18830: Durban: Op-Ed from NY Times (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Lance Durban - MANUTECH <lpdurban@yahoo.com>

Op-Ed Piece in NY Times...

A Way Out for Haiti
By JAMES DOBBINS

Published: February 19, 2004



ARLINGTON, Va.
Ever since President Woodrow Wilson sent in the Marines in 1915,
the United States has made intermittent — and sometimes
inconsistent — efforts to bring about stability, democracy and
prosperity in Haiti. The last decade, especially, has seen
striking examples of contradictory American policy, and the
cumulative result has been economic stagnation and turmoil in
Haiti, where more than 40 people have died during an uprising
this month.

American policy on Haiti in the last 10 years has gone from one
extreme to another. The Clinton administration strongly
supported the ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, sending
20,000 troops in 1994 to restore him to power. The current
administration then cut off all American assistance to the
Aristide government while giving advice and moral support to Mr.
Aristide's opponents. Entrenched in their own economic and
political divisions, Haitians tend to regard politics as an
all-or-nothing, life-and-death struggle. The more support one
side or the other has received from its partisans in Washington,
the less inclined it has been to compromise.

If the United States is to help Haiti overcome its crisis
through dialogue and reconciliation, therefore, Republicans and
Democrats have to reconcile their own differences. And this may
indeed be happening.

Secretary of State Colin Powell ended an apparent administration
flirtation with a coup in Haiti, stating clearly on Tuesday that
Mr. Aristide should finish his term. The Bush administration has
concluded that Mr. Aristide, however flawed he may be, is the
only legitimately elected leader in Haiti, and perhaps the sole
remaining source of stability.

At the same time, Mr. Aristide's American supporters recognize
his responsibility for the crisis and would like to see Haiti
make a new start. Prominent African-Americans like the Rev.
Walter Fauntroy, president of the National Black Leadership
Roundtable, have suggested that Mr. Aristide should step down
now.

This convergence of American opinion on Haiti offers the
prospect of a more united and thus more effective American
approach. The next step should be for leaders on both sides of
the aisle to collaborate on a new strategy for Haiti. Such a
strategy could be based on these elements:

• Mr. Aristide should serve out his term, which expires in 2006.
But at the same time, we need to prepare the succession. It will
take at least the two years Mr. Aristide has left in office to
organize fair elections. Major American and international
efforts to do so should begin now.

• The international community, either the United Nations or the
Organization of American States, should administer the
balloting, not just offer assistance. No Haitian government will
be able to organize elections with even minimal standards of
fairness.

• Haiti should get much more help. This year the United States
will give Baghdad 200 times more economic assistance than it
will to Haiti, which is in much worse shape than Iraq even after
the invasion. We must pay greater attention to a desperately
poor, misgoverned nation in our backyard.

• Some of this foreign aid should go toward strengthening
Haitian institutions. Even the Clinton administration preferred
to channel American aid through nongovernmental organizations,
fearing that any money given to the Haitian government would be
misspent. But no Haitian leader or leaders, however good their
intentions, will be able to govern wisely if they have no
institutions to rely on. We need to begin now to give Mr.
Aristide's successors the wherewithal to govern.

• The United States should get directly involved in ending the
impasse between Mr. Aristide and his opponents. The United
Nations, the Organization of American States and the Caribbean
Community, an organization of Caribbean states, can all play
helpful roles, but only the United States has real influence in
Haiti. A unified American stance could have a decisive impact,
and a truly bipartisan diplomatic engagement now might still
avoid the need for yet another military intervention.

It's often said that democracies end up doing the right thing
only after having tried all the alternatives. We have tried the
alternatives in Haiti and failed. Now we can see if doing the
right thing will succeed.


James Dobbins, director of the International Security and
Defense Policy Center at RAND, was President Bill Clinton's
special envoy for Haiti from 1994 to 1996.