Rob Blackhurst

Independent Leading Article

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Leading Article: At last, the US joins France to send forces to Haiti

Independent, The (London), Mar 1, 2004

PRESIDENT JEAN-BERTRAND Arisitide's hasty flight into exile hours after the White House had warned him to go quietly will be mourned by few Haitians. The former Franciscan priest, who was returned to power a decade ago courtesy of President Bill Clinton and 20,000 American troops, became in the end, just another dictator in a region where he'd once been the great democratic hope.

His rigging of the election in 2000 led to a cut off of $500m in US aid, and the descent of the tragic former sugar colony into the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. It is a measure of the state of Haiti that the new regime could well be worse. The rebels are held together not by a shared love of democracy but a combined dislike for President Aristide. Many were henchman for previous autocratic regimes, and would be familiar to those on the wrong end of a death squad under the 1991-94 military dictatorship.

Few emerge from this episode with any credit. By disbanding the army and leaving the country defended only by a lightly armed police force, the Clinton administration created the seeds of the present disorder. But the Bush administration - perhaps influenced by the 60,000 Haitians in Florida - has been giving fatally mixed messages to Guy Philippe and the other the leaders of the coup. The confusion has led to an inglorious situation in which the White House is giving its blessing to the sixth coup d'etat in the region since 1999.

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Despite Bush's fond hopes of a "world democratic revolution", the keys to the presidential mansion are passed from one gang of gangsters to another with his blessing. Haiti is on the brink of an all-too-familiar trajectory: the state will collapse into anarchy, a flood of refugees will leave the country on makeshift rafts bound for the US, and drugs will pour into the United States. At the 11th hour the US and - irony of ironies - France, with Canada, have scrambled together to raise an international military force and abandoned their blithe refusal to deploy troops until "after a political settlement". This is to be welcomed. But it leaves most questions of Haiti's future unresolved. Humanitarian intervention, as President Bush is finding, doesn't come easy or conveniently.