Under soft lights, surrounded by potted palms, bird-of-paradise bouquets and tables loaded with creole chicken and other delicacies, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide made peace last week with his most ardent opponents, the country's wealthy, conservative businessmen. After being courted by Aristide during the two months since U.S. troops restored him to power, the elite invited him to a banquet in their hillside suburb of Petionville. Observed a guest: "All the heavy hitters are here."
The day after the banquet, Aristide named 15 of the businessmen to a presidential commission that will work closely with his economic cabinet officials. Jean-Edouard Baker, a textile factory owner who broke with his peers to denounce the coup that ousted Aristide in 1991, presides over the commission.Baker says he hopes the panel will "institutionalize the dialogue between the private sector and the government -- to define the rules of the game."
Three months after President Clinton sent some 19,000 U.S. soldiers to safeguard President Aristide's return, the chaos and revenge widely feared by the Haitian elite have not materialized. Today, Haitians divided by wealth, ideology and race are trying to learn how to live in peace. For Aristide, it has been a good start, but his ultimate success -- and that of U.S. policy in Haiti -- will turn on two tasks: maintaining the calm during the handoff from the departing American soldiers to a United Nations peacekeeping force and living up to the high expectations created by the American intervention.
The peace, for now, is more of a truce, and none are more puzzled by Aristide's embrace of the elite than his loyal followers among the poor. "I thought he was one of us," says Dorcas Vincent, a chewing-gum peddler, one of thousands of vendors who cram Port-au-Prince streets and earn well under the national $1-a-day average. The president's turnabout surprises Vincent since "Titid," as Aristide is affectionately called, was an ardent exponent of Marxist-influenced liberation theology, a priest whose political activism caused the Vatican to strip him of his clerical collar last month. The tiny former priest, who stands barely 5 feet, played a key role in ousting Haiti's "president for life," Jean-Claude Duvalier, by calling on the masses to overthrow the 30-year dictatorship.
No one is quite sure who the new Aristide is, but his transformation is due to two factors. Aristide is back in office thanks to the same United States he regularly assailed in his sermons, and he can only better the lot of the Haitian masses if foreign aid money flows into the country. "We need jobs, and we need them fast," says Lionel Delatour, a well-connected Haitian political consultant who estimates that Aristide has three months to begin delivering results before the honeymoon glow turns to disappointment. Delatour says the "highest levels" of the Clinton administration have assured him that $10 million or so in financing will arrive in Port-au-Prince by February. The money could help lure back some 100 American companies that were shut down by the international economic embargo of Haiti.
Building bridges. To get the hemisphere's poorest country back on its feet, Prime Minister Smarck Michel, one of the few Haitian businessmen who backed Aristide's candidacy four years ago, issued an appeal last week for "a bridge between the humanitarian aid [that countries are now giving] and the aid that will relaunch Haiti socially and economically." Foreign donors promise a half-billion dollars in aid, but the money is not expected to arrive until summer. Michel is seeking $78 million to fill the gap.
The expectations facing Aristide and Michel are high. "The words are good," says Richard Buteau, a third-generation hotelier who hosted the fete for Aristide last week. "But we need actions."
Progress has been achingly slow. American military engineers boosted electricity generation after their arrival in Haiti in mid-September, but a mysterious explosion at a thermal plant and a fire at a hydroelectric dam have reduced Haiti's notoriously inadequate power supply to some eight hours a day. Among the poorest Haitians, frustrations abound. Last week, Aristide's grass-roots religious backers staged a demonstration to protest the high food prices, which have not budged since the embargo was lifted in October.
Elections should give the Haitian people tangible proof of progress, but even that issue is complicated. The terms of almost all Haiti's elected officials expire in February, and elections were to have been held before U.S. troops passed the peacekeeping mission to the United Nations. On a visit to Haiti last week, however, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott warned that the United States would not peg its departure to the elections. Balloting in Haiti cannot begin until March at the earliest, but the U.S. troop pullout is already well underway; only 6,200 American troops remained in Haiti last week. The United Nations, which may have to assume responsibility for peacekeeping during the balloting, does not want to inherit the kind of volatile situation it did in Somalia. U.N. officials complain that the United States has done too little to disarm and dismantle the armed civilian groups accused of many of the 3,000 killings during the military dictatorship's three-year rule. Many of these attaches retain their weapons and could disrupt elections with violence.
American officials say a temporary Haitian police force must take over such tasks. Many Haitians remain skeptical. The police, who will number 4,000 by the end of December, will consist mostly of former soldiers. They will be assisted by the U.N. peacekeeping force, which is to be composed of troops from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Djibouti, plus 2,000 to 3,000 U.S. soldiers. Few Haitians expect the U.N. force to command the same awe as the well-oiled American military machine.
American GIs, for their part, say their mission has been accomplished. Specialists Craig James of New York and Patrick Allen of South Carolina stand guard at the home of departed military ruler Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras. Their 10th Mountain Division has not been threatened, but shootings and looting continue. "Sometimes kids shoot off firecrackers," James says, "but never at us." Like the rest of his 10th Mountain colleagues, James is champing at the bit to go home. Haiti, for many of the soldiers, has been a nerve-jangling trial. "Hearing the voodoo chants in the ravine out back," says another 10th Mountain soldier, "that can be spooky."
Most Haitians believe the bad guys are down but not out. Top Haitian military officers have been sent abroad, but leaders of the civilian attaches like Emmanuel Constant sit quietly at home. Constant insists his Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress (FRAPH) is a political party that will run candidates in the next elections. Human-rights activists call FRAPH an incarnation of the Duvalier-era Tontons Macoutes. Jean-Robert Valval, executive director of the Ecumenical Human Rights Center, says the attaches "are watching and waiting. They will never go against U.S. soldiers, but they can use disappointment over the economy and insecurity to make a comeback." Given Haiti's long, miserable history, it would be risky to lay a bet against such a scenario just now.
