Obligations in Haiti

http://www.boston.com:80/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/
articles/2004/03/01/obligations_in_haiti

MAKE NO mistake about it: Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s
resignation yesterday as Haiti’s elected president was
a defeat for democracy. It was a defeat that the United
States, so eager to inject democracy into the Middle
East, could have prevented as recently as last week,
when Aristide asked for foreign security forces to
protect Haitian democracy from the armed insurgents
threatening to overthrow it.

The United States and France, the two Western powers
with the strongest ties to Haiti, chose to leave
Aristide to his fate, forcing him to flee the country.
Now Washington and Paris are more obligated than ever
to protect Haitians from the insurgents, whom Secretary
of State Colin Powell has characterized as thugs.
Yesterday President Bush deployed several hundred
Marines as part of an international force to restore
stability to Haiti.

Aristide was a deeply flawed leader who never managed
to put in place two foundation stones of
self-government: a trained and adequately staffed
internal security force and a fair electoral structure.
On each score he received some help from the United
States after a US intervention in 1994 restored him to
the presidency. (He had won office in 1990, only to be
deposed by the military in 1991.)

Unfortunately, this exercise in nation building was
slammed by the Republican-led Congress, and the Clinton
administration backed off long before Haiti had the
police force or electoral institutions it needed.

In a country of 8 million, Haiti’s police number fewer
than 5,000, and many were so poorly led that they put
up no fight against the insurgents. Embittered by the
Haitian Army’s involvement in the coup against him and
by its brutal killings of Haitian citizens, Aristide
disbanded it. Former leaders of that army are now part
of the insurgency.

A legislative election in 2000 was mishandled to favor
Aristide’s party. Those senators whose election was
questioned later resigned, but the incident worsened
the divide between Aristide and the political
opposition. The Bush administration withheld aid to
Haiti, which deepened the country’s misery and left
Aristide without the wherewithal to improve its
woefully inadequate infrastructure.

A week ago the United States offered a sensible
compromise. Under that plan, Aristide would have shared
power with a new government led by a prime minister
from the political side of the opposition, which has no
apparent links to the armed insurgents. Aristide
agreed, but the opposition refused, insisting on
Aristide’s departure. That’s when the United States
should have supported an international force to protect
Haitian democracy.

Now the process of building a functioning democracy
must begin anew. "The United States is prepared to
help," Bush said yesterday. The international community
should have the staying power to see that it is done
right.