24356: Hermantin (News)One year after Aristide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sat, Feb. 26, 2005


HAITI


One year after Aristide

BY KATHIE KLARREICH

KKLARREICH@aol.com


If Haitians were to acknowledge every governmental transition since the
country's independence, there would be lots of holidays. In just the last
two decades there have been more than 10 governments, some lasting days,
others years. As we approach, the one-year anniversary of former president
Jean Bertrand Aristide's Feb. 29 departure, it seems that a sad pattern of
Haiti's history has repeated itself.

Instead of bringing positive change, as many had hoped, Aristide's exit has
instead left the vast majority of the population just as unemployed,
uneducated, exploited and invisible as before.

Aristide's exile was the culmination of months of unrest, protests and
violence, propelled by a gang of Haitian armed rebels from the Dominican
Republic and what some said was a push -- others a snatch -- by the U.S.
government. Those of us who witnessed the chaos, fear and turmoil that
precipitated his departure knew just how fractured, unwieldy and frightening
Haiti had become. So it was no surprise, except perhaps to the United
States, that today Haiti is as dangerous, unruly and ungovernable as ever.
As has been the case with international interference in Haitian affairs,
there was no thoughtful game plan for its future, just a knee-jerk reaction
to a very dicey situation.

As with everything that happens in Haiti, there is no shortage of theories,
conspiracies and rumors to explain why things aren't going well. And in
Haiti, which is truly a confusing country, things are never as they seem.
There are the obvious factors that have contributed to the country's current
state -- illiteracy, poverty, drug-trafficking, corruption and a lack of
infrastructure from which to work.

But scratch below the surface and things become more complicated because,
despite the laundry list of negatives, the majority of the population
somehow manages to survive another day with no reliable resources even as
the changes in government come and go.

`The Turtle'

The current prime minister, a Haitian technocrat plucked from the States,
has lots of connections to the international community but none to the
Haitian people. Gerald Latortue, ''The Turtle,'' made costly errors early
on. He embraced thugs whom he thought he could control, while actively
targeting former Aristide supporters.

High-profile prisoners, such as Aristide's former prime minister and his
former interior minister have been in jail for nearly a year with no trial
date in sight. A well-organized jailbreak on Feb. 19 freed about 500 of the
1,257 prisoners in the National Penitentiary, 95 percent of whom have been
neither tried nor sentenced. If this incident is handled like other lawless
acts, it will receive media attention for a nanosecond and then be tucked
away until it becomes politically

advantageous to be exploited again.

U.S. leaders had hoped that a strong international presence, from which they
lobbied to be excluded almost completely, could keep things in order. That
hasn't worked, either. More than 250 people have been killed in the last few
months despite the presence of 6,000 blue-bereted peacekeepers from the
United Nations and 1,400 international police.

The problem is that there are as many guns as there are flies on the street.
Those least equipped are the paltry Haitian police, an under-staffed,
under-trained, corruptible and frightened group of several thousand.

Then there are the former Haitian soldiers, whose demands to be reinstated
in the defunct Haitian army have won them 10 years in back pay and
increasing visibility. Renegades from the police have joined up with armed
supporters of Aristide who seek his return, and they have launched
''Operation Baghdad,'' engaging in a gruesome series of beheadings. Nearly a
dozen neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince are under control of these rebel
factions, and at least five towns across the country are under control of
the former military.

It's alleged that drug money helps fuel the rebel factions. Meanwhile, the
government has received only 10 percent of the $1.4 billion pledged by the
international community shortly after Aristide's departure. The
international community wants to see stability before it invests in Haiti,
but the government argues that without adequate funds stability is
impossible.

Coincidentally, this argument parrots Aristide's denunciation of the
international community, which he blamed for strangling his efforts to
ensure Haiti's stability and progress.

Do elections, scheduled for this winter, have any chance of success? Some
100 candidates hope to be inaugurated as president on Feb. 7, 2006, the 20th
anniversary of the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship.

I'm sure that few, if any of them, have a blueprint for how to fix the mess
that Haiti has become. Unless there's an incentive to bring together the
fractured power-driven groups in Haiti and an unwavering financial and moral
commitment from the international community, it's safe to say that with just
a few editorial adjustments, this column could run again next year, same
time, same place.

Kathie Klarreich, author of a forthcoming memoir on Haiti, Madame Dread, has
lived in and covered Haiti for nearly 20 years.