20245: (Chamberlain) The nation-building trap (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(openDemocracy, 11 March 04)



The nation-building trap: Haiti after Aristide

By Rick Barton and Johanna Mendelson Forman



Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was restored to power by
international help in 1994. A decade on, this “success” appears tainted by
his second overthrow. What went wrong, and can the international community
get it right next time?


The departure from Haiti of its president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, marks
the opening of a new chapter in the history of that unlucky country. It is
also the end of an era of nation-building that demonstrates that the United
States, and the international community in general, are unwilling to
demonstrate full commitment in a place where winning the peace might have
been possible.

The crucial period in their failure was after 1994, when Aristide was
restored to the presidency by force of US arms after a three-year exile.
Then, the fitful largesse of the international donor community meant that
Haiti’s greatest resource – its own citizens – were not given a chance to
reclaim their own country.

The international community did supply peacekeepers under the United
Nations rubric, but it did not build a social safety-net for the majority
of Haitians who were illiterate or untouched by the benefits of modern
life: clean water, decent housing and adequate medical care. The incomplete
efforts to build new judicial and governing institutions – the small,
inadequate police force being the most representative example – contributed
to the events of February-March 2004, when gangs of thugs, supported by
opposition leaders, occupied provincial cities then marched on the capital,
Port au Prince.

In this light, Haiti must be seen in the broader perspective of a more
recent doctrine, “humanitarian intervention”. This enjoins the
international community with a “duty to protect” citizens of a state who
face imminent danger to life and liberty. Even though in 1994 US-led
international peacekeepers were permitted to enter Haiti, the “duty to
protect” Haitians in the real sense of that term was not fulfilled.

Ten years ago, a group of us went to Haiti to help rebuild a society torn
apart by political unrest and violence. As part of the United States Agency
for International Development’s (USAID) first efforts to address the
transitions of the post-cold war era, we formed the core of the Office of
Transition Initiatives (OTI) – a small office inside USAID dedicated to the
political development of post-conflict countries. Unlike other types of
development work in Haiti, OTI sought to address the most immediate issues
that could make or break the restoration of President Aristide.

We had two main concerns. The first was security. We were dedicated to the
demobilisation and reintegration of the Haitian army, bringing closure to
an institution whose repressive power had dominated Haiti’s history. Within
six months, the demobilisation programme was underway, with vocational
training and support for former soldiers a key factor in the stabilisation
of the country.

The second concern was with the local communities where 75% of Haiti’s 8
million people lived. We undertook a community development programme where
small grants, given to any party willing to work on a project that would
benefit the community, could help to jump-start economic life. Our ability
to move quickly, to disperse funding, and to work with other agencies,
including the American military, made it possible to create some tangible
results quickly.

Our community development programmes dispersed resources to community
projects: school repairs, water works, replacing small bridges,
reforestation. With these came the seeds of local governance as our staff
helped Haitians convene meetings to decide on community priorities. These
ad hoc councils eventually laid the foundation of community organisations
chosen by election. By injecting not only money, but also hope, we felt we
were making an important difference to the lives of so many Haitians all
around the country.

In two years, we made forty trips to Haiti. The OTI approach, a
non-traditional development programme, was considered a success as more
communities became involved, and as the former army was transformed into a
corps of able-bodied young men who now had a trade or some skills to use.
It was uplifting to be part of something that was improving the daily lives
of Haitians.

But the programme was short-lived. After two years, no additional funds
were allocated to “reconstruction”. Communities were left without further
resources to continue with the local projects. The “institution-building”
programmes that replaced them did not value citizen participation.

Our last visit to Haiti was in 1996. We visited the community of St. Marc,
observed the wonderful work that so many local citizens had completed –
mainly because of the infusion of small amounts of resources – and wondered
what would now happen to all these efforts. Our pleasure was mixed with
apprehension: two years was certainly insufficient time to build a strong
foundation for local governance or economic stability.

The fears we had that day have been confirmed by subsequent events in
Haiti; indeed, St Marc itself was one of the centres of violence in the
recent political tumult. From the vantage-point of a decade later, a
two-year time frame for post-conflict reconstruction seems ridiculously
short. But this issue can only be addressed if development agencies and the
UN were to meet the costs of long-term “nation-building” and reinforce the
moral and financial commitment to complete the job started in 1994.

US policy routinely seeks to uphold democratically elected governments
rather than allowing them to be overthrown by rebels or dissidents. The
case of Haiti may represent a situation where a visceral dislike of a
political leader may ultimately have hastened his departure. Even in 1994,
President Aristide was a lightning rod for partisan bickering among US
political leaders. The use of 25,000 soldiers to reinstall him to his
elected office was not followed by long-term willingness to secure his
position against challenge.

Thus, after Washington had spent the last three years cultivating only one
side of the political spectrum, no middle ground for negotiation with the
opposition was available in these recent critical weeks. Even more tragic
is the probability that Haitians may no longer be persuaded that it is
long-term political compromises and patient institution-building that are
necessary to alleviate their poverty – not quick-fix rescue efforts.

In the last decade, the perceived need to act in the face of imminent
danger to the citizens of a state has resulted in a new form of
international action: “humanitarian intervention”. It was first expounded
in 2002 in the work of Australia’s former foreign minister, Gareth Evans,
and a former UN special advisor, Mohamed Sahnoun.

This doctrine interprets the UN charter as allowing intervention when a
state is unwilling or unable to protect its citizens from harm. This “duty
to protect” has in practice three elements: that UN member-states intervene
to prevent further death and destruction; that further conflict is
prevented via security measures and peaceful conflict resolution; and that
the international community is involved in reconstruction.

In short, nation-building is the other side of the intervention coin. If
countries intervene militarily to prevent death and destruction, hopefully
with the blessing of the UN, then they must also invest resources to repair
ailing states over the long term.

How does the experience of Haiti measure up to these criteria? The country
received the immediate benefits of protection in 1994 through the presence
of peacekeepers and a UN mission; but the rebuilding component made Haiti a
victim of “donor fatigue” as well as of the problems inherent in a weak,
fragile state that had often struggled to sustain its core institutions and
maintain public order.

The abandonment of Haiti reflects a wider problem within the international
community. The world’s nation-building capacity, expressed via individual
donor countries or the collective will of the UN, is quite limited.
Long-term rebuilding is more than either an operational or a financial
option – it embodies the evolving doctrine enjoining action beyond the
boundaries of state sovereignty in the interests of saving lives. But the
core mandate of this doctrine, “the duty to protect”, cannot be fulfilled
without a new consensus that explicitly includes the responsibility to
rebuild. The experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan are clearly of vital
relevance here.

Rebuilding states is a multilateral game. But the resources or the
political commitment to something as long-term as nation-building remain
elusive. Without a new consensus about how these are allocated, we will
continue to see quick-fix interventions that may have the unintended
consequence of weakening further rather than strengthening the capacity of
a country to rebuild.

A UN-based transitional authority system has been suggested, which could
perform a dual role for states like Haiti: protection by international
peacekeeping and security forces, alongside administrative support by the
international community. This might include common resource pools overseen
by the World Bank, and specific programmes to alleviate the worst forms of
human insecurity. All this could be quickly inaugurated by a Security
Council decision to intervene as a humanitarian act.

There is still time to consider this option in Haiti. The country could be
the first beneficiary of this new intervention package. But until robust
intervention is followed by equally robust nation-building efforts, the
“duty to protect” will remain unfinished business – and the political
future of Haiti will remain as unsettled as that of Afghanistan or Iraq.