HAITI-UN: Peacekeepers May Stay in Haiti Despite Objections

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 1997 (IPS) - The United Nations is close to an agreement to maintain a small peacekeeping force in Haiti until the end of November, despite the increasing unpopularity of the U.N. force on the Caribbean island, according to diplomatic sources here.

The U.N. Security Council is now expected to approve the four- month creation of a U.N. Transitional Mission in Haiti (UNTMIH), comprising 50 troops and 250 civilian police, by next week, when the current peacekeeping force ends its mandate, sources said.

Although two veto-wielding Security Council members, Russia and China, both want to see an end to U.N. involvement in Haiti, both are tentatively willing to accept the slimmed-down UNTMIH, diplomats here say. The proposed force would boast 200 fewer soldiers than the current U.N. Support Mission in Haiti, and would be bolstered by several hundred independent Canadian and Pakistani troops and financed largely through voluntary contributions, mainly from the United States and Canada.

But the peacekeepers, who U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reported this week would be crucial in preparing a “secure and stable environment” for the country’s fledgling police force, are becoming increasingly unpopular in Haiti itself. Several leftist Haitian popular groups – including members of the movement aligned with former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide – began to stage protests throughout the country Friday against any continued U.N. presence.

A general strike is scheduled for Jul. 28, just three days before the current peacekeeping mandate is set to expire.

Aristide has not voiced approval of the current protests or strike, but in recent weeks has criticised President Rene Preval, his former ally, of being “indebted to imperialism.” Meanwhile, anti-U.N. graffiti has appeared in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and a growing number of politicians of both the ruling Lavalas Popular Organisation and Aristide’s breakway Lafanmi Lavalas have criticised the troops.

“The international community itself has now come under attack and is being blamed for the country’s continued difficulties,” Annan said in a report to the Security Council this week. “Some popular organisations have publicly opposed what they term a ‘foreign occupation’. Recently, one of them called for armed struggle to ‘liberate’ the country.”

In general, even Haitians who initially accepted outside intervention when Aristide was restored to power by a U.S. force in 1994 have become discouraged and frustrated by the United Nations, said Kim Ives, a journalist for the New York-based ‘Haiti Progres’ who recently returned from Haiti.

“The widespread opinion there is that the United Nations, at the very best, is doing nothing at all to promote security,” Ives said of the present mood. “When U.N. forces are on the scene as a crime occurs, they immediately take off in the other direction.”

As a result, he added, a crime wave linked to members of rightist paramilitary groups – who long dominated Haitian politics during the dictatorship of Francois Duvalier’s family – has continued to boil, with 15 people killed during one recent two-day period.

But many observers believe that the objections to U.N. troops are coming from what Annan calls “a vocal minority” voicing “deep-seated nationalistic sentiments.” Some experts who have monitored Haiti in recent years contend that the United Nations’ work is still largely appreciated.

“Support is pretty deep among the Haitian populace for continued U.N. presence,” said Robert Maguire, the leader of a 1996 team sent by Brown University’s Watson Institute to study the international role in Haiti. “I don’t get a sense of reluctance about the United Nations. But there is a sense of frustration that the United Nations is not doing more in terms of nation- building.”

U.N. troops are restricted in their mandate, and cannot use force to rid Haitian paramilitaries of arms despite the high level of violence. Nor is the Haitian National Police, the internationally-trained police force, up to the challenge of providing security by itself if U.N. troops leave.

Annan said the new police are “slow and uneven” in learning basic functions, and he warned, “Some Haitians fear that the young police force might be manipulated by certain political groups, for which there is precedent.” Human-rights monitors have repeatedly criticised the police as inexperienced and quick to use lethal force.

For U.N. officials and the Preval government, the persistence of unrest makes the continued presence of some outside troops necessary. Even after the United Nations leaves, Preval has said, Caribbean countries – notably Jamaica – may be willing to shore up the local police with their own forces. Moreover, Canada, which currently fields 300 of its own soldiers in addition to U.N. troops, is unwilling to walk away now.

‘Canada already has done so much that it does not want to pull out altogether,” one official opined. Maguire added that Ottawa’s continuing support for French-speaking Haiti has also helped to strengthen relations between mostly western Anglophones and largely Quebec-based Francophones in Canada itself. Yet Annan concedes that in general, support for U.N. peacekeeping is at a lull, with the size of the worldwide U.N. peacekeeping forces, now fewer than 25,000 soldiers, only about a third of what it was in 1993.

In such a climate, Russia has long grumbled about keeping a mission in Haiti when there is no clear international threat there, while China – upset about Port-au-Prince’s ties with Taiwan – has long objected to the troops and continues to threaten to veto UNTMIH.

As one U.N. official told the press recently, regardless of whether the troops are extended further, the world body’s work in Haiti has reached “the point of diminishing returns.”