19594: Lemieux: CS Monitor: Round 2 for US nation-building in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

 Christian Science Monitor

from the March 02, 2004 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0302/p01s02-woam.html

Round 2 for US nation-building in Haiti
By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI - As the US puts its soldiers' boots
on Haitian soil for the second time in a decade, 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 clean national police, 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 much more
limited - at least initially: to secure Port-au-Prince's
airport and looted port so that much-needed supplies can
begin flowing in again.

But coming as it does on the heels of America's deep
involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Haiti expedition
is again putting a spotlight on the idea of
nation-building. As the US and the international community
debate how to help Haiti, questions mount about why such
efforts work in some cases and not in others - and what
lessons Haiti's recent experience may hold for other
nation-building projects.

On Monday, with Aristide's departure still fresh, Haitians
were preoccupied with other problems: first, an interim
government council that would be headed up 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. Mr. Paul is rumored to be a likely candidate
for a government post.

Among other issues is what becomes of the armed rebels.
Some entered parts of the capital and worked with national
police in the initial hours after Aristide's departure to
secure sections of city from armed pro-Aristide gangs.
Marines took up positions at the presidential palace Monday
as rebel leader Guy Philippe, who had said he would enter
the presidential palace, instead established a presence
across the plaza in police headquarters.

It is also unclear whether a political opposition that has
never mustered much popular support can become a voice for
more than the small entrepreneurial class. And to whom will
Haiti's masses of poor turn, now that their leader has
fled?

Representatives of Haiti's civil society say the
international role will be crucial in rebuilding, and that
Haiti offers a key 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," says 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 say. "With countries that have reached
the level of disintegration of Haiti, you have to be
prepared to stay for a long time," says 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 a skeptical Congress, the Clinton
administration agreed to an exit strategy for Haiti that
would curtail much of the US presence within two years.
After elections in 2000 that many condemned as fraudulent,
the US 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," says James Dobbins, who was
Clinton's envoy to Haiti for two years after 1994 and
worked on Afghanistan under the 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."

Mr. Dobbins, who is now director of international security
affairs at the RAND Corp., says 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 says,
while the one shortfall in the Iraq reconstruction project
may be in manpower.

"We're putting into Iraq in the first year 100 times more
monetary assistance than our whole effort in Haiti,"
Dobbins says. "You can argue that Iraq is a larger and a
more important project, but not 100 times more important."

The issue of "importance" of a particular country leads to
the question of why undertake nation-building projects at
all. With Iraq and Afghanistan the threats of terrorism and
weapons of mass destruction have been cited.

But what of little Haiti? The Caribbean country has emerged
as a growing link in the hemisphere's drug trade as law
enforcement has collapsed and fallen to corruption. Threats
of a mass exodus of Haitians to US shores have also been
cited. The functioning democratic institutions a successful
nation-building program would help create are remedies to
both problems, experts say.

Citing development of the national police as a "relative
success story" of the Clinton program, Dobbins says that
"withered on the vine" after aid was cut off. Critics say
Aristide had made much of the police his personal domain by
then anyway.

But domestic politics offers another explanation for the US
focus - and failure - in Haiti. Dobbins notes that of all
US nation-building efforts, "Haiti has been the most
partisanly controversial."

Republicans, always disdainful of Aristide's leftist
rhetoric, have lent moral and financial support to the
opposition. On the other hand, the Congressional Black
Caucus emphasized Aristide's status of a democratically
elected leader and labeled US abandonment of Aristide as
"racist."

Pierre Robert Auguste, president of an association of
entrepreneurs in Haiti that is part of the Group of 184,
disagrees that US Republicans were involved in undermining
Aristide. "Yes, they held seminars about building civil
society, but that's the kind of thing we need," he says.

Others say the fact that US experience in Haiti is so
recent should help in avoiding past mistakes. "We have a
memory that cautions in favor of building up institutions
and not a man," says Mischa Gaillard, a prominent
opposition member. "It's our job to do, but for the
international community to help they need partners in Haiti
to work with."



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