20142: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Marines have delicate mission (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Tue, Mar. 09, 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE


Marines have delicate mission

As thousands of U.S. Marines arrive in Haiti to keep the peace, the job
becomes increasingly difficult.

BY JOE MOZINGO

jmozingo@herald.com


COL. DAVE BERGER, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Regiment

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Just as the morning sun finally beat the mosquitoes back
-- and hours before U.S. Marines would fire their first rounds in this
country -- Maj. Justin Rodriguez interrupted the morning briefing to lay
out, in the ragged language of the Corps, a dictum for this mission.

''This ain't a war,'' he said. ``The Haitian people aren't the enemy.''

He told his company, hunkered down on a remote corner of the airport, that
some soldiers were too aggressive.

``The other day we had a Marine trying to keep a gate closed at the port.
Some kids kept coming up to the gate because they were curious.''

Rodriguez paused for a moment. And then he drew his voice deep and hard from
his gut: 'We don't need a Marine aiming his weapon and yelling, `Get the - -
- - out of here!' ''

Once again, U.S. soldiers find themselves in a situation where the enemy is
undefined and largely unknown, blending into the very crowds peacekeepers
are here to protect.

STARK OBSTACLES

Sunday's gun battle -- in which seven people died and some 30 were wounded
in front of the National Palace -- showed the stark obstacles the soldiers
will face in trying to get this country up and running again.

Before the shooting began Sunday, Col. Dave Berger -- commander of the 3rd
Battalion, 8th Regiment -- said the chaotic yet delicate situation his
troops are facing is real-time practice for Iraq, where they are scheduled
to go next.

The mission Sunday: Secure the National Palace and the square in front of it
for the first large protest against exiled-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
since he left Feb. 29.

>From his position within the palace gates, Berger and other commanders
scanned a crowd of thousands, who were dancing, chanting and circling the
square. Sniper teams set up on the palace roof.

Word was out that a group of Aristide supporters -- and possibly the
murderous chimres -- planned to crash the party. But no one knew whether
they would come as one big gang or simply infiltrate the crowd. Berger and
his boss, Col. Mark Gurganus, struggled to come up with a way to a defuse a
gun battle without shooting innocent people.

''It's going to be hard,'' Berger said. ``One of the things we can do is
take a light-armored vehicle into the crowds and do a slow circle to
disperse them. It can't boil as long as you're stirring it.''

But it did boil as the protest was winding down about 2:30 p.m. Gunmen
emerged in the crowd and from a building nearby and began shooting people.
The Marines took fire themselves and shot one man dead.

In the aftermath, they are asking themselves whether they could have done
more to prevent the incident.

''You got to be pretty discriminate about your shooting in a situation like
that,'' Capt. Brad Cornali said.

''We're trying to encourage democracy,'' said a disheartened Berger at the
end of the day. ``I'm afraid if we blanket the area, we'll prevent exactly
what we're trying to generate.''

ROUTINE BEGINNING

Sunday started as usual, with soldiers popping malaria pills and scratching
the bites they incurred throughout the night.

At around 9 a.m., the supply convoy lined up its vehicles. In a high-back
Humvee, six Marines -- kids really -- argued the merits of Haiti over their
last assignment, counter-insurgency work in the Philippines.

''This is heaven compared to the Philippines,'' said Denis Couture, 19, of
Boston.

The convoy moved out around 10. As an indication of the difficulties the
Marines face in simply getting their bearings in this country, the heavily
armed unit had to follow a Haitian guide in a Dollar Rent-a-Car to navigate
the city's maze of streets.

Sgt. Michael Haddle drove an armored ''hardback'' Humvee with a mounted
.762-caliber machine gun, passing crowds of Haitians and overloaded colorful
tap taps, pickups that serve as public transportation. Most stared
impassively at the Americans, some waved, some shouted at them to go home.
One man gave them the middle finger.

''The reaction to us, it really depends where you are,'' said Lt. Kyle
Aldrich. ``I guess it's symbolic of the whole situation here.''

They arrived at the palace and set up a command post. Two Huey helicopters
monitored the progress of protesters, who were marching down from the suburb
of Petionville.

The morning was quiet. Many soldiers slept under the trees and ate their
rations. Even when the protesters arrived, the event stayed peaceful until
the very end. The shooting began around 2:30 p.m. Sometime soon after,
soldiers saw people scattering and screaming on the northeast side of the
palace. They pointed to two gunmen -- one holding a 45, one reaching for his
belt.

The soldiers yelled at everyone to get down, and shot one of them, they said
later. The other escaped.

SHOOTERS SCATTERED

The crowd began carrying the wounded to the front gates, and the
light-armored vehicles rolled out. The Marines say they hunted shooters
down, but they all scattered into the narrow winding alleys of the
neighborhood.

At 5 p.m. Berger called everyone in a circle for a debriefing. Anyone
involved in the shooting or subsequent manhunt took center stage and
described what happened, as one Marine typed up the chronology on a laptop.

One soldier who went into the streets said he saw people using cellphones,
wearing headsets and distributing American cash -- a possible indication
that the attack was funded and well-coordinated.

As the mosquitoes came back out of hiding as the sun dropped over the
mountains, some Marines moved into the palace barracks for dinner, and the
supply company headed back down to the airport in the waning light.

''We will go back now and figure out how to do it better next time,'' Berger
said.

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