24452: (news) Chamberlain: Argentine peacekeepers in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

Argentine peacekeepers bring a semblance of order in Haiti

By Laura Bonilla



GONAIVES, March 7 (AFP): Cadavers from September's devastating floods still
make eerie appearances amid mud and rubble in dusty Gonaives, a provincial
town where 451 peacekeepers from Argentina work to deliver some semblance
of public order amid Haiti's misery and flashes of hope.

This city of 200,000, which has played a role in several uprisings
including the one that one year ago led to the departure of then-president
Jean Bertrand Aristide, is making a creeping, painful recovery from
tropical storm Jeanne, which last year buried a swatch of the city in mud,
killing 1,500 and leaving another 1,000 missing and feared dead.

Six cadavers have been unearthed in recent weeks as workers press on in
their daunting mission or clearing out the mud and rubble in an operation
organized by non-governmental organizations. The Argentine peacekeepers
have promised to pitch in with five men and 50 shovels.

"The objective is to provide security and stability," Lieutenant Colonel
Carlos Perez Aquino, of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH),
told AFP on a swing through several areas of the city north of the capital
of the Americas' poorest country.

The soldiers patrol 24 hours a day, they set up security checkpoints where
they confiscate weapons, and they provide security to the hospital, to NGO
food distribution centers, and to international and Haitian officials in
town to prepare for elections later in the year.

In the shadow of a statue of a black Christ, under hot midday sun, hundreds
of Haitians line up and wait. And wait, for hours, to collect a 50-kilo bag
of lentils and cornmeal, under the watchful gaze of the heavily armed
Argentines, sweating profusely decked ou in requisite bulletproof vests and
UN blue helmets.

Haitians, tense and tired, stand watch, sometimes holding hands, to ensure
no one tries to push ahead in the line (queue). They share often empty
streets with the odd goat, pig or mule. Graffiti still read "Down with
Aristide," a year after the leftist-populist ex-priest left the country for
exile amid an increasingly untenable rebellion.

Among looming local concerns: the NGO Care will cease to hand out food on
March 14. That and the pending departure of the International Red Cross and
other NGOs will leave an estimated 20,000 locals out of work, a worry for
them and for the Argentine troops.

"I am a good worker. What am I going to do when this ends?" one Haitian man
asks Perez Aquino in Creole. "I know, I know," he replies. "Talk to Care,"
he replies wearily.

"I am going to have a talk with God, with Nature," the Haitian says. "We
are going to be out in the streets, begging for food."

Unemployment in Haiti, with a population of eight million, is so rampant it
is the norm. In Gonaives, there is no electricity, no running water, no
drinking water, no garbage collection; there are no firefighters. Tell the
mayor, you think; there is none.

Pakistani troops are on permanent watch at the police station, a job that
until recently the Argentines did as well.

"The military solution is important, it is what contributes to
stabilization, but it just us not enough. There are a lot of problems here
that require some capital investment, some international humanitarian
support," Captain Oscar Gonzalez, commander of the Argentine forces here.

"Most of the incidents we have are requests for food, better roads, water;
and a lot of people think MINUSTAH is coming in to solve all their
problems," he added.

The Argentines, who arrived in Haiti in July and were relieved in January
by a second battalion, are in charge of security for an area of 1,737 sq mi
including several areas where the Haitian police, with just 4,000 men for
the country of eight million, do not have any presence at all.