Can Iraqis See Their Future in Haitian Crisis?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 15, 2004

Byline: Jamie Dettmer, INSIGHT

For Iraqis worried that the United States may just cut and run if the bombing and insurgency doesn't cease and the GI casualty rate reaches numbers the American people are unwilling to bear, there may be lessons to be learned from what is happening in Haiti, where an armed rebellion has extended its reach over the central third of the country, one of the few fertile areas of food production in the impoverished nation.

Cast your mind back to 1994 when the Clinton administration sent an invasion force of more than 20,000 to oversee the reinstatement of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and promised to assist Haiti in overcoming its turbulent and bloody past. Democracy and the rule of law was in the offing the United States, other Western countries and international organizations all labored at laying the foundations for a stable Haiti.

The Clinton administration spent millions training a new police force Haiti was going to be a model for the new era of humanitarian interventionism by the Western powers. And within months the Clinton White House took to dubbing Haiti a "foreign-policy success."

Some success. A decade on and Haiti once again is drifting into political and economic chaos, the consequence of rebellion against a president whose hold on power is dependent on a thuggish police force, this time U.S.-trained. The desperate poverty that wracked Haiti before Aristide was reinstalled remains and political control in the country rapidly is deteriorating into gang warfare.

In mid-February a rebel group led by a former army death-squad commander under the dictatorship and military terror of "Baby Doc" Duvalier stormed the town of Hinches, near the border with the Dominican Republic, killing the police chief and breaking open the local prison. From their base in the port of Gonaives, and backed by sinister elements in the disbanded Haitian military, the rebels at press time were ready to strike Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. In the south, pro-Aristide forces have been killing opposition sympathizers and leaving their remains to be picked at by wild dogs.

And what's the West's response? In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell admits: "There is, frankly, no enthusiasm right now for sending in military or police forces to put down the violence." Despite a declared grandstanding readiness to ride to the rescue, Paris and Ottawa say they will deploy troops only after the political violence stops. Mexico, Germany and Brazil also have declined to use force.

While outside powers jaw-jaw, anti-Aristide thugs no side in the Haitian strife has a monopoly on brutality are threatening to impede delivery of food and relief supplies to the central part of the country. A full-blown humanitarian crisis is in the making, according to both the Organization of American States and the U.S. Department of State.

Of course, Washington may eventually decide that it can't just sit on its hands if there is a repeat of what happened after Aristide's ouster in the mid-1990s, when Haitians fled en masse, forcing the U.S. Coast Guard to interdict more than 40,000 refugees. Another refugee exodus along those lines could affect this year's presidential race and complicate election politics in Florida, the state that (with a chad hanging here and there) handed George W. Bush the White House three-and-a-half years ago.

But election politics aside, what lessons are Iraqis to draw from the shrugging of Washington shoulders when it comes to Haiti? Admittedly, the U.S. intervention in Haiti in the 1990s was on another president's watch the Bush White House can argue they don't have a dog in the fight there now.

But for Iraqis who know that their country can be stabilized only if America and other powers are ready to commit for the long haul, the reluctance with which Washington, Paris and others are approaching the Haitian crisis prompts anxiety. "Could that be us in, say, a few years' time?" queries one high-level Iraqi politician. "Will another administration wash its hands of what the Bush administration left?"

One advantage Iraq has over Haiti, of course, is oil. Another is its important geostrategic location. Trouble in Iraq spells trouble elsewhere in the Middle East. But the worries are not misplaced. There already are concerns in Baghdad that a Democratic administration won't be so ready to hang in with Iraq. And anxiety about the future encourages Saddam Hussein loyalists and others to continue their insurgency and bombing campaigns.

The lack of Western response in Haiti also prompts bigger questions about responsibility. If you intervene to reinstall a questionable, albeit democratically elected, leader who then fails in his task of reform and excludes opposition groups from the political process, are you not obliged to act again? There are questions about what could be called white mischief intervening when the mood or ideology suits, but shutting off and walking away when domestic politics doesn't require action. What kind of message is sent to a wider, global audience about credibility and staying power?