It's now a daily sight in Port-au-Prince's grassy Champs de Mars, the park that runs between Haiti's military headquarters and the National Palace. Thousands of civilians line up in groups of 30 to drill in the morning heat, preparing for a U.S.-led invasion that Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, their military ruler, warns is inevitable. Their job is to aid the 7,500-man Army if invaders try to reinstate ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Elsewhere, an array of paramilitary groups have sprung up. The best known among them is the Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress, headed by Emmanuel Constant, whose radio call sign is "Qadhafi."
Many Americans doubt that Haiti can effectively resist an invasion. Carl Denis, an adviser to the provisional president, Emile Jonassaint, disagrees. America's tanks can't get down the slums' narrow streets, he says, and its helicopters can't fire through cinder block houses. "It will be close combat. Any shotgun will be effective." In the past year, 20,000 gun licenses have been issued in Port-au-Prince alone. Denis, who served in the U.S. Army in the 1960s, cites a teaching of Sun Tzu, the Chinese military genius: "When you encircle an enemy, always leave him a way to escape." The United States hasn't done this, Denis says, "so all that's left is a fight to the death."
