18740: Esser: Washington Must Dramatically Raise its Profile Regarding Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Council On Hemispheric Affairs
Memorandum to the Press 04.08
Tuesday February 17, 2004


* New French initiative vital for bringing peace to the island.

* New Washington Latin American policymaking team is needed: replace
such radical extremist political appointees like Otto Reich and Roger
Noriega with career Foreign Service officers.

* Haiti opposition should be told to negotiate with government or be
considered irrelevant.

* Outside police force, now likely to include French units, needed to
immediately pacify the country.

Unlike his U.S. counterpart, French Foreign Minister Dominique de
Villepin has said that his government is considering dispatching
French troops to Haiti as part of an international police force to
put down the present violence in the country. Meanwhile, Secretary of
State Colin Powell must do more than simply say that he is
"disappointed" with the quality of leadership that Jean Bertrand
Aristide has afforded Haiti. In response to Powell's statement, many
Haitians could respond that despite Aristide's many shortcomings, his
level of performance compares favorably to the Bush administration's
failed strategy towards the island, which has been based on freezing
all aid to Aristide and waiting for the inevitable chaos to descend.
Throughout Aristide's three-year exile in Washington and after his
restoration to the presidency in 1994 (after a U.S.-led regional
force landed in Haiti), Washington has treated the Haitian president
as a potentially dangerous figure who must be curbed in order to
fence off his radical politics and messianic tendencies. Instead, all
along Aristide should have been viewed as Haiti's most precious
political asset, regardless of his personal failings. Yet, even from
a narrowly defined perspective of serving U.S. national interests and
Bush administration reelection concerns centered on the negative
impact that hordes of Haitian refugees sailing to south Florida would
have on the president's campaign, Washington, beginning with the
Clinton administration, has maintained an indefensible policy towards
Aristide since he came into office upon winning two-thirds of the
vote in the 1990 election. Similarly, throughout Haiti's history,
Washington has treated the island with a mixture of low expectations,
unrelieved disrespect and a policy devoid of any desire for
constructive engagement or democratic advancement.

Washington's Carefully Contrived Pretext

At the end of the 1990s, the IDB and other international lending
agencies, along with the U.S. and other international donors,
promised Haiti a total package of some $500 million for relief and
development purposes. However, Washington, at the insistence of
Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), then-chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, instituted a policy of exaggerating the
magnitude of disputed legislative elections in May of 2000 and using
them to craft a policy of economic denial against Aristide based on
the thesis that pledged donor aid to the country would be frozen
until free elections were staged. About this time, the Democratic
Convergence was formed, representing a coalition of disparate
personalities and micro organizations, including former followers of
the Duvalier dictatorship, the thuggish paramilitary force, FRAPH,
and remnants of the harsh military junta that ruled the country until
1994. More recently, it was joined by the Group of 184, led by the
very controversial André Apaid, a shady and notoriously opportunistic
island millionaire who illegally holds both Haitian and U.S.
passports, and who was involved in a personal tax fraud case with
Haitian authorities.

In recent months, Washington's calculated inaction and
the OAS' lack of political will have allowed the situation in Haiti
to rapidly deteriorate. The Bush administration's new leadership team
appointed to implement U.S. policy toward Latin America, including
Haiti, which featured Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega,
White House advisor Otto Reich and Noriega's assistant Daniel Fisk,
were all protégés of ex-Senator Helms. It was this group of zealots
and hardliners who, off the record, let it be known to all concerned,
that the Bush administration would countenance regime change in Haiti
and that Aristide might have to be induced to step down in order to
return stability to the country. In the last few days, as the
situation in Haiti began to worsen, Secretary Powell, as he did once
before when Washington had fallen on its face after his keystone cop
team led by Otto Reich had prematurely recognized what turned out to
be a failed coup in Venezuela, seized control of the issue by
reversing Noriega and Reich and clearly stating that the U.S. would
not recognize the overthrow of Aristide, as was also the Secretary of
State's position when it came to President Chávez in Caracas.

A Deeply Flawed U.S. Policy

After months of inaction, the U.S. has continued to base its policy
towards Haiti on its freeze of aid and a series of political
conditions that would have to be met before the freeze would be
lifted. It persuaded Ottawa and Brussels to follow this policy, which
also has been adopted by the OAS. Yet even though Aristide repeatedly
has agreed to adopt these conditions, Washington showed no interest
in advancing the pacification of the country or decisively addressing
the now rapidly deteriorating economic and political conditions on
the island. At this point, it is imperative that the Bush
administration replace its present team of ideologues with seasoned
policymakers who would be more responsive to hemispheric realities.
At the present time, something of a crisis exists not only with the
carrying out of U.S.-Haiti policy, but also in the general tenor of
Washington's ties with the rest of the hemisphere. In recent weeks, a
flap broke out between Noriega and Argentine President Néstor
Kirchner, in which the latter insisted that his country would no
longer be the "carpet" for U.S. policymakers and a high level
Argentine official characterized Noriega's statements regarding the
country's drift in favor of Cuba as being "imbecilic".

In Haiti at the present time, armed fugitives from the period of
military rule and notorious figures like ex-police chief Guy Philippe
and FRAPH leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain have teamed up with armed
street gangs that have threatened to expand their activities until
they control the entire country. Any distinction between the André
Apaid "polite" opposition and the violent street gangs that have
seized a number of Haitian cities, including Gonaives, was removed
when the U.S. citizen and Haitian millionaire urged the Gonaives
street gang leaders not to turn in their weapons and remarked that
"armed resistance" was a legitimate action.

The prospects for the onslaught of a terrible civil war mounts as
impoverished Aristide supporters, who although they have been
disappointed that their leader has failed to make good on his pledge
to improve their daily lives, prepare to defend the country's
constitutional government.

What is apparent is that Washington must install a new Latin American
policymaking team on an emergency basis. The group of ideologues now
holding key positions in the policymaking process is incapable of
bringing a peaceful resolution of Haiti's present grave situation.
Realizing the past ineffectiveness of the OAS' leadership and
political will on the Haitian issue, the United Nations should make
the increasingly perilous situation in Haiti an item on its agenda
and quickly decide, on an expedited basis, to dispatch a collective
police force to the island consisting of units from Haiti's fellow
CARICOM countries, as well as France and Canada. Secretary Powell, at
this late date, also should instruct the country's opposition that it
either must participate in the country's electoral process by
negotiating with the government on various processes spelled out by
the CARICOM and OAS initiatives, or be considered irrelevant.


This analysis was prepared by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Issued 17 February, 2004

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