January 24, 2006
Fear and Death Ensnare U.N.'s Soldiers in Haiti
By GINGER THOMPSON (The New York Times)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Jan. 21 - Nearly 20 months after the United Nations arrived to stabilize the hemisphere's poorest country and avert a civil war, there is still no cease-fire in this violent city on the sea.
Blasts from tanks and machine guns go on for hours almost every day around Cit� Soleil, a steamy slum of concrete hovels and canals of raw sewage at the capital's northern edge. No one knows for sure how many civilians have been killed inside because the bodies of the slum-dwellers and local gangsters rarely make it to morgues.
But last Tuesday, two Jordanian soldiers were shot to death in skirmishes with local gangs, and another was seriously wounded.
It was the third fatal strike against United Nations personnel since December, a month when relations between the international peacekeeping mission and local people worsened.
The violence has raised demands in capitals from Brasília to Washington to Ottawa for an explanation of what has gone wrong with Haiti's transition to democracy.
What is clear is that the $584 million a year mission has failed to bring peace to Haiti, and the caretaker government has failed to bring elections.
The interim government, appointed with the support of the United States after the downfall of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in March 2004, postponed the first round of new elections to Feb. 7 from Jan. 8, the fourth delay in four months.
A second round is scheduled for March.
Uncertainty remains among the highest level organizers of the elections about whether a fair vote is possible in the corrupt and deeply polarized political atmosphere here.
The postponement has led to finger-pointing all around.
The interim government blames the international community for the delays, saying it failed to deliver voter cards and train enough poll workers.
The United Nations blames the interim government, accusing its leaders of stalling in fear of losing power.
Cit� Soleil is among the most desperate corners of a desperately poor country.
Fifty-five percent of Haiti's 8.5 million people live on less than a dollar a day, according to United Nations estimates.
The continuing insecurity has not helped.
Just after the United Nations mission finally reached its full complement of 9, 000 troops and police officers in December, incidents of kidnappings increased to more than 14 a day, bringing protests by this country's middle and working classes for the peacekeepers to get serious about fighting street gangs, or get out of Haiti.
"They need to do better than what is going on to make a dent in the fear that is affecting a million people in the Port-au-Prince area," said Andy Apaid, a wealthy Haitian businessmen who runs textile factories outside Cit� Soleil.
"We don't want them to kill anyone.
But we want them to do strategic operations to get the criminals out."
Indeed, everyone here seems to have a finger on the trigger.
The nervous Jordanian soldiers assigned to patrol the streets of Cit� Soleil rarely get out of their tanks to speak to the people they are assigned to protect.
"Go away!" the soldiers shouted one day last week in English at a woman who only spoke Creole, and who was pleading for help to find her missing husband.
"We cannot tell you anything."
Neighborhood gunmen, who call themselves militants, hide from the soldiers among men and women too afraid to report crime.
"We are here to accompany the people in peace," said 24-year-old William Baptiste, who calls himself Tiblan.
"The problem is the United Nations is trying to annihilate us. Times are critical.
We have to be ready, and willing to die."
Ambassador Juan Gabriel Vald�s, the chief of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, known as Minustah, acknowledged the uphill battle in an interview.
"This is a ghetto," he said of Cit� Soleil, "where gangs, which are not different from the gangs found in Central America, have managed to isolate the area from state control.
And in a place where the state is as weak as here, you cannot ask Minustah to perform the role of the state."
But he and several other United Nations officials, as well as two high-ranking Western diplomats, rejected assertions that the mission had failed.
They charge that Haiti's tiny elite, along with interim Prime Minister G�rard Latortue, have orchestrated a campaign to undermine the mission and delay the elections, because the Haitian leadership is nervous about what opinion polls indicate are likely to be the results.
Prime Minister Latortue refused repeated requests for an interview, but he has said that after Feb. 7, his government would not begin any new initiatives, only fulfill necessary administrative duties until the new president is sworn in. "If he could, my boss would leave tomorrow," said a spokesman for Mr. Latortue, Jean-Junior Joseph.
"There is no joy in leading this country."
A recent poll sponsored by the United States government indicated that the leading candidate is former President Ren� Pr�val, considered a prot�g� of Mr. Aristide.
The Aristide government was undone by a protest movement, led by people like the businessman Mr. Apaid, a revolt by former soldiers and police officers and American pressure.
"They thought they could get rid of one government and have the country to themselves and their friends," a United Nations officials said, asking not to be identified out of fear that his comments could hurt his position in Haiti.
