HAITI: U.N. Envoy Warns to Extend Peacekeepers or Risk Insecurity

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, May 9 1996 (IPS) - U.N. peacekeepers should remain in Haiti at least through 1996 because the new national police force is unable to maintain security, the special U.N. envoy to Haiti warns.

“It is clear that the Haitian national police is not in a position to take over the creation of a stable and secure environment,” says Ambassador Enrique terHorst. “Our presence would still be required for some time.”

The 1,900 troops and 280 police monitors of the U.N. Mission in Haiti (UNMIH) are to remain in the country only until Jun 30, because the U.N. Security Council, at the prodding of China, made clear the current extension of the force is to be its last.

But terHorst hopes the Council will reconsider, since, he contends, a departure now could doom Haiti’s fledgling democracy under President Rene Preval.

If the force leaves on schedule, we would face a situation where the development of the police may be considerably retarded,” he says. “Some of the unsavoury elements of the de facto regime (Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras’s 1991-94 military junta) may get some funny ideas.”

To forestall those possibilities, terHorst recommends keeping the force at least at its current strength for a minimum of another six months. He believes the Council will be responsive to that request, and it may send a delegation to Haiti this month to assess the situation.

China — angered by the Haitian government’s recent relations with Taiwan, which Beijing says is part of the People’s Republic — has threatened to use its veto power to block a lengthy extension of UNMIH.

But terHorst says that China seems responsive to concerns over Haiti’s safety, and may send a representative on the Council delegation to Haiti.

The special envoy’s words have boosted optimism among many supporters of the current government, who have been worried that violent opposition to Preval and his mentor, former President Jean- Bertrand Aristide, could increase once UNMIH leaves.

“Obviously there are people there with guns and people who would like to overthrow the government,” says Ira Kurzban, general counsel for the Haitian government. “But the question is means.”

Supporters of the Cedras regime and of paramilitary groups such as the rightist Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH) lack the ability to threaten Haiti for now, claims Kurzban, who doubts U.N. troops will leave at the end of June.

“The former members of the de facto military regime do not constitute a security measure at this time,” terHorst agrees. But he adds that some former army and police forces could become a threat if UNMIH departs and the Haitian police are unable to take up the slack.

One possible warning sign came last month, when neighbouring Dominican Republic expelled former police chief Michel Francois and his aide, Erich Romaine, citing their plans to overthrow the Preval government. (Both men are now in Honduras.)

Another problem is the existence of new, shadowy criminal gangs, 11 of which reportedly operate in the Cite Soleil slums skirting the capital, Port-au-Prince. TerHorst calls such groups the main threat to Haiti’s fragile security right now.

Jane Regan, an analyst at the Haitian Information Bureau, a research group in Port-au-Prince, says that some of the groups seem to have some vague political aim. Most notably, she cites the “Red Army,” a violent group that claims to provide security to Cite Soleil neighbourhoods and espouses populist rhetoric.

“We don’t know what the Red Army stands for, whether they support Lavalas (the pro-Aristide popular movement) or are against it, or who supports them,” Regan says.

Jocelyn McCalla, executive director of the New York-based National Coalition for Haitian Rights, counters that the groups are mainly a product of the current void in state security forces. Many of the gangs, he says “have taken up the role of policing the community.”

But terHorst argues that most of them are simply criminal groups, who steal from Port-au-Prince’s port area and deal in drugs and other contraband material. He discounts the idea that any of them are political or paramilitary forces, saying the Red Army label was created by a local radio station and not a reflection of the group’s political beliefs.

Some Haitians also fear the possibility of violence as the cash- strapped government prepares to privatise nine state-owned companies, including the main electric utility.

But terHorst responded, “I do not foresee violence at the end of the (privatisation) agreement, because they will not result in price hikes.”

Unlike the selling off of many enterprises, the U.N. envoy adds, this round of privatisations may not harm employment, since two of the companies due to be sold — the national cement factory and flour mill — already are idle.

But a larger threat of violence may lurk in the precarious relationship between the new police and Haitian society. “The lack of experience (among the new officers) is a factor in generating reactions which are sometimes impulsive and the result of fear,” terHorst says of reports of police using excessive force.

The recent killing of three police officers in the span of one week sparked concern that the police may become even more wary. The killings “probably will bring the police on edge, more than they have been,” McCalla says.

“We hope it is not part of a campaign to demoralise the police force,” adds terHorst. He says UNMIH will investigate the killings.