From: Greg Chamberlain
<GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>
(St. Petersburg Times, June 23, 2005)
Danger arises from all quarters in Haiti
By DAVID ADAMS
MIAMI - A friend recently began sending me copies of
her family's personal
e-mails from Haiti.
She wanted me to get an insider's glimpse of how
desperate things have
gotten down there, asking only that I not publish
any
names.
The correspondence reveals a scenario more shocking
than I imagined,
tantamount to a total breakdown of society and the
outbreak
of urban, class war. Security has so totally
collapsed that armed gangs now
operate with impunity, carrying out brutal
carjackings, home invasions and kidnappings in broad
daylight. U.N.
peacekeepers who took over security in Haiti a year
ago after
the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide seem
powerless to stop the
violence.
In one e-mail, a middle-aged businesswoman described
how families have
become virtual prisoners in their homes in recent
weeks
due to the uncertainty of when armed criminals will
strike.
"Every day you go out, you wonder if they'll kidnap
you, since there are
many every day, and some (of the victims) are
people you
know," she writes. "So when will it be your turn?"
Police confirm up to 10 reported kidnappings a day.
In the great majority
of cases, families do not bother to contact the
police.
Haiti's tiny and ill-disciplined force is already
hopelessly overwhelmed
and lacks the proper training to negotiate ransoms.
Many Haitians also suspect - with good reason - that
corrupt officers are
involved in the crimes.
Among the latest kidnapping victims earlier this
month: a husband and wife
seized as they were opening their pharmacy business;
a
woman and four children on their way to school; and
the former head of
protocol at the presidential palace.
Cases run from relatively minor carjackings to the
most brazen and horrific
assaults. One man had his pickup truck seized at
gunpoint and was told he could buy it back for
$20,000. He negotiated the
price down to $10,000, only to have the pickup
stolen
again two weeks later.
Some homes are no longer safe, either. In one case
in the capital, armed
men raped a woman and her 10-year-old daughter,
then
kidnapped a 9-month-old baby.
In another case, a 60-year-old woman was kidnapped,
stripped and tortured.
Her captors warned that Haiti's light-skinned, mixed
race elite were all now targets.
Much of the violence is attributed to gangs from
Aristide's slum
strongholds, who appear to be conducting an
orchestrated
destabilization campaign to scuttle elections due
later this year.
Aristide loyalists have broadcast hit lists of their
targets - bourgeois
businessmen - on the radio.
Victims also report that some of the kidnapping
rings use safe-houses in
middle class neighborhoods, possibly with ties to
police
and other businessmen involved in drug trafficking.
The sad truth today is that violence is coming from
all sides, according to
a recent report by the highly respected
Brussels-based International Crisis Group, which
monitors Haiti. While
pro-Aristide groups may be sponsoring some of the
violence,
it noted that "extreme urban poverty" and the
failure of public
institutions were just as much to blame.
In the 17 years that I have been covering Haiti,
it's hard to recall a more
desperate situation than exists today.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
When U.S. troops were sent to Haiti last year after
Aristide's fall, there
was hope the country might be put back on the
democratic path. Those hopes proved short-lived.
The U.N. peacekeepers say they were not prepared for
this kind of urban
war. Nor were U.S. officials. Late last month the
U.S.
Embassy in Port-au-Prince announced it was
downsizing. It recommended all
American citizens leave the country, even advising
on
the safest routes to get to the international
airport, which is surrounded
by slums. This week Canada also warned its citizens
not
to travel to Haiti.
Efforts to improve the security situation are being
made. International
donors met in Montreal last Friday to speed up
delivery
of $1.3-billion in financial aid pledged to Haiti.
The United Nations also
voted Wednesday to beef up its peacekeeping mission
with 1,000 troops.
But judging by the e-mail I have been reading, hope
is wearing thin.
Businesses are closing. School is out, and everyone
who can is escaping to
spend time with relatives in the United States,
Canada
or France.
One e-mail ends: "One almost has the impression of
being suicidal if you
decide to stay."