19629: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Mission to stabilize reeling nation begins (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Tue, Mar. 02, 2004

ESTABLISHING SECURITY


Mission to stabilize reeling nation begins

Fewer than 500 foreign troops are in Haiti's capital, mostly at the airport,
as the leading edge of a 5,000-member, three- month stability mission.

BY CAROL ROSENBERG

crosenberg@herald.com


Some 450 U.S. Marines and French and Canadian troops set up a command center
at the Port-au-Prince airport Monday -- leading a force that Pentagon
planners say could swell to 5,000 multinational troops bringing order and
aid to Haiti under a U.N. mandate.

About 2,000 members of the force are expected to be Americans -- U.S.
Marines on a mission to help Haiti after a rebellion that left more than 100
dead and forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to resign.

But only the advance party was in place Monday as a U.S. military airlift
delivered several dozen Marines and supplies -- food, fuel, ammunition and
armored vehicles -- for the 200 soldiers who arrived Sunday from Camp
Lejeune, N.C.

''Today wasn't a big troop movement day,'' said Col. David McWilliams,
spokesman for the Pentagon's Southern Command, which runs U.S. military
operations in the Caribbean.

``It was more about setting the conditions -- security for follow-on forces,
getting commercial air connections reestablished and humanitarian aid start
flowing in.''

In fact, the troops now led by a lieutenant colonel, a battalion commander,
are preparing for what Pentagon planners describe as a mixed-bag mission:
Stop the chaos and looting, bring in humanitarian aid, start reestablishing
civil society.

And it's all supposed to be done in three months, when the mandate the
interim force got Sunday night in a U.N. Security Council vote runs out and
the U.S. officer in charge, likely a general, is replaced by a U.N.
commander.

Meantime, at the Pentagon, commanders had yet to issue orders for the
follow-on U.S. forces.

RAPID-REACTION FORCE

But defense sources said planners were expecting a 2,200-member Marine
expeditionary unit, a rapid-reaction force, to get the mission.

In his daily news briefing, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld estimated
that the multinational force would number ``less than 5,000, total of
everybody.''

But, ''once the situation's stabilized, I think it would be appropriate to
pass the lead off,'' Rumsfeld said, suggesting that the U.S. military might
be finished before the three-month deadline.

With 120,000 troops committed in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan, the Bush
administration is not keen to engage in another large-scale commitment of
U.S. forces abroad.

The Clinton administration dispatched more than 20,000 troops in 1994 to
restore Aristide to power after a coup d'état ousted him. U.S. soldiers
stayed until 1996, training police and doing humanitarian projects.

Since then, Aristide disbanded the Haitian army, which had ousted him, and
kept only a police force, accounting for the Pentagon plan for a force that
is one-fourth the size of 1994's force.

As for other foreign forces, France had dispatched about 150 troops, and 30
to 50 Canadians had arrived Monday. But a Caribbean contingent was also
expected -- perhaps after CARICOM leaders assemble today in Jamaica for an
emergency meeting on Haiti.

The first U.S. landing force was armed with M-16 assault rifles, grenade
launchers and a dozen Humvees with mounted .50-caliber machine guns.

But that force is unlikely to start patrols of Port-au-Prince for days --
until after an initial assessment in consultation with the U.S. Embassy of
the military requirements.

''I don't think we'll see any patrols going out to the city,'' said Raul
Duany, another Southcom spokesman. ``We need more personnel and a better
definition of the mission.''

He said that the Marines' rules of engagement so far prohibited them from
talking with the rebels but did permit them to be in the National Palace,
protecting acting President Alexandre Boniface, the Supreme Court chief
justice who replaced Aristide under provisions of the Haitian Constitution.

NO DETAILS

At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, flatly refused to give details on the rules of engagement.

Reporters wanted specifically to know whether, as during the 1994 U.S.
invasion, U.S. troops would stand by while Haitians looted in plain sight.

But Myers seemed to suggest Monday that military power might not be required
to tackle the Haiti mission.

''This is work that could be done by well-trained police forces, and it
certainly is a political-economic problem,'' he said, ``but I wouldn't
characterize it as a military problem.''

Still, Rumsfeld warned that the U.S. military might suffer casualties in the
Caribbean.

''Obviously we would not want to leave the implication that they are
risk-free. There are a lot of people with weapons, there are a lot of thugs,
there are a lot of criminals. There are people who may very well shoot
somebody and people can get killed, including our forces,'' he said.

``I mean, you just don't go into a less-than-stable environment and think
that it's going to be casualty-free.''

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