Haitians Again Relying on U.S. Military to Bring Order

Saturday, March 6, 2004
By Tim Weiner & Lydia Polgreen

New York Times Writers

Reporting for this article was contributed by Rachel L. Swarns, Eric Schmitt and Christopher Marquis in Washington, Warren Hoge at the United Nations and William K. Rashbaum in New York

Hunger and disease are rampant in Haiti, and the flow of international aid achingly slow. Many international aid agencies' stores were looted during the rebel advance on the capital. "We have let Haiti slip back into a silent humanitarian emergency even before this period of extreme internal strife," Jan Egeland, the United Nations's chief aid coordinator, told the Security Council on Friday. Saturday was market day in the capital, the first calm day for commerce in five weeks on the Rue des Miracles in downtown Port-au-Prince. But, given Haiti's ruined economy, "normal is terrible," said Mona Alexis, a street vendor selling cinnamon, ginger and star anise alongside hawkers of brake fluid, saddle shoes and cornflakes on the Street of Miracles.

Haitians watched a United States marine on the streets of Port-au-Prince on Friday. Crowds of Haitians go to the National Palace every day, where they peer through the palace gates at the armored vehicles on the lawn.

Image Credit: Michael Kamber -- Polaris, for NYT

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- NYT
Jean Rodrigue peered through the green gates of the palace wall, struggling to take in the sight of a dozen or more United States marines in armored vehicles on the lawn of the National Palace that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had fled.

A decade ago, Mr. Rodrigue had wept for joy when Mr. Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president, returned with the help of the American military. Now he is gone, and American troops are trying to mop up the mess he left behind.

"There was so much hope then," Mr. Rodrigue, a 40-year-old biology teacher, said, staring vacantly at the marines from underneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. "We all believed in Aristide and we believed the world would help us."

Now the United States military is back in Haiti for the third time in 90 years. It says its mission will last 90 days. On June 1, the United States plans to hand off to an international force under the United Nations. Planning for that force has barely begun, and Haiti's 15 neighbors in the Caribbean, furious at Mr. Aristide's ouster under American pressure, say they want no part of it.

Trying to put Haiti back together again may well require more soldiers, more time and more money than the last American military deployment, in 1994, to build lasting institutions, like the police, courts and schools. The $3 billion spent by the United States during those years has washed away like the soil on Haiti's denuded hills.

Many of the armed rebels who rose up in Haiti this past month are veterans of the junta that overthrew Mr. Aristide in 1991. They have not put down their arms as they have promised. United States Special Forces have flown to the rebels' strongholds outside Port-au-Prince to try to persuade them to do so.

United States military officers are working with senior members of Haiti's police force trying to reform a rabble of demoralized and poorly trained officers, who have been unable to bring order to a deeply divided country of heavily armed citizens with grievances and long memories. United States officials said the new police chief would be Léon Charles, 38, who has worked with them before as a Haitian Coast Guard commander.

The Haitian government, torn between rival elites, has traditionally ignored the needs of Haiti's poor, who saw in Mr. Aristide a champion of their interests. Though a "council of elders" was formed Friday to try to select nominees for a provisional government, political discourse here is still often carried out at gunpoint.

(More: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/international/07HAIT.html?th)

2004 © The New York Times Company.

Dan