From 1991 to 1994, a dictatorial military regime held
power in Haiti and political repression compelled tens of thousands to
flee their homeland. Many ended up in the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos
Islands, the Dominican Republic and other neighbouring countries but the
majority headed for the United States. The resolution of the 'Haitian
refugee crisis' was given as a key justification by President Bill Clinton
when he announced that US troops would lead an intervention force
authorised by the United Nations to restore democracy in Haiti. On 19
September 1994, the first of 20,000 US troops landed in Haiti with the aim
of establishing a safe and secure environment to permit the return from
exile of democratically elected President Aristide.
Repatriation of Haitian refugees
In the months that followed, the leaders of the military regime relinquished power and went into exile, President Aristide resumed office and, with US forces and token troop contingents from other UN member states deployed across the country, there was a significant reduction in human rights violations. US officials proclaimed the country safe enough for the return of some 16,000 Haitian 'boat-people' interned at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Other countries in the region followed the US lead and began to repatriate Haitians. According to official US and UN announcements, conditions in Haiti posed little or no threat to those who had left their country or to the estimated 300,000 internally displaced during the period of military rule.
Returnees were given small cash payments on their arrival in Haiti and then left to fend for themselves. In the absence of a coordinated reintegration programme, there were no means to monitor the returnees' fate. But, according to the information and testimonies provided by Haitian grassroots organisations and other non-governmental organisations working with the poorer sections of the urban and rural population, a profound sense of insecurity persisted during the first months of the intervention and beyond.
For the majority of Haitians the most important issue relating to security and protection - or the lack of it - was the Haitian military, both soldiers and police, and their paramilitary assistants who, during three years of terror, were responsible for an estimated 5,000 deaths and thousands more cases of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, beatings, torture and rape. If the hope was that the US-dominated intervention force would quickly neutralise, disarm and disband these groups, the reality was something quite different.
Instead, as a result of a last minute deal that allowed for the unopposed entry of the intervention force, the Haitian and US military were to act as partners. In the capital, Port-au-Prince, the US commander announced that he had asked the Haitian military to patrol the pro-Aristide slum area of Cite Soleil. As US troops were deployed across Haiti, supporters of Aristide's Lavalas movement came out into the open only to find their erstwhile liberators establishing cordial relations with the Haitian military. The cooperation extended as far as the two forces sharing barracks and mounting joint patrols.
The vast majority of the intervention force was concentrated in the
capital and in the second city, Cap-Haitien. In the rest of the country,
the US elite Special Forces established a presence in some twenty regional
towns. While claiming their aim was to prevent 'Haitian-on-Haitian'
violence, there were many instances of these troops collaborating with the
Haitian military in the suppression of pro-democracy activities.
It was not only the Haitian military that benefited from the partisan actions of US forces. On numerous occasions, members of the pro-military regime's death-squad, the Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH) and paramilitary police attaches were rescued from hostile crowds by US troops. Usually arrested for their own protection, they were then turned over to the Haitian military who promptly released them.
Perhaps the biggest factor contributing to a continuing sense of insecurity felt by many Haitians during the first months of the post-intervention period was the US forces' failure to institute an effective programme to disarm the paramilitary network that had worked hand-in-glove with the military regime. US troops displayed a marked reluctance to act on reports provided by the Haitian public of hidden arms caches and preferred to promote a weapons buy-back scheme. The 'guns-for-money, no-questions-asked' offer lasted until the middle of February 1995 and netted approximately 30,000 weapons. This figure represents a small fraction of the number of weapons estimated to have been distributed to its supporters by the former military regime. Moreover, many of the weapons handed in were reputed to be unserviceable or antique.
As The Peasant, published by the Papaye Peasant Movement, one
of Haiti's largest such organisations, said: 'The intervention forces
would not tolerate a military or paramilitary threat to their personnel,
but neither would they move decisively to neutralise those responsible for
a more generalised climate of political instability and insecurity.'
(January 1995)
Reform of the military and judiciary
Protection of the Haitian population was intrinsically linked to the reform both of the still existing military structure and of the judiciary. Here again US influence on these reforms generated widespread concern.
The 1987 Constitution stipulated that the military should be split into distinct army and police sections and, with the return of Aristide, moves began to put this into effect. However disagreement over the control and nature of these reforms quickly developed. Aristide and his representatives clearly preferred a clean break with the past and supported the recruitment of a new police force. Instead, beginning soon after the return of Aristide, the US began a programme of 'recycling' half of the 7,000-strong Haitian military into an interim police force. By the end of January 1995, 3,400 former soldiers were back on the streets in new uniforms having undergone six days 'retraining'. This interim police force was supervised by international monitors drawn from approximately 20 countries, including, to the disbelief of human rights groups, Guatemala, a country notorious for its appalling human rights record. In a report published in March 1995, two US-based human rights groups warned that the interim police force contained many members linked to the former military regime. This was confirmed by Haitians who identified many well-known human rights abusers who had simply been redeployed to different parts of the country. Some of the internally displaced found themselves policed by the very people they had fled to escape.
