03/17/2004

The international response to the latest political turmoil in Haiti is not encouraging. The UN’s planning does not seem to extend much beyond elections and more police assistance, while the U.S. is repeating old mistakes.  There was no significant planning for a Haiti operation prior to the deployment of U.S. Marines, and their initial rules of engagement did not include stopping looters, contributing to an estimated $500 million worth of infrastructure damage to Haiti’s fragile $1 billion economy.  The mandate for the U.S. mission constantly shifted over the first few weeks, resulting in confusion about U.S. intentions. The inescapable conclusion is that the U.S. government needs a better system to plan for and participate in post-conflict situations.

The Stabilization and Reconstruction Civilian Management Act of 2004, recently introduced by Senators Lugar and Biden, contains useful provisions towards building a more effective U.S. civilian capacity to respond to post-conflict challenges.  The legislation would authorize the establishment of an Office of International Stabilization and Reconstruction (OISR) at the State Department, led by a Coordinator; the establishment of a Response Readiness Corps (RRC) of 250 post-conflict experts, with a corresponding reserve roster of personnel, such as police, judges and prosecutors; and the establishment of a contingency fund for stabilization activities.

The evolution of the latest crisis in Haiti offers examples as to when and how this proposed capacity could have been applied. Increasing political violence in Haiti in late 2001 and early 2002, following flawed parliamentary elections, would have led the OISR to place Haiti on a watch list.  In late 2003, as violence dramatically escalated, preparations for a possible stability operation in Haiti would have begun.  The OISR Coordinator would have identified immediate and long-term resource needs, tasked the RRC with appropriate planning activities, and identified available personnel from the reserve rosters who would be needed if the operation went forward.

By early 2004, as rebels took control in parts of Haiti, a Coordinator for the U.S. response to Haiti would have been designated by the President, and OISR personnel would have gone to a higher state of readiness for rapid deployment to Haiti following the establishment of non-combat conditions by the U.S. military.  Once in Haiti, the Coordinator would have been prepared for potential problems, such as looting, and ensured the U.S. response was appropriate.  In short, the U.S. State Department would have had the capacity to make certain that a U.S. stability operation went beyond the same tired approach to failed states—do as little as possible, and get out as quickly as possible.

The need for the U.S. and the UN to seek better solutions in Haiti is clear.  The country has already become a significant transit route for illegal drugs during the past few years of political instability.  If Haiti is allowed to remain a failed state, that problem, which poses a direct threat to regional and U.S. national security, will only grow larger. Nevertheless, despite its proximity to the U.S., Haiti never seems to rise to the level of a major policy priority, leaving chronic problems to fester and hampering the capacity of the UN to respond.

Therefore, while the immediate task is to establish stability and public security, a longer-term challenge will be to overcome the peace building failures of the past. The departure of the democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is simply the latest episode of the political strife that has afflicted Haiti for almost all of its 200 years of existence. While it is tempting to conclude that political violence in Haiti is therefore inevitable, the country does have strengths to draw on, notably a vibrant civil society with numerous popular organizations, and large diaspora communities, located mainly in the U.S. and France, which can be ready sources of economic assistance and support for better governance. Haiti will nonetheless still need outside help to recover from the latest round of political violence, and the lack of success from previous attempts suggests that the peace building approach in Haiti must become more comprehensive and long-term.

Reform of the judicial system should be a major priority. The experience of peace building in Haiti after President Aristide was restored to power in 1994 showed that improvements to the capacities of civilian police institutions are ineffective if the rest of the judicial system is ignored.  Police must have somewhere humane to hold people they arrest, and there must be fair and impartial judges to try those arrested.  If key elements like this do not exist, police are left to take extra-judicial steps to deal with crime, which swiftly leads to a breakdown of police professionalism.

Further, training only 5,000 police officers was not adequate. The training itself was good, as shown by the mere fact that there are still police in Haiti trying to do their job even in the current chaotic environment. But if it takes nearly 40,000 police for New York City’s population of 8 million, it is unlikely that 5,000 police would be sufficient for Haiti, where the same population is spread throughout a country slightly smaller than the state of Maryland.

As the next round of nation building in Haiti moves forward, a stronger police capacity will be needed.  The Haitian National Police must be enlarged, and will probably need a more robust gendarmerie-type capacity.  Courts, judges, prisons and other parts of the judicial system must be improved at the same time.  The army was disbanded after the 1994 intervention, and should not be reconstituted. The pervasive political corruption and weak governance structures must also be addressed, or citizen disillusionment with government and political instability will inevitably follow.  To support these efforts, the Bush administration should follow the example of the British, who in 2000 deployed a small number of troops to Sierra Leone to buttress the UN peacekeepers, and have kept them there to this date.  Several hundred U.S. Marines would usefully augment the upcoming UN peace operation.

If Haiti is to finally climb out of the abyss, a long-term commitment of resources and institution building in all sectors of governance including judicial will be required.  But the broader lesson of the Haiti experience is that the U.S. needs better civilian capacities to plan for and participate in post-conflict operations. The ad-hoc nature of current U.S. interventions, the unclear and constantly changing mandates, and the absence of both short and long-term planning harm U.S. security and leave vulnerable people to suffer the consequences of the resulting chaos.

Therefore, Refugees International recommends that:

• The U.S. and the UN begin planning for a comprehensive and long-term peace operation in Haiti, one that tackles all areas of the judicial system and that works to establish good governance practices within Haiti’s political institutions.
• The Pentagon plan for, and the Bush administration support, a long-term deployment of a small contingent of U.S. Marines to buttress the upcoming UN peace operation in Haiti.
• The U.S. Congress pass the Stabilization and Reconstruction Civilian Management Act of 2004, which would create capacities within the U.S. government to better plan for and participate in stability operations such as Haiti.