His Haiti policy adrift, Bill Clinton edges closer to invasion
by Tim Zimmermann, Bruce B. Auster, Kathie Klarreich, Linda Fasulo, Linda Robinson
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When former congressman William H. Gray III returned to Washington two months ago to revive the Clinton administration's floundering Haiti policy, the challenge he faced was crafting a new plan that would force Haiti's military rulers to step aside without igniting a full-scale refugee crisis that would wash up on Florida's politically sensitive shores. What appeared merely difficult then is now looking almost impossible.
With thousands of refugees pouring out of Haiti in rickety boats, severely straining the Coast Guard's efforts to ferry them to safety, the White House is having a hard time clinging to a middle course between capitulating to Haiti's military and invading the country to restore exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Last week, the strain was beginning to show, with the administration changing its policy three times in as many days as U.S. officials struggled to line up temporary safe havens for the massive numbers of boat people, recruit other nations to participate in a possible U.S.-led invasion and assemble a peacekeeping force to police Haiti if the country's military rulers depart.
Reluctant players. The effort produced more chaos than coherence. Panama offered to accept up to 10,000 Haitian refugees and then reneged, handing a sharp setback to the U.S. effort to cope with the new wave of emigrants and sending officials scrambling for new ideas. "People are all over the lot," says a top administration official. "We're rearranging deck chairs." Only a few countries, meanwhile, have shown much interest in joining a U.S. invasion, and most of them insist they will act only under United Nations auspices.
In contrast, the Haitian junta, which ousted elected President Aristide nearly three years ago, sat tight in its Port-au-Prince mansions. The generals ran "No Intervention, No Occupation" banners across the bottom of World Cup television broadcasts and coolly stuck another thumb in the eye of the international community -- this time by declaring illegal the civilian mission that has been documenting the regime's rampant human-rights abuses. "I think the conduct of the military leaders will have more than anything else to do with what options are considered [and] when," Clinton warned from Naples. "And their conduct has not been good."
Mixed signals. While Gray insisted that military action is not imminent, other administration officials vigorously signaled otherwise. Senior officials traveling with President Clinton in Europe hinted strongly that if the regime does not go quietly, the administration's patience could be exhausted by late this month. The Pentagon leaked word that Army Rangers and Navy SEALs recently rehearsed raids against an airport and a port modeled on those in Port-au-Prince. And last week the administration bolstered a 650- man force already stationed off Haiti by dispatching 2,000 additional marines and a four-ship Marine Expeditionary Unit led by the amphibious assault ship USS Inchon.
The ostensible reason for sending the marines is to provide Washington with the ability, if necessary, to evacuate the 5,000 American citizens who remain in Haiti. But the force could also spearhead an attack. The 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbor on the island of Hispaniola, began with an evacuation of civilians by U.S. marines. Days later, a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division ushered in a 25,000-man invasion force.
If Clinton decides to invade, U.S. military officials do not expect much opposition to the sophisticated nighttime attack they would probably launch. A night strike would help minimize civilian casualties, and it would take advantage of American training and technology. The immediate objective would be to attack key targets in and around the Haitian capital simultaneously (map, Page 34).
Securing Port-au-Prince's airports -- one military, one international -- would be necessary to bring in transports with additional troops and equipment. The National Palace, where Aristide had his office as president, and the Parliament would also have to be secured. U.S. forces would strike at Haiti's Army barracks, next door to the palace; its tank headquarters in the hills near the wealthy Petionville district; the headquarters of FRAPH, the paramilitary group responsible for many of the recent human-rights violations in Haiti, and key communications sites, including radio and TV stations in and around Port-au-Prince.
Haiti's 7,000 Army troops would probably show no more fight than the thousands of Iraqis who threw down their weapons and surrendered at the outset of the ground war in the Persian Gulf. They are poorly equipped and badly led. Only about half the force is located in Port-au-Prince, where the Pentagon would focus its assault. And American intelligence estimates that even in the best units soldiers have perhaps 150 bullets -- and no way to obtain more.
Moreover, the Haitian Army has only one heavy-weapons company of 250 men and 15 light armored vehicles and howitzers. Training is so infrequent that when a howitzer was fired at the inauguration of Emile Jonassaint, the recently installed puppet president, American analysts were surprised the gun worked.
Haiti's other armed services are even less imposing. The Air Force consists of two training planes that rarely fly; it has no armed helicopters. The Navy consists of four patrol boats; on a good day, two might be at sea.
The Noriega problem. Quickly apprehending Haiti's ruling triumvirate -- Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, Police Chief Col. Michel Francois and Army Chief of Staff Philippe Biamby -- could prove harder than beating back whatever opposition Haiti's armed forces were able to muster. Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega embarrassed the Pentagon by eluding U.S. forces for two weeks after the December 1989 U.S. invasion. Cedras -- whose headquarters in the High Command is located a few blocks from the National Palace and defended by a 600-man battalion -- Biamby and Francois could try to escape through numerous rural airstrips used by ranchers and drug smugglers.
Perhaps the greatest challenge would be maintaining order after the attack. Pentagon planners are loath to send troops into the packed slums of Cite Soleil, whose muddied alleys are home to some 200,000 people, or Carrefour, where 100,000 people live near the downtown area. Instead, they would hope to seal off these areas until peace in the capital could be restored.
Now the hard part. "Haiti is not a difficult military problem," says a senior Pentagon official. "It's a difficult political problem." While the Pentagon is confident it can subdue Haiti's armed forces, military officials worry about how long U.S. troops might have to remain while diplomats and civilians tried to put Aristide and the Haitian economy on a path to stability. "We are not thinking enough about what happens after the invasion. There are concerns all around about the exit strategy," says Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
If the administration fails to assemble an international peacekeeping operation to relieve U.S. forces, American troops could be compelled to police Haiti for the second time in this century. Current U.S. proposals call for a peacekeeping force of about 10,000, including perhaps 7,000 Americans, to keep the peace if Cedras and company depart voluntarily. Assembling a "follow on" force to take over after a U.S. invasion would be harder. "Nonintervention is the position of the whole region, with very few exceptions," says Jorge Pinto, Mexico's deputy foreign minister. Pinto warns that Mexico and most other Latin American countries would probably refuse to participate in any post-invasion mission because doing so might be interpreted as an endorsement of U.S. intervention.
