24418: Hermantin(News)Life in Haiti remains bleak after ouster (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


>From Orlando Sentinel

Life in Haiti remains bleak after ouster
Violence and instability stand in the way of recovery after Jean-Bertrand
Aristide fled.



By Matthew Hay Brown
Sentinel Staff Writer

March 1, 2005

After Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled Port-au-Prince a year ago,
President Bush and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pledged to help restore
stability to the benighted Caribbean nation, reinforce its democratic
institutions and set it at last on the path to prosperity.

But 12 months after Aristide's pre-dawn flight to Africa last Feb. 29, life
in the hemisphere's poorest nation seems little improved -- and, perhaps,
less promising.

A U.N. force of 7,400 soldiers and police has moved into Port-au-Prince and
other cities. But the Haitian ex-soldiers who led the rebellion that chased
Aristide from the country still control much of the countryside, while
pro-Aristide gangs continue to rule slums that house hundreds of thousands
who reject the U.S.-backed interim government of Prime Minister Gerard
Latortue.

Aristide, elected to a five-year term in 2000 but now exiled in South
Africa, maintains he was forced from power by the United States and France.
His supporters continue to demand his return; hundreds of Haitians have been
killed in clashes around the capital. The Caribbean Community, the 15-member
bloc of which Haiti is a member, has refused to recognize the interim
government.

And in a stroke of catastrophic misfortune during the nation's bicentennial
year, flooding devastated Haiti in May and September, killing thousands.
Instability, meanwhile, has hampered the delivery of humanitarian aid, which
is vital to a country where 80 percent of the population lives below the
absolute poverty threshold of $150 per year.

"In some ways, conditions are worse, because you have much more widespread
sources of destabilization and human-rights violations than before," said
the Wesleyan University sociologist Alex Dupuy, a native of the nation of
7.7 million. "Since Aristide fell, more people have been killed in one year
than were killed in the three years under Aristide's government."

The interim government has announced local and national elections for this
fall. The top U.N. envoy to Haiti says he sees hope for a better future.

"The launching by the government of political initiatives opens space for
participation by all those who reject violence and makes it easier to carry
out the electoral process," Juan Gabriel Valdés, Annan's special
representative to Haiti, said last month.

But leaders of Aristide's Lavalas Party, the largest and best-organized
political organization in Haiti, say they will boycott the elections over
what they call the arbitrary arrest and detention of Aristide loyalists.
More than 250 Haitians, including 24 police officers, have been killed in
clashes among demonstrators, street gangs, police and U.N. forces since
September, when supporters stepped up demands for Aristide's return.

Latortue, who caused a stir last year when he called the rebels who ousted
Aristide "freedom fighters," has rejected charges his interim government is
persecuting Aristide backers.

"They are not in jail because of being Lavalas members or supporters . . .
[but] because they broke the law," police spokeswoman Gessy Coicou said.

Some say a vote in Haiti now would be meaningless.

"I don't think elections serve any purpose other than to legitimate, for a
short period, another set of leaders who cannot lead Haiti out of the
problem," said Gabriel Marcella, a lecturer in strategic leadership and
longtime Haiti watcher at the U.S. Army War College.

Ominously, a new threat to stability is emerging. The former soldiers who
drove Aristide from the country and remained armed and organized now are
demanding that Latortue reinstate the Haitian army.

"This life is in our blood," Sgt. Clement Mathurin Etienne said recently as
he called into formation a ragtag bunch of former soldiers armed with aged
pistols, Uzi machine guns and M-14 rifles.

The army, which was disbanded by Aristide in 1995, is blamed for the
torture, maiming and deaths of thousands of Aristide supporters during the
military coup period of 1991 to 1994. The interim government already has
promised to pay $29 million in back pay to 6,000 former soldiers.

Little has been done to disarm the ex-soldiers so far, but U.N. officials
say they will soon launch a major disarmament plan.

Dupuy, the Wesleyan sociologist, says taking the weapons away from all sides
is a vital first step.

"It obviously involves more than just disarmament," he said.

"What one needs to do is to have the sort of international oversight to hold
the government accountable for acts that are committed under its auspices
and that are not prosecuted," Dupuy said. "The Organization of American
States and the U.N. could play a very important role in that process, and
their role ought to be independent of the government's role."

Marcella, of the U.S. Army War College, has called for an even greater
international commitment to Haiti: making the nation a protectorate of the
United Nations and deploying a greater number of foreign troops and workers
for long-term reconstruction.

"You would require sufficient public-security force on the ground that would
be in the form of uniformed police and military to simply occupy the
critical nodes of communication and transportation, disarm the population
and protect infrastructure reconstruction," Marcella said.

With security established, Marcella said, foreigners and Haitians together
could rebuild roads, bridges and public buildings, restore the soil and
plant fast-growing trees.

"Haitian leaders and the international community have got to get together
and make a decision," he said. "Are we going to apply the occasional
Band-Aid approach or the longer-term approach?"

Several countries and international institutions pledged $1 billion to the
nation last July, but only about $200 million has been disbursed. Business
leaders say the government has balanced the budget and normalized
foreign-debt payments but has created no new jobs.

Philippe Armand, president of the stateside American Chamber of Commerce of
Haiti, hopes to open a Florida chapter of the group to help exiles start
businesses in their homeland.

"There is a better business climate now, a sense we're moving toward
elections and will finally put the country back on its feet," he said.

On the streets of Haiti, many people, such as Car Monique, are less
optimistic.

"Either there has been no change since Aristide left, or things are worse,"
said the 35-year-old mother of five. "It seems like even more people are
without jobs now."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. Matthew Hay
Brown can be reached at mhbrown@tribune.com or 787-729-9072.


Copyright © 2005, Orlando Sentinel