23853: Hermantin (News) Before rushing to occupy Haiti, give it a fair chance (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Miami-Herald



Posted on Fri, Dec. 03, 2004




NATION BUILDING


Before rushing to occupy Haiti, give it a fair chance

BY RAYMOND A. JOSEPH


Would another occupation of Haiti produce better results than the first?

Certainly the Haitian leadership has been derelict of its duty over the
years, but a recent suggestion in these pages favoring ''some form of
international protectorate'' for Haiti is not supported by the historical
record.

>From 1915 to 1934, the Americans occupied this Caribbean island nation.
Although they built the infrastructure of the country, they didn't change
its social structure. In fact, they reinforced the cleavage in the society
by favoring a small elite, for the most part of light skin. Americans
organized a gendarmerie to keep order.

Eventually it became the coup-prone army. Above all, the occupiers collected
taxes to repay loans made by an American bank in New York.

A fierce anti-American guerrilla movement was eventually crushed. However,
the U.S. occupation spawned Haitian nationalism, giving rise to a rabidly
anti-American movement. The ruthless dictator Frangois ''Papa Doc'' Duvalier
(1957-1971) was a byproduct of that occupation. Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
touted as Haiti's ''first democratically elected'' president, chose
Charlemagne Piralte, the martyred hero of the American occupation, as his
patron saint.

With help from the Clinton administration, Aristide disbanded the army in
1995. A new police force organized with U.S. help became more corrupt and
more repressive than the army that it had replaced. From a high of 6,000
police in 1995, that force dwindled to about 2,500 when Aristide fled Haiti
on Feb. 29.

Aristide depended on organized thugs, not unlike the Tontons-Macoute of the
Duvalier era, to keep himself in power. Those heavily armed thugs, who
supplanted the police, are causing most of the trouble in Haiti today under
the watch of the MINUSTAH, as the ''U.N. Mission to Stabilize Haiti'' is
called.

For not applying the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force last February,
the international community now bears great responsibility for a mini-Iraq
at America's doorstep. Nonetheless, the chaos in Haiti is circumscribed in
few pockets in Port-au-Prince. With determination and the proper resources,
it can be quickly controlled.

Would we be facing the current violence if the 8,000 troops and police that
the United Nations had promised were in place last September? Despite a
checkered human-rights record, the 7,000-member Haitian army maintained
order in a land the size of Maryland with a population of 8 million. Compare
that with the nearly 40,000 police officers in New York City, whose
population is also about 8 million!

We would expect the Haiti's U.N. force to have a broader mandate to help
establish order until a new national force can replace it. That would be no
different from what the U.S.-led force is doing in Iraq.

But how can we ask the government of Alexandre Latortue to establish order
with so little resources at its disposal? Not much of the $1.1 billion
pledged last July at a World Bank conference to rebuild Haiti has been
disbursed.

When President Clinton contemplated change in Haiti, he dispatched more than
20,000 soldiers there in 1994 to restore President Aristide to power and
provided ample financial support. Then, America looked the other way as
Aristide armed his irregular army of thugs.

Before rushing to protectorate status or occupation, the international
community should provide the personnel, training and proper financial
package to a team of national professionals whose aim is to create a secure
climate conducive to holding free democratic elections, leading to the
economic development of a country too long neglected and ostracized.

Raymond A. Joseph is charge d' affaires at the Haitian Embassy in
Washington.