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Rebuilding Haiti, again

By USA Today and The Christian Science Monitor

	CAROLYN COLE / LOS ANGELES TIMES Police do a random search for weapons in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, yesterday, in an attempt to quell the violence that erupted as rebels rolled into the capital after the ouster of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Maintaining the security is among the problems facing the poverty-stricken nation.
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As the United States sends Marines to Haiti for the second time in 10 years, questions are arising about what went wrong the first time, when the Clinton administration sent 20,000 Marines in 1994 to return to power a president deposed by a military coup.

The idea then was to provide Haiti with the tools it needed — a national police force that was not corrupt, a competent and impartial judiciary, fair elections, and the foundation for economic development — to build the democracy it had never become.

This time, the Marines' assignment appears to be more limited, at least initially: to secure Port-au-Prince's airport and looted port so that needed supplies can begin flowing in again.

But coming on the heels of the nation's deep involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Haiti expedition is again putting a spotlight on the idea of nation-building.

Yesterday, with Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's departure fresh, Haitians were preoccupied with trying to build an interim government council that would be headed by former Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre. "We're working hard on that, but it will be impossible to name a government before a day or two," said opposition leader Evans Paul. Paul is rumored to be a likely candidate for a government post.

Although rebels who fought their way across Haiti arrived in Port-au-Prince to a riotous welcome from tens of thousands of people, at a hotel on the outskirts, where rebel officers later met with political and business leaders, the welcome was wary. Gesturing at the armed men who strode through the lobby, Mischa Gaillard, a prominent civilian opposition leader, confessed he felt uncomfortable with the rebels, who have been linked to massacres.

"I have a lot of problems with these people," said Gaillard, a former Aristide supporter who later opposed the president. "I have to have self-control and say, 'Yes, we will work together.' "

As U.S. Marines and French troops began trying to quell the unrest that has once again engulfed Haiti, political factions in Haiti and leaders around the world acknowledged what has become a historic reality: It won't be easy to force democracy upon the hemisphere's poorest nation.

The low expectations were evident as Bush administration officials pledged U.S. help. "It's been a sad story for almost 200 years now," Secretary of State Colin Powell said on CNN of the former slave colony, which has seen more than 30 armed coups since it won independence in 1804. "We'll try again this time."

To find success, Haitian leaders and regional experts said the United States, France and other interested nations must show the stomach and political willingness to commit troops and money to a years-long effort to push the country toward democracy. And Haitians, for the first time, must find a way to govern themselves and marginalize the gangs that seem to prefer violence over politics.
 
"This is a desperately poor country 700 miles away from us ... and if we now take this opportunity to try to lift Haiti even three inches off the ground, it would be a good thing," said Samuel "Sandy" Berger, national-security adviser under President Clinton. "I hope we can do more than help to break something apart here. Let's help build something."

Glee at the departure of Aristide was overshadowed by the fact that many of the rebels who helped depose him have records of human-rights abuses.

Among them are former soldiers from the army Aristide disbanded a decade ago and exiled paramilitaries who were members of death squads during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier in the 1980s. Before Aristide's departure, Powell warned that some of those seeking to oust Aristide were "thugs."

Human-rights groups said none should have a role in a new government or reconstituted security forces. "These are people who have been involved in ... atrocities," said Reed Brody, of Human Rights Watch.

Representatives of Haiti's civil society said that the international role will be crucial in rebuilding and that Haiti offers a lesson: focus on institutions, not individuals.

In 1994, the Americans "based their whole relationship with Haiti on one man ... but when Aristide went bad, it doomed the effort," said Andre Apaid, head of the Group of 184, a leading opposition group. "This time the international community needs to work with a broader base of Haitian society."

Nation-building remains a tough sell to Americans, who tend to focus on exit strategy. But willingness to stay is key to success, experts said. "With countries that have reached the level of disintegration of Haiti, you have to be prepared to stay for a long time," said Marina Ottaway, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "With Haiti, we really went in thinking before everything else about how fast we could get out."

Under pressure from Congress, the Clinton administration agreed to an exit strategy for Haiti that would curtail much of the U.S. presence within two years. After elections in 2000 that many condemned as fraudulent, the United States rallied the European Union and international financial institutions to cut off most assistance.

"The Clinton administration — whose nation-building competence was largely discredited as a result of Somalia — had to proceed cautiously," said James Dobbins, who was Clinton's envoy to Haiti for two years after 1994 and worked on Afghanistan in the current Bush administration. "The fears they had to answer then were of mission creep, so they agreed to an exit strategy, but that was not compatible with getting the job done."

Dobbins, now director of international security affairs at the Rand Corp., said putting a failed state back on its feet requires three investments from the international community: people, money and time. The last Haiti effort was shortchanged on money and time, he said.

The Bush administration, while promising to help Haiti, shows little appetite for an open-ended commitment. President Bush has said he would not have sent troops to Haiti in 1994.

The difficulties Haiti faces are staggering:

• Less than 70 percent of Haiti's children are getting or have received a primary education.

• Roughly 12 percent of children born in Haiti die before age 5. About 500 of every 100,000 women die in childbirth, a figure 70 times the U.S. average.

• Only one-fourth of the population has access to safe drinking water.

• The country has no functioning army or police force, making the creation of a domestic security force a difficult and time-consuming task.

Skeptics about the Haiti mission are already speaking up. "This is a case where the United States has tried repeatedly to stabilize Haiti and to get that country to have a workable democratic government and a functioning economy, and it has repeatedly failed. There is no reason to be more optimistic this time," said Ted Galen Carpenter, a foreign-policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company