"But Pr�val has come and ruined the party."
Maj. Gen. Eduardo Aldunate, deputy force commander for the United Nations troops, agreed that kidnapping was a serious problem, but not one that justified delaying elections.
He has taken charge of the mission since, in another setback, the commander of the United Nations troops here, Gen. Urano Teixeira de Matta Bacellar, was found dead in his hotel room just after New Year's from what officials have described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
General Aldunate said that while violence continues to plague much of the capital, there are few serious incidents in the rest of the country.
He conceded that Cit� Soleil was under the control of street gangs loyal to Mr. Aristide.
He said the gangs use kidnapping as a way to make money and to attack the rich and middle classes they feel are responsible for forcing Mr. Aristide into exile.
Critics say that the Jordanian forces are, culturally, a bad fit in the slum and have been unable to mix with the local population as their Brazilian counterparts have managed to do elsewhere.
When the Brazilians first said they would lead the mission here, it was seen as an opportunity for Latin American nations to step up and fill a gap that the United States, after supporting Mr. Aristide's departure, was reluctant to fill.
But the Brazilian effort here has been plagued by many of the same problems that have faced peacekeepers in other conflicted corners of the globe, namely, a lack of money and political backing, and questions over use of lethal force.
Not least among the reasons that it has been hard to attack the gangs in Cit� Soleil, said Mr. Vald�s, the diplomatic chief of the mission, is that the area is flush with weapons.
Mr. Vald�s said the gang members have used money and intimidation to enlist a broad network of support among residents here. Most kidnapping victims, he said, are brought to the homes of average families in Cite Soleil and held there.
If the families cooperate with the gangs, Mr. Valdes said, they eat. If they don't, they die.
Disarming anyone has been all but impossible.
"I have always said that this mission is completely different from any other mission of the United Nations in that sense because disarmament is not a collective problem," he said. "We are not facing armies, irregular armies or guerrilla groups.
We are facing individuals who are armed, and who do not want to lose their weapons, either to defend themselves, or to attack others, or simply to eat."
In response to mounting criticism against the United Nations work in Cit� Soleil, Mr. Valdes said, troops would increase patrols and implement stricter controls at checkpoints.
But he and ranking military leaders of the mission said soldiers would not move to occupy Cit� Soleil because of the risk of "collateral damage," the killing of innocent men, women and children.
"What would happen with a massive operation?" asked Maj. Gen. Eduardo Aldunate, the deputy commander.
"Maybe we would catch some bandits, but for sure many innocent people will die.
"Our role is not to kill innocent people," he added.
"It is to help them."
Innocent people are dying all the time. Last August, the international aid group Doctors Without Borders reopened Sainte Catherine Hospital in Cit� Soleil.
The hospital had been closed for a year. Dr. Loris De Filippi, head of the medical unit, said that the numbers of gunshot victims treated at the hospital had been steadily declining but peaked again in December, as elections neared.
Things only got worse, he said, after the New Year.
In the first 10 days of this year, doctors treated more than 47 gunshot victims, half of them women and children.
One recent patient was hit by a bullet as she slept in bed.
"It's appropriate," said Dr. De Filippi, "to describe what's going on out there as war."
It certainly looked and sounded like war last Tuesday.
Gunfire erupted just before 8 a.m. when a Jordanian battalion started work on fortifying a guard post at a main entrance to Cit� Soleil.
"They don't care about how much they are firing or shooting rounds," Brig. Gen. Mahmoud al-Husban said of the gunmen.
"In the beginning they used to fire three or four shots in maybe one hour, but now they are firing hundreds and sometimes a thousand."
Indeed gunfire crackled through the air until well past noon, leaving two soldiers dead. Capt.
Tariq Abed Alfatta Aljaafreh, 30, was engaged to be married at the end of his six-month assignment here. Sgt. Jalal Rabi Merei, also 30, was a husband and father of two.
Their bodies were sent home Friday, after a ceremony of somber prayers and defiant speeches.
Not a single representative of Haiti's interim government was there.
Still, the speakers took the opportunity to send a message.
General Aldunate said the United Nations mission would not be forced to surrender its work by the "tiny elite that does not want to understand our mission."
Col. Mohammed Sabayleh, the dead soldiers' commanding officer, also spoke.
"We remain committed to preserving peace against those who have lost the taste for it," he said. "These bodies you see before you are proof of our honesty, and our determination."
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