As for the remainder of the military, Aristide first reduced the size of the army to 1,500. In April, bolstered by numerous anti-army demonstrations, he announced its complete abolition - pending Parliamentary ratification. The dissolution of the military was a giant step forward towards establishing a climate of security in Haiti. However, the country's popular organisations were sceptical given the influence the US exerted over the composition of the new police force replacing the interim force.
New recruits undertook three months training at a new Police Academy run
by the International Criminal Investigation, Training and Assistance
Programme (ICITAP), a US body founded by the FBI and run by the US Justice
and State Departments. In May 1995, the US proposed increasing the size of
the force from 4,000 to 7,000 and then insisted, against the wishes of the
Aristide government, that some should undergo training in the US.
The dominant role played by the US in the creation of the new police force raised serious concern among Haiti's popular and human rights organisations who were only too aware that the US created the Haitian military during its 1915-34 occupation, continued to provide them with training and equipment and, even after the 1991 coup, had maintained contact with top military officers through the Central Intelligence Agency.
The other crucial issue was the reform of the judicial system. Traditionally the justice system had been used by the military and the Haitian elite as a tool to preserve the established order and to oppress the population at large.
Unfortunately the process of judicial reform was undermined from the start when the US made it clear that it would try to preserve the existing system. In May 1995, a leading Haitian human rights organisation published a critique reflecting the concerns of a number of popular organisations. It maintained that the justice system was so rotten that it should be scrapped and totally rebuilt, and that retraining of existing judges would result in continuing abuses. It bemoaned the limited input from France and Canada and condemned the US for employing legal firms from Washington with no knowledge of the French-based Haitian legal system or of the French language in which it is written. Indicative of the lack of progress was the fact that, a year after the intervention, there had been only two prosecutions for violent political crimes committed during the 1991-94 period.
When Emmanuel 'Toto' Constant, the leader of the FRAPH death squad, told reporters that he had been encouraged by his CIA 'handlers' to form FRAPH as 'a counterweight' to Lavalas, the US authorities admitted that he had been a paid informant. When in December 1994 he received papers ordering him to appear in a Haitian court to answer charges of involvement in murder, he fled to the US where he remained at liberty for five months. In September 1995, his deportation to face charges in Haiti was finally recommended but in June 1996 he was released from custody in the US.
The US/UN intervention has failed to protect the Haitian population, including returnees. Nevertheless, the UN military mission is still present. Originally scheduled to leave in February 1996, the new Haitian President Preval fears attempts by right-wing forces to destabilise his government and has negotiated an extension. A force of 500 UN troops and 300 UN civilian police monitors will remain in Haiti until July 1997.
Paramilitary activity continues and there are rumours of plots to assassinate the President. Organisations of demobilised soldiers openly threaten to destabilise the government, and crime linked to the paramilitaries is on the increase. The 5,000 new police officers who have graduated from the Police Academy are not considered sufficient to guarantee order and their frequent use of excessive and often deadly force have lead some, such as Father Daniel Roussiere of the Gonaives Justice and Peace Commission, to predict that the new police will merely replicate the functions and behaviour of their military predecessors.
Lessons from the US/UN intervention in Haiti
Role of the US
Casting a shadow over the whole intervention and subsequent reforms is
the role played by the US. Its long involvement in Haitian affairs and, in
particular, its long and close relationship with the Haitian military, its
support for the father-and-son Duvalier dictatorships, its links with
Haiti's tiny economic elite, its alleged support for the 1991 coup and its
deep antipathy towards President Aristide and the popular movement that
supported him, all suggest that the US was spectacularly unsuitable for
the task of leading the intervention. A much greater contribution from the
very beginning on the part of France, Canada and the Caribbean nations
could perhaps have made a difference.
Failure to disarm and lack of focus on human rights
As to the actual mechanics of the intervention, it is clear that a
determined effort to disarm the paramilitaries and former soldiers, and a
focus on bringing human rights violators to justice, would have
significantly contributed to an improved security situation.
Failure to involve the Haitian people
At another level, the greatest flaw in the whole intervention was the failure to involve ordinary Haitians through their organisations in the dismantling of the repressive structures and in the creation of new institutions. For example, the development of the new police force could have utilised the potential of the neighbourhood vigilance brigades that sprang up in various districts in the aftermath of the intervention. A much greater involvement of Haitian human rights and popular organisations in the judicial reform process could also have produced a better outcome.
These failures are at the very heart of the problem of the US/UN
intervention in Haiti. It was the participation of the Haitian majority in
the country's political affairs which formed the ideological backbone of
the popular movement which developed following the fall of the Duvalier
dictatorship in 1986 and which brought Aristide to power in 1991. Such
moves towards a participatory democracy opened up the possibility of
social transformation: in other words, a revolution. The military coup and
the brutal regime that took power aimed to stop dead this revolution. By
intervening in September 1994, the US was again involved in political
choices. The participation of the population could have increased the
chances of resolving the immediate problems of insecurity and lack of
justice; it also had the potential to re-ignite the movement for radical
change. This was a risk that the intervention forces and the UN would not
tolerate.
Charles Arthur is coordinator of the Haiti Support Group in London and is currently working on an introductory reader about Haiti, to be published by the Latin America Bureau in 1988.
April 1997