by Linda Robinson; Richard Z. Chesnoff; Matthew Cooper
Lanac Leger, a mother of two who hawks grain from a stall at Port-au-Prince's Iron Market, is "so happy, more than happy, that God has given our president back to us." She has a wish list for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide: "I want my children to go to school, to find enough food for myself and my children."
It's a simple plea, but in Haiti nowadays nothing can be taken for granted. Back from three years of exile in the United States, Aristide faces a sisyphean task: He must balance the expectations of an adoring but impoverished majority against those of people who fear his radicalism -- especially those with money and guns who still have the power to plunge Haiti into chaos. Aristide must end the violence that has plagued the country by remaking the military and other institutions rife with graft and inefficiency and by reining in his own extremists. He must also revive the moribund economy and attack the hemisphere's most brutal poverty.
The Clinton administration is as eager as the Haitians are for Aristide to rule as the progressive, democratic leader he has pledged to be -- in part so that the approximately 19,000 U.S. troops safeguarding Aristide's leadership can be withdrawn in short order. So far, the American task of policing Haiti has been virtually without U.S. casualties, although dozens of Haitians have been wounded and killed in sporadic violence. However, as a senior administration official privately told White House staffers last week, "We're only a hand grenade away from disaster."
A first signal of Aristide's strategy will be his choices for top government posts, especially prime minister. His advisers insist -- and Clinton administration officials expect -- that Aristide will recruit some officials beyond his Lavalas populist political movement. One of his current non-Lavalas cabinet members, Education Minister Victor Benoit, says that "the government of a country that is so torn apart has to be one of national concord."
Dim views. But the crucial choice of prime minister, which under Haiti's Constitution is theoretically a more powerful position than president, is likely to be an Aristide loyalist. One top candidate, Smark Michel, Aristide's former commerce minister, wins praise from some businessmen. But many conservatives take a dim view of any former Aristide official. Speaking for many in the nervous business community, Clark Chevallier, a young sportswear manufacturer, agrees: "If he puts some opposition people in his government, for example, that will boost the morale of the private sector."
Aristide must also deal with those who committed crimes against his followers and supported the coup that ousted him in 1991. He has made reconciliation a mantra in recent speeches: "No to violence, no to vengeance, yes to reconciliation, yes to justice." An amnesty law passed by the reconvened Haitian parliament gives him wide leeway in choosing how to punish coup supporters. Some of Aristide's closest aides want to press forward with trials, but others caution that Haiti's dysfunctional justice system is not up to the task and that passions are too intense to see justice done. "Maybe 50 years from now, [Lt. Gen. Raoul] Cedras can be brought back, like [John] Demjanjuk, to stand trial," says Jean-Yves Urfie, editor of the pro-Aristide newspaper Libete.
Remembering the victims. Many Aristide advisers back creation of a "truth commission," similar to the one set up in El Salvador after its civil war ended in 1992: Impartial jurists investigated and publicized the most notorious crimes. Another suggestion is to create a government fund to pay reparations to victims and their families.
Given the visceral panic that Aristide inspires in the country's most ardent conservatives, it is unlikely that he can bring everyone into the fold. Gregory Brandt, a member of one of Haiti's wealthiest families, believes that Aristide will incite the poor to attack the rich. He says flatly: "He's not interested in unity. Aristide is no [Nelson] Mandela."
Charles David, foreign minister under the just-departed de facto government, argues that Aristide "knows nothing about administration. He can exploit the problems of this country, but he can't solve them."
Others in the elite are willing to give Aristide a chance. Maryse Penette, who works for Haiti's giant GB Group of industrial and trading companies, says the worried elite must adapt: "Either they play by the new [democratic] rules, or they're out of business." But even she allows that Aristide may turn out "to be an architect who can't build a house."
Just as delicate in the days ahead will be eradicating the sources of violence that roil the country. The coup leaders are gone, U.S. troops are patrolling the streets, and some paramilitary leaders have been detained, but "there is still a lot of mischief that can be done," says a longtime foreign-aid worker in Haiti. "The armed thugs here have always been headless horsemen," he cautions. And there is danger that some of Aristide's own followers will seek vigilante justice.
A top Aristide adviser says that the priority is disarming right-wing civilians and purging the Army; he adds that Aristide is unhappy that U.S. forces have not made more progress on this front. "The U.S. is overly concerned with mission creep. But if they don't disarm civilians, the people will -- and the U.S. will be caught in the middle," he warns.
As of last week, U.S. troops had seized or bought back more than 6,200 guns from civilians and soldiers; but tens of thousands more remain on the streets. Despite plans to build an interim security force monitored by international police volunteers, any Haitian with a uniform is still looked upon with fear and loathing. Last week in the Carrefour suburb of Port-au- Prince, Haitians burned down a military post. Former New York City police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who leads the 572 international monitors trying to reshape the Haitian police, says he spends much of his time reminding local commanders "that weapons of war are not to be used on their own people."
Sources close to Aristide say that Maj. Gen. Jean-Claude Duperval, appointed last week by departing coup leader Cedras to command the Army, will not last long in his post since he silently supported the coup leaders and is reportedly the target of a drug-trafficking investigation in Miami. Aristide will seek to oust the Army's high command and promote younger colonels. One of them, Col. Beaubrun Mondesir, is said to be his new choice to lead the Army. Aristide also aims to cut the Haitian Army down to size in an effort to end its penchant for meddling in politics. Its current strength of 7,500 soldiers will be cut to 1,500 troops, who will be approved by the Aristide government. And in a potent symbolic change, the military headquarters next to the presidential palace is to be taken over and converted into civilian offices. The military will be moved to a barracks outside of Port-au-Prince and assigned limited tasks of border control and civic action projects.
Expectations for economic revival are high, now that a United Nations embargo that contracted the economy by 30 percent during the three years of coup leadership is being lifted in conjunction with Aristide's return. But Raymond Lafontant, executive director of the Association of Haitian Industries, warns of the monumental task ahead: "The real economic problems of Haiti are so profound that we need more than infrastructure, more than even reorganizing. We need assistance in organizing a civil society."
Help is on the way, in the form of about $555 million in the coming year from the United States and other countries. But given the disarray in which Aristide has found the government, with offices stripped and no records kept, a top member of his cabinet cautions that "there has to be a careful evaluation and fiscal planning before the world starts pouring in major money."
