20179: Bernard: P&J#577A HAITI: Comments by a former U.S. AID official (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dick Bernard <dick@chez-nous.net>


J. Brian Atwood's qualifications to speak about U.S. policies towards
Haiti are briefly described at the end of this article. For perspective,
the U.S. Department of State, December 29, 2003, described U.S.
assistance to Haiti as just under $29 million for FY2004, with an
additional "$24 million sought".

BYLINE: J. Brian Atwood
CREDITLINE:  Minneapolis Star Tribune March 10, 2004
HEADLINE: J. Brian Atwood: U.S. needs to stop playing partisan politics
with Haiti


Even an optimist has a hard time being positive about Haiti's future.
After more than a decade of experimentation with democracy, Haiti is
today a failed state. Haiti's elected president is once again seeking
asylum, forced out by armed thugs and major international powers who
lost patience with him.
The controversy today is whether the United States forced President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of power, participating in what he has called
a "coup d'état." One can only believe the denials the Bush
administration has offered, though for reasons unrelated to Haiti, many
will not. No, if Aristide was forced out, it was not at the end of an
American gun. He was instead the victim of longstanding American
neglect.
It may be a very long while before Aristide ever sees Haiti again. But
that is less important than knowing whether Haiti will ever again be a
viable nation state. Will this island, just off the coast of Florida,
end up being an inhospitable prison for its 8 million inhabitants? Will
it become a safe-haven for drug traffickers or terrorists? Or will it
become a stable, functioning polity with an economy viable enough to
satisfy its people's needs?
These are vital questions for our political leaders, for the answers
have serious national security implications -- and not just for the
people of Florida. A policy of treating Haiti as if it were Alcatraz
prison may satisfy our need to protect Florida from a huge influx of
refugees, but it will not protect our nation from the threats that could
emanate from a failed state.
We never did give Haiti's democratic government the support it needed.
We in the Clinton administration tried very hard to support the new
democracy. We made choices that seemed reasonable given the constraints
in Washington, but in retrospect some of those choices came to undermine
that goal.
We insisted, for example, that Aristide serve out the remaining part of
his term rather than staying in office long enough to compensate for his
years of asylum. The consequence was that a popular president had to
leave office after about a year. The subsequent election placed in
office a man widely believed to be an Aristide puppet. This served
neither the new government nor Aristide, as it undercut confidence in
the new president and made Aristide look like a behind-the-scenes
manipulator.
We offered $100 million a year in foreign assistance -- a generous
amount -- but the needs were closer to $1 billion. Our expectation was
that the World Bank would provide large soft loans to help repair and
create much-needed infrastructure. These resources were never
forthcoming. The great dividend democracy was to provide never became a
reality and disillusionment set in.
Aristide was reelected in 2001 and took office just after President Bush
entered the White House. The Bush administration made it clear from the
beginning that it would not be very friendly. Aristide, after all, was
the president that Bill Clinton restored to power. The Aristide election
was messy. His Lavalas Party claimed national assembly seats that it
most likely stole through ballot-box fraud. While Aristide's margin of
victory put his popular election beyond dispute, opposition complaints
about stolen assembly seats soured the relationship with the new U.S.
administration. Soon, direct aid to the Haitian government was cut off;
the administration used Haiti's political stalemate as an excuse to do
nothing.
It is often said in the democracy-promotion business that elections do
not make a democracy. The institutions and values of democracy take
years to build. When the backdrop is abject poverty, the challenge
becomes immense. New leaders are expected to change these conditions
overnight. In the case of Haiti, the international community, with the
United States in the lead, provided too little help at first and then
turned its back.
Thus Aristide, an imperfect leader but a man thoroughly capable of
empathy for the poor, was denied the wherewithal to respond to their
plight. It was only a matter of time before the clash between warlords
would fill the political vacuum. This is not unique to Haiti. Conflict
is common in the world's poorest nations.
Yet, there is always hope, even for failed states. Uganda is a perfect
example of a nation that resurrected itself after two civil wars and
years of despotic leadership. Uganda is halfway around the world, Haiti
is not.
There is no question that our leaders in Washington have played politics
with Haiti. Republicans criticized Clinton for sending in the military
and then abandoned a democratically elected president because they did
not like his politics. Democrats saw the constraints more clearly than
the opportunities and were too quick to excuse Aristide's failures of
governance.
It is time to stop playing partisan politics with Haiti and to start
seeing it as a potential national security threat. If our political
parties can work together on this problem, the United States can help
turn Haiti around. It may take a large investment and a generation, but
one thing is certain: We cannot afford a failed state of 8 million
people just off our shore.


J. Brian Atwood is dean of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey
Institute of Public Affairs and a former administrator of the U.S.
Agency for International Development.