22832: (Craig) NYT: Five Months After Aristide, Mayhem Rules the Streets (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <hoosier@att.net>


Five Months After Aristide, Mayhem Rules the Streets
August 2, 2004
By MICHAEL KAMBER

CAP HAITIEN, Haiti, July 27 - The two police officers stood
in front of this impoverished city's central police station
and recounted their grievances: they had no guns, no police
cars and no radios. They said they were reduced to sporadic
patrols in a stolen truck they had impounded. "We're like
dead men on vacation," one said.

The other said their cars and guns were in the hands of the
rebel force that swept through Cap Haitien on Feb. 22, as
the revolt that led to the ouster of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide reached its height. About a mile
away, in the courtyard of an ancient military jail where
the rebels are now based, their supreme leader, Michel
Dieuseul, who goes by the name Commandant Mano, denied that
his men possessed police weapons and vehicles. "When we
attacked, the police took their guns and ran away - they
are hiding them," he said, as about a dozen rebels lounged
near what looked suspiciously like a police truck with its
markings removed.

In fact, he says, it is really the violent supporters of
Mr. Aristide, known as the chim?res, that need to be
disarmed, not the rebels. "We will work together with the
U.N. to disarm the chim?res," he said.

As the charges and suspicions filter through the city like
the sticky summer air, though, one thing is certain -
mayhem is reaching ever higher levels, with murders, rapes
and bus robberies becoming routine.

In the five months since Mr. Aristide was driven from
power, a tense inertia has spread over efforts to police
this shattered society, allowing armed factions and
marauders to move in. Despite the United Nations
peacekeeping force of 2,300 soldiers spread across the
country, and despite a surface quiet in major public
places, any number of groups are vying for street control -
the old guard police, the rebels, the Aristide supporters
and freelance thugs.

Prime Minister G?rard Latortue and his caretaker
government, backed by the peacekeepers, are focused on
setting conditions for elections in 2005, attracting
foreign investment and aid, and trying to restore a
semblance of normality so that rebuilding can go forward.

But by all accounts, the often precarious sense of safety
in Haiti is taking a beating, and nowhere is this more
evident than here in Cap Haitien, the country's
second-largest city, where the rebel breakthrough in
February brought chaos and hastened Mr. Aristide's
downfall.

Crime statistics in this city of 500,000 are unreliable.
The police have no finger-printing equipment, much less
computers, and records are kept in a battered brown ledger.
But four days of interviews with residents and United
Nations and local officials provide a picture of an anxious
and violent city with weapons caches and a barely
functioning police department. The disarming of the
population, an oft-expressed goal, is at best a distant
concept.

Security experts working for nongovernmental organizations
say four residents were killed here during one recent week,
and a United Nations official confirmed that there had been
three recent vigilante killings. By all accounts, roads
outside the city that lead to the Dominican border are
controlled by armed gangs that rob and rape passengers on
buses filled with traders.

"They rob the buses every Monday and every Friday, the days
the border is open," said S?jour Ellison, a police officer
who told of being a passenger on a bus two weeks ago that
was diverted by bandits into a remote field. "They made us
lie on the ground. They took our money and jewelry. I
watched as they raped two women in front of me."

The police blame the crime wave on their rivals, the rebel
forces who according to nearly all observers freed 186
prisoners from the penitentiary here when they attacked in
February. "They were mostly professional criminals; now
they are controlling gangs," said Taillefer Ismaille, the
ranking police officer at the patched-up city jail on a
recent afternoon. "So far we have only recaptured two or
three." Commandant Mano denies the accusation, saying the
prisoners "let themselves out" after his rebels attacked.

In late June, Amnesty International released a scathing
report accusing the interim government and an initial
peacekeeping force of American marines, who left to make
way for the United Nations force, of failing to implement
security and disarmament measures.

Pierre Esp?rance, director of the National Coalition for
Haitian Rights, echoed the criticism in Cap Haitien this
week. "The security situation in Cap Haitien is getting
worse, and I do not see a plan from the government to fix
it," he said. As for the peacekeepers, he said, "I do not
see them doing anything at all."

The United Nations has several hundred peacekeepers
stationed outside Cap Haitien, and they occasionally roll
through the crowded streets in personnel carriers or
trucks. On Monday, five United Nations police officers
arrived as the vanguard of a new deployment that is hoped
to eventually reach 150 officers.

A senior United Nations official with the police
contingent, who insisted on anonymity, said: "We're walking
on eggs here. The rebels have the support of the
population." They cannot be easily demobilized, he
explained, while the police, with whom the United Nations
is supposed to work, are seen as tainted by their ties to
the former government.

Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, chief of communications and public
information for the United Nations peacekeepers here,
defended them. "We don't have a civil war," he said. "All
the shooting after the departure of Aristide has stopped."
The force, now at one-third strength, is expected to grow
to 6,700 soldiers, he said. Talks with the government about
a national committee for disarmament have begun, he said,
though it may take months to set up.

Meanwhile, increasing numbers of former Haitian soldiers
are coming forward, and many of them hope the Haitian
government and the United Nations will offer back pay in
exchange for their weapons. The rebel camp in Cap Haitien
has 300 people, almost entirely former Haitian Army
soldiers who were disbanded by Mr. Aristide in the 1990's.
Commandant Mano sees the rebels as paving the way for the
current government, and he clearly expects some reward. "I
want the Haitian government to pay me 10 years and 7 months
of back salary," he said. But as far as disarming goes, he
said, the government can forget about it. "We are the
Haitian Army now," he said.

Likely to be even harder to deal with are the chimeres, who
have gone underground and lack a clear command structure.
Credible reports suggest they have several hundred
automatic weapons stashed around the city.

The slum Shara 2, a dense warren of sewage-strewn
passageways lined with malnourished children and unemployed
men loitering in the stifling heat, is a known chimere
stronghold, a place where nearly everyone says they are
waiting for Mr. Aristide's return, however unlikely.

In a recent interview in Shara 2, a group of young men
dismissed talk of disarmament. "The chimeres are not going
to give their guns away, because they don't know what the
other side is going to do," said one, Jackie Digoirand. "If
a person has three guns, he might give up one and keep the
other two."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/international/americas/02haiti.html?ex=1092500439&ei=1&en=7e463cad234b1505
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company