
professor of international relations at Florida International University.

Hope was high when a popular uprising encouraged by then-Roman Catholic
priest Aristide ousted the 30-year Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986.
Five years later, Aristide became Haiti's first freely elected president.

Though exiled by a military junta just seven months after taking office,
Aristide and democratic rule returned to Haiti on the back of the U.S.
military intervention in 1994.

Aristide scored a number of successes. He dismantled the thuggish army and
banished the dreaded Ton Tons Macoute secret police that backed the
Duvalier rule. With the help of trainers from the United States and
Canada, he established the Haitian National Police, Haiti's first civilian
security force.

Declared a foreign policy success for the Clinton administration, Haiti
made small but important strides, improving health care and bolstering
education in a country with an illiteracy rate of more than 50 percent.

In 1996, Aristide turned over power to his protege Rene Preval, the first
democratic transition between leaders.

HOPES WANING

But by the end of 1996 most of the 21,000 foreign troops had departed and
by 1999 Haiti was, to a large extent, on its own, analysts said, leaving a
country with no history and little understanding of democracy to figure it
out on its own.

"If you're going to be an imperialist, at least have a sense of how you're
going to run the thing," said Lawrence Pezzullo, a Clinton envoy in the
early 1990s. "To do it on the cheap and to do it oblivious to the cultural
realities is an act of fantasy."

Pezzullo and others say the United States has no stomach for long-term
commitment and abandoned Haiti far too soon.

"They came in with a one-year strategy to a 10-year problem," said James
Morrell, executive director of the Haiti Democracy Project, a Washington
think-tank.

Haiti fell foul of international donors after national elections in May
2000, when officials improperly calculated the results of several Senate
seats to favour Aristide's party. Foreign agencies halted some $500
million in direct aid.

Aristide was returned to office in a November 2000 election boycotted by
opposition parties, and Haiti has been mired in a political stalemate
since.

Among outside observers and many Haitians, hopes for a successful
democratic transition are waning. Life has become tougher in the teeming
capital as the Haitian currency, the gourde, has lost over half its value
in 18 months.

Many Port-au-Prince residents get only two or three hours of electricity a
day. About two-thirds of Haiti's eight million people are considered
malnourished.

The United States says Haiti has been corrupted by Colombian traffickers,
who take advantage of its weak police force and poverty to move cocaine at
will.

"The United States needed to stay here for 20 years," said Richard
Desorme, a Haitian who said he is unemployed and homeless. "Then maybe
there is hope for Haiti."