From the air, the yellow concrete building looked like just another crumbling warehouse in the southwestern port city of Les Cayes. But when 38 U.S. Army Special Forces troops arrived last Tuesday in Haiti's fourth-largest city, they soon learned that the facility was a prison replete with horrors that rival the worst that war-torn Bosnia has to offer.
The prison is located on southern Haiti's largest military base, just a few yards from command headquarters. So when Haitian officers reluctantly agreed to share the base with three Special Forces teams from Fort Bragg, N.C., the Americans discovered up close why the Haitian military and police are nearly universally despised -- and why ordinary Haitians' thirst for retribution will be hard to suppress.
Some 45 men, women and boys were jailed in four stinking, congested cells. Many of the prisoners had been locked up for thievery, but about five claimed to be political prisoners. One of the concrete chambers, just 10 by 8 paces, housed 33 men and boys. There were no beds or blankets, and men took turns urinating and defecating in a pail. Many of the prisoners were dangerously emaciated, and most were covered with disfiguring scabies, bleeding venereal diseases or both. "It turned my stomach," says Army Capt. Robert Bevelacqua, who is in charge of the three "A" teams in Les Cayes.
Less than two weeks ago, the Special Forces troops had planned to land at Les Cayes with a 12-man fighting force, fire mortars to frighten the Haitian soldiers and then destroy them if they did not surrender. But now, thanks to the last-minute plan that forestalled an invasion, the Special Forces teams are sleeping on the top floor of a building also occupied by Haitian soldiers. "It's like we're sleeping with the enemy," says U.S. Army medic Art Geffen.
"Shoot them." Les Cayes residents also seem confused by the odd-bedfellow arrangement. Haitian and American troops have been patrolling the town of 40,000 together, often eliciting jeers. "On the first day, people would point at the Haitian soldiers and look at us and say, `Shoot them! Shoot them!'" says Geffen.
"The role of the military is to protect. But in Haiti they beat you," says accounting student Phigaro Riguel, 24, who cheered along with thousands of Les Cayes residents last week when four U.S. Black Hawk helicopters buzzed the panhandle city and briefly landed on the local soccer field. "Why do the Americans live with them? And when are they going to beat them?"
In the windup to Jean-Bertrand Aristide's return to Port-au- Prince, the Yanks will be called upon to keep the peace. American troops already are in place in Haiti's four largest cities as well as in half a dozen small towns and villages.
But apart from maintaining order, U.S. troops must try to figure out their mission as they go along. Although the Army was responsible only for guarding the prisoners held in Les Cayes, the Special Forces troops could not shield their eyes from the horrible conditions. Brig. Gen. Richard Potter, head of the Special Forces operation in Haiti, flew in to Les Cayes twice last week to oversee the administration of medical treatment and distribution of food to the inmates. He also urged the Haitian Red Cross to feed them and provide them with soap, which it did. "This is a multifaceted mission, a peacekeeping mission, whatever you want to call it," General Potter says. "The book has to be written every time you go out."
