30059: Durban (pub): Washington Post on Security Situation (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Lance Durban <lpdurban@yahoo.com>

Page 1 and above the fold this morning.  How the writer can determine
that some kidnapping groups have monthly budgets of $70,000 is not
explained, but then, this is just one more example of why the
Washington Post is so far behind the New York Times when it comes to
decent journalism.  They might have at least mentioned that the murder
rate for their own city (D.C.) is well above that of Port-au-Prince so
far this year, IMO.
LPD


In Haiti, Abductions Hold Nation Hostage
Despite U.N. Troop Presence, Much of Capital Controlled by Gangs

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 21, 2007; A01



PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Kidnappers came for Petit-Frère Desilus in the
early afternoon, as he was driving away from his office.

The street was busy and he was just 10 feet outside the gated compound
where he worked as a billing clerk. But they got him anyway, Desilus
recalled recently in a hushed voice, trying to steady his trembling
hands.

Two young men, their faces hard but calm, flashed pistols at him. When
he turned, he saw four more gun barrels behind him. Pedestrians did
nothing, merely swerving around the unfolding scene, he said.

"Lie down, shut up," Desilus remembers being told. "Today you're going
to get yours."

Pressed flat against the back seat, Desilus was about to begin a
downward spiral that severed his tenuous hold on a working-class
lifestyle, leaving him poor and depressed more than four months after
his captors released him. His troubles have become commonplace here.
One year after a presidential election that generated optimism and
marked only the second peaceful handover of power in Haitian history,
Port-au-Prince is a city of fear.

Despite the presence of thousands of U.N. troops and a new military
offensive to root out gangs, armed thugs still rule much of this hilly
capital, where many of the 2 million residents live in tin or
cinder-block shacks. A swarm of recent kidnappings is terrorizing
residents and scaring away foreign investment.

Dozens of schools closed in December after students were kidnapped in a
series of incidents and a school bus was hijacked. That month, at least
100 people were reported kidnapped, the most since August, when 115
were abducted. Victim advocates say the real numbers may be much
higher; once freed, people often are afraid to go to the police.

Haiti's government has been powerless to stop the crisis. International
advisers describe the police force and judicial system as critically
dysfunctional and profoundly corrupt.

"We are a failed state -- our institutions are bad, they don't work,"
said Kesner F. Pharel, a Haitian economist who was trained in the
United States and runs a business consulting firm in Port-au-Prince.
"It is crucial for Haiti to solve the security problem if we have any
hope of making progress."

The kidnapping plague, which began in 2004 after the ouster of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and peaked during the past six months,
is the latest horror in a long history of upheaval that has sealed
Haiti's position as the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. A hip
destination for the adventurous rich in the 1970s -- a place where Mick
Jagger of the Rolling Stones hung out and where tourists lounged at the
Club Med -- Haiti is now a barely functioning country, dependent on the
largess of international donors for two-thirds of its budget. The
United States, which provides $200 million a year, is Haiti's largest
bilateral donor.

Decades of coups and political instability have ruined Haiti's economy
and tourism industry, leaving factories closed and once-thriving beach
resorts abandoned. According to the International Monetary Fund, 76
percent of Haitians live on less than $2 per day and 55 percent of
those live on less than 44 cents a day.

Many here had hoped for stabilization after the election last February
of President René Préval, a soft-spoken agronomist who held the
presidency from 1996 to 2001 and who promised reconciliation among 100
political parties. But crime has soared under Préval, exacting its
heaviest toll on the poor and working class, who cannot afford ransoms
or the bodyguards and bulletproof vehicles that shield every movement
of Haiti's entrenched elite.

Desilus, 42, a slender man with big, sad eyes, was far from joining
Haiti's elites. But he had scratched his way out of the slums and
gotten a decent job. Before being kidnapped, he had managed to buy a
tiny one-room apartment, where he lived with his wife and three of his
six children.

