22162: (Craig) NYT: A Haitian Village Gets a Barrage of Care (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <hoosier@att.net>


A Haitian Village Gets a Barrage of Care
May 31, 2004
By TIM WEINER

MAPOU, Haiti, May 30 - The awful truth is that life in this
ruined patch of Haiti may be better now than it has ever
been, or will ever be again.

Doctors and nurses treated the sick and wounded on Sunday
in a shack that passed for a clinic. Hulking American
helicopters delivered tons of food. People with money and
power - aid workers and American soldiers - attended to
Mapou.

For the first time, and perhaps the last, someone strong is
looking after the people of Mapou and its outlying hamlets.
The people here lost as many as 1,670 of their friends,
neighbors and relatives in the floods that have destroyed
swaths of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, according to
one Red Cross official in Mapou on Sunday, Erich Baumann.

The 1,900 American soldiers in Haiti - and their
helicopters, now Mapou's lifeline - will start leaving the
country on Tuesday. They will all be gone in a month.

About 1,500 of them are marines based at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
More than 1,000 of them were scheduled to go to Iraq in
August. Some may take a bit more time to rest, retool and
retrain, but almost all will head to Baghdad and beyond by
year's end.

The Haitian government has about $3 per person to help the
estimated 75,000 people affected by the flood. With so
little money to aid Mapou's survivors, the government may
force them to move. Many of the survivors say they might as
well leave forever.

"This land is cursed," said Lilie Jean-Baptiste, 26, who
like most of her neighbors had willed a living out of the
earth, growing a little cassava, buying rice and beans when
she scraped a dollar or two together. "Mapou is over."

Marcberth St.-Louis, 21, is the son of dirt farmers who
dreamed of a better life abroad someday. Mr. St.-Louis, who
speaks fluent French, Creole, Spanish and a little English,
said: "For many people here, life is finished. People loved
their little piece of land but it's all gone now."

Raymond Delaba, 15, a survivor of the torrent that took
Mapou and now the sole support for his six younger brothers
and sisters, said: "It's just impossible to survive here,
with or without the flood. My parents are gone. My house is
gone. Our pigs and goats are gone. How am I going to
survive? Are we going to eat a handful of rice out of a bag
from abroad for the rest of our lives?"

This is what life was like before the flood in Mapou and
its six surrounding hamlets - one of which, Barrois, was
completely destroyed:

As in most of Haiti's villages, the average income here is
a dollar a day or less. Last year, a drought shriveled the
corn. For Christmas, fate gave Mapou a flash flood. During
and after the February revolt that overthrew President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically
elected leader, the price of rice - the staff of life for
Haitians - rose 50 percent in Mapou. That meant 50 percent
less to eat, Mapou's survivors said.

No leader of Haiti has ever visited Mapou, the people said.
"For the poor, there is no government," Ms. Jean-Baptiste
said. "The only government of Haiti is God."

Now, starting June 1, a coalition of foreign soldiers
cobbled together by the United Nations will begin to
replace the American-led force that occupied Haiti after
the fall of Mr. Aristide, who flew to exile in South Africa
on Sunday.

It is unclear that this force will have the organization,
money or equipment to deal with the emergencies of food,
medicine and shelter facing survivors of the flood, who
will need help for months to come.

The force is supposed to include soldiers from Brazil,
China, France, Argentina, Nepal, Bangladesh, Uruguay and
the Philippines. But it remains largely a force on paper,
though a ceremony beginning the transfer is to take place
on Tuesday and the new United Nations force is set to
assume command on June 20.

The question is what happens to the people of Mapou when
the world's fleeting attention - and the American soldiers
- move on.

The same might be asked of the people of nearby Fond
Verrettes, where the dead and missing now number close to
200, and Jimani, just over the border in the Dominican
Republic, where more than 700 are dead or missing. No one
has counted the dead in two small floodstruck Haitian
towns, Nan Galet and Boulou, but unofficially the toll in
both nations is now well over 2,000.

The United Nations is already running more than a few major
operations in places like Liberia, where thousands of
peacekeepers patrol a devastated country. The world's aid
agencies are struggling to handle a world of crises, many
man-made, in places like Afghanistan. The charitable
responses of the world's governments to Haiti have been far
less than the United Nations sought.

So the withdrawal of American forces will not help Haiti
cope with its latest disaster.

The American military began arriving Feb. 29, the day
President Aristide fell, as the capital, Port-au-Prince,
was stormed by armed rebels calling for a return of the
notorious Haitian Army he had disbanded.

The Americans were seen by many Haitians as an occupying
force; the United States Marines invaded and essentially
ruled Haiti from 1915 to 1934. The return of American
forces was welcomed by the armed rebels. But they were
hated and feared by armed Aristide loyalists, who saw them
as part of the political equation that ended Mr. Aristide's
presidency.

In the last three months, the American military role in
Haiti has shifted from taking - and returning - hostile
fire, to building a firewall between pro- and anti-Aristide
gunmen, to providing a measure of comfort.

Troops have delivered 153 tons of food, 30,000 gallons of
water, and 13 tons of supplies like tarpaulins and cooking
tools to flood victims in the past five days. Before the
flood, American, French, Canadian and Chilean soldiers here
distributed food and medicine, cleaned up tons of garbage,
refurbished schools and repaired orphanages.

United States marines are trained to fight a "three-block
war," an idea conceived by Gen. Charles Krulak, Marine
Corps commandant from 1995 to 1999.

"You're handing out humanitarian assistance to people,
you're peacekeepers intervening between forces, you're
getting shot in combat," is the way Lt. Col. Dave Lapan of
the Marines, the spokesman for the American military in
Haiti, explains the three-block doctrine. "Our forces would
be able to do all three because, increasingly, that is the
world we are going to be living in.

"Haiti has been exactly that," Colonel Lapan said.

"When
we were first here, we were getting shot at," he said. "We
shot back. That calmed things down. Then you get into a
neighborhood and help people. That helps protect you. You
get information. You get a feeling from the populace that
you're not here as an `occupying force.' Giving people
water, rebuilding schools - that contributes to the
mission."

Haiti, he said, has "given our marines an experience that
will help them later on" - in the months to come, when they
arrive in Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/31/international/americas/31HAIT.html?ex=1087010382&ei=1&en=57a11e1fc2b8411b
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company