by Linda Robinson; Tim Zimmermann; Bruce B. Auster
Luxon Lancer stood over his cousin's bloodied body last Thursday on the portside Boulevard La Saline in Port-au-Prince. Moments earlier, someone had lobbed a grenade into a crowd of demonstrators, killing at least five Haitians and wounding more than 40. Vegetable and gasoline vendors pressed in as two dozen U.S. Army humvees pulled up. American soldiers began to administer first aid and search for the assailants, training their machine guns on the cement and wood shacks as hundreds of residents poured out, hands in the air. "If the U.S. can't stop the attaches [armed pro-military civilians], the people will do the job," cried Lancer.
As the October 15 deadline for Haiti's military rulers to step down approaches, tensions are at the breaking point. Violent clashes and looting in Port-au-Prince go virtually unchecked, underscoring the collapse of civil order in Haiti -- and the fact that only American troops can prevent chaos.
It is now a foregone conclusion that the junta will go: Its security forces are in disarray, and reports that Police Chief Lt. Col. Michel Francois, one of its top leaders, would seek asylum in the neighboring Dominican Republic show the officers' solidarity has crumbled. What matters now is the anger of Luxon Lancer and thousands like him.
Moving target. Under the September 18 agreement brokered by former President Jimmy Carter, U.S. forces landed the next day to create a "secure and stable environment" for the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But that task has become a moving target. The Haitian military, initially seen as the No. 1 threat, has put up no concerted resistance. This has left U.S. forces on the front lines to deal with the newly emboldened Haitian civilian population, which is clamoring for justice after years of brutal military rule. Haitians are unlikely to get it in the country's dysfunctional court system; the alternative is to exact retribution in the streets.
"Even if people don't intend to make trouble, things can get out of hand," says Francis Filleul, the Canadian ambassador to Haiti. "People get worked up on the spot if they've had too much clairin [Haitian moonshine] or if there is a provocation like someone tossing a grenade into a demonstration." The U.S. military has warned Aristide that pro-military provocateurs have been circulating through the crowds in Port-au-Prince, trying to incite them to violence.
Meanwhile, the U.S. commitment grows. The administration had planned to send no more than 15,000 troops to Haiti; more than 20,000 are now in the country, although there are plans to begin withdrawing marines from Cap-Haitien this week.
The mantle of cooperation with Haitian security forces mandated by the Carter accord has been dropped. "We do not want jointness; we are not looking at joint patrols," U.S. Ambassador William Swing told U.S. News. Nevertheless, as U.S. troops fan out into the Haitian countryside, an uneasy facade of cooperation remains (box, Page 28). "It's a thin line between keeping Haitian police doing their jobs and not having an identity that we're working with them," says Swing.
Fading away. The first of 1,000 international police monitors have arrived in Haiti. But their mission -- to accompany Haitian police on patrols and supply on-the-job training -- will be moot if Haitian police simply melt away. According to some reports, Francois has ordered his men to shed their uniforms and fade into society. Training of Haitian exiles for police work at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is being accelerated.
Within six months, a United Nations peacekeeping force of some 6,000 is to take over from the police monitors. But the criterion for a U.S. handoff to the U.N. is the elimination of organized resistance -- a definition that applies more readily to combat with a hostile army than to an effort to pacify an unruly populace.
In a sullen, undeclared strike, Haitian policemen sat in a downtown station called Cafeteria, playing dominoes while a squad of U.S. military police gently shooed away the mounting crowd. "Why do you think we're parked out front and they're inside? They're afraid," said Staff Sgt. Robert Egnor, sweating profusely in his helmet and flak jacket. Standing in front of the two humvees, a Haitian blew kisses to a female MP standing on the station's second-floor balcony.
Soldiers in northern Haiti have deserted their posts, and civilians have followed in their wake, stripping offices and barracks of files and furniture. Nine warehouses of humanitarian supplies -- food, medicine and fuel -- have been cleaned out by looting crowds in the capital, Cap-Haitien and Gonaives. Ross Mountain, director of the United Nations Development Program in Haiti, says that 300 tons of supplies were taken from one U.N. warehouse and 11 tons from another.
In the headquarters of Haiti's armed forces, a senior officer ticked off the mounting incidents of public disorder, saying: "Now the United States will see why Aristide was sent away. No matter what the Haitian military has done wrong, it is the sole force in the country for law and order." While U.S. troops bedded down for the night, a Haitian in civilian clothes downstairs donned the sunglasses that are a trademark of the attaches. His voice dripping with venom, he said loudly: "Even if I die, I have to kill a couple of white guys." A guns-for-cash program begun last week by the U.S. military has gotten off to a slow start. U.S. troops have been ordered to carry their weapons and wear flak jackets at all times.
While American military forces are working feverishly to bring about some semblance of stability, diplomats are pushing as rapidly as possible to re-establish a civilian government. Parliament was convoked by President Aristide last week to consider the general amnesty promised in the Carter agreement. While U.S. soldiers stood on the Parliament roof and perimeter, deputies and senators filtered in; many have been in hiding or in exile since the coup, some in the United States.
But many of the parliamentarians are not disposed to pardon the Haitian military for all the crimes committed in the past three years. "The Constitution is clear: It is not possible to give a general amnesty," says Alexandre Medard, a deputy from Aristide's coalition, citing a constitutional provision allowing amnesty for crimes deemed "political" but not for what are called "blood crimes" in Haiti.
Aristide has said he is willing to grant amnesty for political crimes, including the coup itself, but he, too, opposes a blanket amnesty that would absolve the coup's supporters of other crimes and murders they have committed.
Singing rooster. In the first major step toward restoration of the Aristide government, last week Port-au-Prince's mayor, Evans Paul, was reinstalled in his neoclassical Hotel de Ville office. Thousands of Haitians, many of them city employees who have not been paid for 20 months, gathered in a park out front to cheer him and listen to speeches broadcast over speakers, as several dozen U.S. soldiers stood guard behind concertina wire encircling Paul's office. "The cock is singing," the triumphant mayor shouted, referring to the symbol of Aristide's Lavalas movement, the rooster. While Paul called for "peaceful cohabitation" among Haiti's divided citizens, Haitians dancing to a sha-sha band outside chanted, "Those who are not Lavalas are panicked."
Aristide's prime minister, Robert Malval, resigned last December but has stayed on as interim prime minister so as not to leave the exiled government without at least a symbolic presence. He spends his days at home, where U.S. officials meet with him and Defense Minister Jean Beliotte. Aristide will name a new prime minister when he returns after October 15, and legislative elections at year's end are aimed at providing a fresh mandate for civilian authority.
Graffiti scrawled on buildings suggest Haitians are hoping that th
