What, exactly, are we doing in Haiti? The short answer: restoring what the White House calls “a duly elected leader” who won two thirds of the popular vote. Putting aside, for a moment, the question of Aristide’s fitness to govern–and the possibility of a smear campaign by his enemies–does the U.S. strategy for his reinstatement make sense? Sending lightly armed troops to retrain the Haitian military now seems laughably naive; several dozen armed civilians prevented the USS Harlan County from landing. A U.S.-led flotilla of warships then moved in–not to challenge the unregenerate junta, but to enforce U.N. sanctions that only inflict more misery on the long-suffering civilians. At the weekend, a new deal was put into play: Aristide could return, but on terms more accommodating to those who had overthrown him two years ago.
Publicly, at least, Bill Clinton continued to stand by the exiled Haitian president. Despite the CIA report, “his gut” tells him that Aristide is “a somewhat naive and ascetic priest,” according to one of Clinton’s friends. Asked when Aristide would return to power, however, the president sounded less assured: “I don’t know. I was hoping he’d be back by Oct. 30. " Now that deadline is seriously in doubt. A congressional move to limit Clinton’s authority to send troops to Haiti, spearheaded by Sen. Bob Dole, folded by midweek. Still, Aristide loomed as a colossal political liability. Far easier, perhaps, to back someone less controversial–like Robert Malval, Haiti’s prime minister and a member of the country’s business elite. The Clinton team respects Malval and considers him a steadying influence on Aristide.
Malval looked tough and smart last week. He stood up to Haiti’s strongman, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, by closing down all gasoline distributors in the country, in compliance with the U.N. embargo. He also emerged as the pivotal man in restarting the latest negotiations with the army. The new deal would extend an earlier agreement–signed and then abrogated by the Haitian military–calling for Aristide’s return and Cedras’s resignation. In exchange, Aristide would strengthen an existing amnesty by introducing a law into Parliament, and name members of the conservative opposition to his cabinet. His chief nemesis, the Port-au-Prince police chief, Col. Michel Francois, would remain in the military, but move to a less threatening post. The accord, said Malval, “is the last opportunity for us.”
Some U.S. senators, profoundly shaken by the CIA briefing, weren’t convinced. They heard charges that Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest and firebrand orator, had been hospitalized for mental illness in 1980 and, at the time of his overthrow in 1991, was taking 13 different drugs for manicdepression. The report also alleged that he dealt with his opposition by inciting mob violence and condoning “necklacing”–igniting a gasoline-soaked tire that has been placed around a victim’s neck. “In my judgment, this man is a psychopath,” said Sen. Jesse Helms, who led an unsuccessful charge to ban U.S. troops in Haiti. “I do not think we have any business whatsoever…risking the life of one soldier or one sailor or any other American to put Aristide back into office.”
Aristide’s supporters jumped to his defense. “[He] has been hospitalized once in his life–as a boy he was treated for hepatitis,” claims Michael Barnes, former congressman and counsel to the Haitian leader, in a prepared statement. “Totally false,” Aristide says of the CIA allegations of taking drugs for manic-depression and sponsoring political terror. “I am a psychologist,” he told NEWSWEEK. “I know all about character assassination and psychological warfare. It’s all garbage.” Some Senate staffers contend that Haitian military leaders, fronting for Colombian drug cartels, have deliberately spread misinformation about Aristide, whose return threatens their livelihood. The staffers also suspect that the CIA and State secretly want to edge out the exiled president in favor of a candidate more amenable to Washington and the Haitian military. “Those State Department guys would sell out Aristide in a New York minute,” says a Capitol Hill source.
A dispassionate look at Aristide’s record shows a leader who is neither psychopath nor saint. In a November 1991 report by Americas Watch, the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees and Caribbean Rights, Aristide gets high marks for starting to reform the army and dismantling an abusive network of rural sheriffs. He is severely criticized for not improving the criminaljustice system and doing little to prevent Haitians from taking the law, into their own hands. In a celebrated instance, a mob poured its fury on Port-au-Prince’s archbishop, who had preached that Aristide was not fit to be president. It gutted his home, burned the cathedral and attacked the papal nuncio. “We cannot hold Aristide responsible for inciting reprehensible actions by his followers,” the report concludes. “But [he] deserves blame for choosing not to use his exceptional moral authority to speak out forcefully against this violence.”
Breaking that cycle of violence will be key to any successful agreement. Without a radical reorganization of the homicidal army and police, the brutal deterioration is likely to continue. If it does, will Washington consider using force to restore order? Despite his bravado about executive privilege, Clinton is in no mood to send troops to Haiti. And if he tried, Congress would balk again. But unlike Somalia’s stability, Haiti’s is a matter of real national interest, if for no other reason than the prospect of more refugees arriving on U.S. shores. Whether Clinton likes it or not, Haiti has become a test not just of America’s willingness to play global cop–but whether it will still walk the beat in its own backyard.
