by Linda Robinson; Brian Duffy; Tim Zimmermann; Bruce B. Auster; Matthew Cooper
Under a blue sky before rain, Haitian Police Sgt. Leopold Washington was standing tall at the end of a crumbling wharf at the farthest edge of the Western Hemisphere's worst slum. "If there are disturbances," Sergeant Washington smiled, shifting the 20-year-old Colt revolver on his hip, "I will disperse them." Thirty yards away, the sergeant's whippet-thin officers cursed a clutch of muddy children, scattering them like peahens. A minute later, a U.S. Air Force C-141 StarLifter roared low over the wharf, its massive fuselage blotting the sun, and Sergeant Washington interrupted his musings, his eyes on the plane. "C'est grand," he said, then paused. "C'est incroyable!"
The American occupation of Haiti is indeed both large and incredible, and like his countrymen, Leopold Washington cannot be faulted for failing to imagine just how large and how incredible it really is -- because what started out as a military incursion has become something very different. "We avoided an invasion," says an American official. "But we got an American occupation."
That wasn't the way it was supposed to turn out; how it happened says as much about a Clinton administration foreign policy that appears increasingly ad hoc as it does about Haiti's manifold misfortunes. The change of plans after a U.S. team led by former President Jimmy Carter brokered a last-minute accord with Haiti's military rulers was so rapid that Bill Clinton wound up virtually ad-libbing his televised speech to the nation announcing that the Haitian generals had agreed to step down by October 15, making way for the return of exiled President Jean- Bertrand Aristide.
Avoiding deadlines. By the end of the week, however, relief that an invasion had been avoided was giving way to realization that a U.S. military occupation of Haiti will not be simple and will probably not be short. "There are going to be some bad spells, no doubt about it," worries one senior administration official, who nevertheless vows that the United States will see through the changes in Haiti, even at the cost of casualties among U.S. soldiers and marines on the island. Some officials hint that the troops could be home by Christmas. But the administration is determined not to have a deadline imposed for their withdrawal, and Clinton visited lawmakers on Capitol Hill in an effort to stave off Senate and House votes that could set time limits on the U.S. military operations.
Clinton also announced that some of the more than 14,000 Haitian refugees from the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would begin returning to their homeland this week. Secretary of Defense William Perry and Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were expected to make a quick visit to Port-au-Prince over the weekend.
The unexpected accord also rekindled fierce bureaucratic infighting in Washington, pitting the State Department, which backed broader use of the military to ensure stability in Haiti, against the Pentagon, which was determined not to get involved in a police action similar to the failed Somalia peacekeeping mission. The interagency sniping came as a personnel shake-up was beginning in the administration that could expand to foreign- policy figures as the Haiti mission wears on.
Such concerns are remote from the harsh realities in Haiti. Within hours of the arrival of the American force in the Haitian capital, a crowbar-wielding policeman chased a young man, hitting him in the back and then turning on a reporter before whirling in another direction. At a roadside food stand in the Gracie neighborhood outside Port-au-Prince, a thin young man displayed a bump on his head that he said he received from one of the melees at the port, saying he felt "funny" that U.S. soldiers didn't react when he was hit: "I thought they were here to help us." After a young coconut vendor was killed by Haitian police officers on the second day of the occupation, U.S. military commanders decided that they could no longer let their soldiers stand by without reacting to the violence. Instructions were issued within hours that if Haitian citizens were being beaten or tormented, U.S. troops should use their own judgment on whether to use deadly force, including, a top U.S. military lawyer emphasized, "against the Haitian police." Says a U.S. official in Port-au-Prince: "Talk about mission creep. First we said we would not assume internal police functions; now we are going to have fully armed U.S. soldiers patrolling the streets."
Plaudits, then attacks. The odds that the United States will be drawn into deeper involvement in this long-troubled nation are high. One reason is the agreement negotiated by the U.S. team led by Carter. While the agreement won plaudits worldwide and almost certainly has saved the lives of many Haitians and probably at least a few U.S. troops, it has also been attacked by various players in the Haiti drama -- players with the ability to frustrate, if not torpedo, its implementation. On close inspection, Carter's last-minute rabbit-out-of-the-hat has been found to have an ugly case of mange. Even Carter acknowledges the fact: It has "many imperfections," the ex-president says.
That may be mild understatement. The Carter accord paves the way for the return to Port-au-Prince of Haitian President Aristide by requiring the retirement of "certain military officers," namely the Army commander in chief, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, and the Army chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Philippe Biamby. Both must relinquish their posts by October 15. But Aristide's advisers are nervous about the deal. For one thing, it does not even mention Aristide by name. It also never specifically calls for Aristide'sreturn to Haiti. Aristide'slegal counsel, Michael Barnes, points to what may be a more serious problem with the agreement: the radical shift in the U.S. posture toward the Haitian military. "On Sunday night [September 18], we understood that these three gentlemen [including Police Chief Lt. Col. Michel Francois] were to be on a plane or they would be arrested," says Barnes. "The next morning, we learn that they are `our partners.'"
If the generals do not leave, they could complicate things, diplomats and many ordinary Haitians say. "The generals will be the focus of opposition to Aristide and hopes of a comeback to power," says Canada's ambassador to Haiti, Francis Filleul, who has been deeply involved in the negotiations for Aristide's return.
Bonel Borgard, a 69-year-old gas vendor with only two bottom teeth, hopes that Aristide will come back and that the generals will go, but he recalls the failure of last year's Governor's Island agreement, which was designed to achieve just that. "There was already one accord," Borgard says, "and [the generals] didn't respect that one, so ..." he shrugs. Cedras has stated flatly that he will not leave Haiti.
Problems with the mechanics of a parliamentary vote on an amnesty for Cedras and Biamby only add to the confusion, as does the timing of the lifting of the United Nations embargo against Haiti. Both are among the conditions listed in the Carter accord. Both may not happen, at least not soon. Evans Paul, the elected mayor of Port-au-Prince and an Aristide ally, was still in hiding late last week, afraid for his life despite the presence of thousands of American soldiers in the capital. "With all the contradictions in U.S. policy," Paul says, "it is still too early to say thank you."
The military issues are every bit as vexing as the political -- and more worrisome. The U.S. mission in Haiti, says Maj. Gen. Dave Meade, the commander of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, whose troops were among the first to enter the country, is to bring about a "safe and secure environment to facilitate the return of the Aristide government [and to] allow the government of Aristide to govern." That mission became considerably more complicated with the violence committed by the Haitian authorities against Po
