Don’t expect Americans to cheer. Oct. 3 marks the one-year anniversary of the moment that defined how a mission can creep from humane intentions to horror- the battle of the Olympic Hotel in Mogadishu, which left 12 Americans dead. If one phrase was banned among policymakers last week, it was “nation-building.” That’s what the United States tried to do in Somalia, where gangs of armed children now roam the pockmarked streets once again. And nation-building is exactly what the United States now has to do in Haiti. It tried once before, from 1915 to 1934. That American occupation was brutal and openly racist. With luck, some lessons have been learned since then.
Nation-building is a complex matter of economic and political reconstruction–but for the good of both countries, the two strands must be kept separate. “We can’t be mixing ourselves in Haitian issues,” said one White House aide last week. “It’s their country. All we’ll do is create a secure place and give them the resources they need.” That’s a sensible division. Providing resources- not just cash, but the muscle to fill potholes and the pipes to carry clean water-is something that outsiders can do for troubled countries, and have done everywhere from the post-Marcos Philippines to the Gaza Strip.
Foreigners can’t build a democratic society like an irrigation plant; that’s a job for the Filipinos, Palestinians-or Haitians. It’s probably easier to construct a democracy if someone is pouring concrete, because then everyone can see the immediate gains of stability (if nobody was rebuilding the Gaza Strip, Palestinian politics could be truly murderous). But it takes time to build a nation–and time is, politically, far more expensive than money: it’s the last thing the Clinton administration wants to spend in Haiti. “We can’t get expectations too high,” says a senior World Bank official. If, 10 years hence, Haiti looks like Bolivia does now-still dirt-poor, but with two clean elections and a few years of economic growth behind it–that will be just fine. Yet Haiti’s prospects of even such modest success depends on some troublingly unanswered questions.
A 45-year-old chain smoker, with a wife of notorious charm, Raoul Cedras can appear calm and elegant on American TV. “He plays with words; he never takes a clear position,” says U.N. negotiator Dante Caputo. In his speech before the invasion, Bill Clinton branded Cedras a monster. But in 1990 the general was considered (by Aristide, among others) one of the moderates of the Haitian army; a U.S. intelligence official says he “is not some crazy guy who has blood on his hands.” Maybe not crazy, but he now hates Aristide with a fury. When Bill Richardson, a Democratic congressman, mentioned Aristide over dinner with Cedras last summer, the Haitian and his wife ranted for two hours on Aristide’s evils.
Under the terms of the Carter agreement, Cedras must leave office by Oct. 15 whether or not the Haitian Parliament has granted him an amnesty. Though Haitian politics are as ragged as the country’s coastline, senior U.S. officials and Aristide aides both say the exiled president is prepared to offer an amnesty bill-but only to a parliament shorn of members illegally appointed by the junta. If Cedras doesn’t leave office, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon has contingency plans to seize him and force him to go. Even so, Cedras has said that he won’t leave the country. For a year, he’s been telling friends that he wants to run for president.
That’s probably bluster. In any fair vote (and next year, international monitors will swarm over Haiti to make sure that it is), the candidate of the elite will probably be hammered; in 1990, remember, Aristide won nearly 70 percent of a flee vote. Senior U.S. officials doubt that Cedras has a long-term political future. But that’s all the more reason to worry about what he and his associates may do to derail the occupation in the short term. “Something nasty may happen to U.S. troops,” says Ian Martin, former director of a U.N. human-rights mission to Haiti. American officials know that if a few GIs were killed, the pressure to pull out would be enormous.
While Cedras speaks in melodrama and struts like a lady-killer, Aristide whispers and looks as innocent as a child at first communion. Yet he, too, has the power to give Washington more headaches and stop Haiti’s nation-building before the foundations are poured. What the Clinton administration wants, as one senior State Department official put it, is “Aristide without Aristidism.” The hope is that with American troops everywhere, Aristide will realize that he doesn’t need a populist appeal to the masses to protect himself. In other words, no more calls to “Pere Lebrun”–necklace–his opponents. (An Aristide aide warns, however, that the junta may do some necklacing of its own, and blame Aristide.)
But Aristide isn’t even in Haiti yet, and despite some discussion among his advisers last week, it seemed unlikely that he would get there any time before Oct. 15. When he arrives, Washington will watch to see how he forms his government, which they want to be as broad-based as possible. Aristide has said all the right things about reaching out; he’s even said that there are military officers he trusts. But many observers are skeptical. Aristide “has enormous difficulty working with other people,” says Anthony Maingot, a Haiti expert at the University of Miami; he points out that the president has fallen out with his nominal prime minister, Robert Malval. (An Aristide aide says Malval and Aristide are now “communicating.”) It’s critical that Aristide reach beyond his old populist power base and start dealing with the urban commercial class, who must be brought into any reconstruction effort.
By some measures of development, like the number of telephones, Haiti is worse off than some countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Without doubt, the U.S. embargo deepened the hurt. “There were about 60,000 assembly jobs in Port-au-Prinee when Aristide was overthrown,” says Ernest Preeg, a former U.S. ambassador to Haiti. The embargo killed them all. Aristide’s government has drawn up an ambitious reconstruction plan requiring $770 million from international donors over the next 12 to 18 months. The plan, the work of Leslie Delatour, a Haitian who once worked for the World Bank, has drawn praise from development experts. Preeg says “it reads like a good University of Chicago or World Bank structural-adjustment program.” A key to the plan is privatizing Haiti’s state-owned enterprises, which have traditionally been used to feather the nest of a kleptocratic elite.
But does Aristide himself buy into all this? “Aristide is much more free-market than the so-called capitalists who are leading the country now,” says a senior State Department official, but that’s not hard. In his days as a parish priest, Aristide preached the leftist rhetoric of liberation theology. Here again, much will depend on whether he surrounds himself-and listens to-advisers with better economic ideas.
Long term, and after the embargo is lifted (which won’t happen until Aristide returns), Haiti needn’t be the basket case it is now. Throughout the Caribbean, tourism is the engine of growth, and a stable Haiti could be a more interesting (and friendlier) destination than the Dominican Republic or Jamaica. Haiti also has a large and relatively successful diaspora. But the entrepreneurs won’t return from Montreal and Miami if they fear more bloodshed. And that brings us to the next question.
Under Security Council resolutions, at some point the United States is supposed to hand authority to a U.N. operation that will supervise the presidential elections in December 1995. But the United Nations, too, was burned in Somalia, where it maintains it was asked to take over from the United States before order had been restored. U.N. officials don’t want a repeat.
Last weekend the troops of the Third Special Forces Group prepared for a trip upcountry to assess everything from health clinics to the availability of clean water. Maj. Mark O’Neill and his men reflected on the task of nation-building. “If the army doesn’t come in and build up the infrastructure,” said a staff sergeant, “there’s going to be trouble ahead.” How long did O’Neill think his men would be involved in such work? “We’ll be here six months minimum. We’re working for the Haitian people now.” He was probably right–on both counts.
By all measures, Haiti’s economic and social hardships are chronic.
HAITI U.S. Average annual income $250 $23,240 Infant-mortality rate 87 9 (per 1,000 live births) Life expectancy 55 yrs. 77 yrs. Adult-literacy rate 35% 95% Population with 25% 98% sanitation services Population with 41% 100% safe drinking water SOURCES: World Bank; U.S. Agency for International Development
Will Haiti’s military leaders be a threat to Aristide and democracy if they resign from office but do not leave the country?
73% Yes 18% No THE NEWSWEEK POLL, SEPTEMBER 22-23, 1994