The kidnappers, he said, took him to Cite Soleil, a 2 1/2 -square-mile
seaside slum of more than 200,000 people that is ruled by gangs. The
kidnappers beat him inside a second-story room that had been converted
into a makeshift cell with heavy bars on the windows. They made him
drink his own urine, he said.

Following a practice typical of kidnappers here, Desilus's abductors
called all the numbers stored in the address book of his cellphone,
each time threatening to kill him and demanding $100,000, the
equivalent of 20 years' salary for Desilus. A day later, they settled
for $4,800 and released him. But his troubles were just starting.

Traumatized by the experience, he asked his boss to let him switch to a
job that would require moving around the city less. His boss responded
by firing him.

Meanwhile, the friends and associates who had paid for Desilus's ransom
were pushing to get their money back. Desilus said he sold his little
apartment, as well as a small plot of land that he owned in the
country, to pay off his debt. He drained his bank account.

Suddenly homeless, he was forced to move his family into a cousin's
home. Jobless, he had to pull four of his children out of school, as
even Haitian public schools charge tuition and require parents to buy
materials.

"For me to build up what I had, it took me 10 years," he said. "I have
to start all over. But being in this country, I don't see how I can."

Desilus desperately wanted someone to face justice. He tried repeatedly
to get the Haitian police interested in his case. But each time the
officers refused to write a report, he said.

It was a futile exercise that another kidnapping victim, a music vendor
who goes by the nickname "Peaceful Michel," didn't even consider
embarking upon. Michel, who was abducted in December, was seized in
front of a police station and said he is certain the officers witnessed
the kidnapping. Friends who have also been kidnapped told him they were
"just laughed at" by police when they tried to file complaints, he
said.

"Unless you're a millionaire, they're not listening to you," said
Michel, who was deported from the United States after serving a
four-year drug sentence and now is active in organizations that try to
aid Haitian deportees.

The United Nations, which is engaged in background checks of police
that officials believe could lead to the dismissal of 1,000 corrupt
officers, is now overseeing the largest military operation to defeat
gangs since being deployed here in 2004. U.N. officials hope to stem
the flow of kidnap ransoms to gangs, some of which need as much as
$70,000 a month to pay for their operations.

Préval initially opposed military intervention, opting to negotiate
with the gangs, and invited several top gang leaders to the National
Palace. Edmond Mulet, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, described the
talks as a "very strange" strategy.

"By mid-September Préval said, 'This is going to work. This will be
over by October,' " Mulet recalled during an interview at his
headquarters in the Hotel Christopher in Port-au-Prince. "I said,
'Okay, if you say so.' But I knew in my heart it would not work."

In the past year, kidnappers appear to have been targeting victims
throughout the city rather than staying in the slums that are patrolled
by the U.N. troops. Residents of neighborhoods once considered safe now
feel anxious.

Christian Duvivier was nabbed after leaving Magdoo's, a hip hangout for
Port-au-Prince's young, moneyed set in the prestigious hilltop
neighborhood, Petionville.

Kidnappers rammed their car into Duvivier's vehicle, he recalled in an
e-mail from the Dominican Republic, where he fled after a ransom was
paid and he was released. They pulled out guns and told him they were
"the devil's sons" and that "they kill for fun," Duvivier said.

Young people and professionals are pouring out of Haiti. By some
estimates as many as 50,000 have left in the past several years,
creating a massive "brain drain," according to Pharel, the economist.

But for some kidnapping victims, fleeing is not an option. Emmanuelle
Poncet, a Port-au-Prince math teacher, has spent the five months since
his kidnapping and release trying to get a visa to enter the United
States so he can leave Haiti and "never come back." He finds his solace
in chain-smoking and bottles of rum, a form of self-medication that he
knows is ruining his health.

Poncet's brother, a Catholic priest, and a group of friends paid nearly
$14,000 to free him. Like Desilus, Poncet has sold what little he had
to pay off his debts. His car and a small farm were gone within days of
his release, sold cheap because the buyers knew he was desperate.

One week after his release, Poncet got a phone call from another group
of kidnappers. They were holding his brother-in-law, they told him. And
they wanted money.