Haiti: Threat and Defiance

More and more, the face-off between Haiti’s military rulers and the U.S. White House looks like an elaborate game of chicken. From the American side comes a steady escalation of military and political pressures designed to send Haitian Army Chief Raoul Cedras and his cronies this message: We don’t want to invade Haiti, but if that’s the only way to get rid of you, we will. From Cedras and company comes a series of nose-thumbing moves adding up to this reply: Come on — we dare you. But the game has not reached the point at which the final collision becomes inevitable; there is still time for either side — or both — to swerve away.

The Clinton Administration, to be sure, several times a day denies that an invasion is “imminent” and even blames the U.S. news media for spreading a contrary impression. At the same time, though, it keeps up a steady rolling of war drums. Pentagon officials last week willingly described what sounded like invasion-rehearsal exercises by Marines on Great Inagua Island in the Bahamas 200 miles north of Port-au-Prince and by soldiers of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Pentagon also announced the arrival on station of a new command ship for the 14-vessel flotilla standing ready near Haiti: the U.S.S. Mount Whitney. Crammed with communications gear and sprouting a forest of antennae, it is one of two U.S. ships designed specifically to serve as a floating headquarters for an amphibious invasion.

On the political side too, the Administration seemed to be going through preparatory exercises and building a case for intervention. Madeleine Albright, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., announced that Washington had signed up 12 Latin-American and Caribbean countries to contribute troops to a post- Cedras peacekeeping force in Haiti. (She may have gone too far. A White House official later said the 12 “were countries with whom we have had conversations. They have not necessarily agreed to participate.”) Meanwhile, the State Department put out additional reports of murders and rapes committed by the Haitian regime.

Cedras answered with defiant words and acts. In interviews with American reporters, he insisted that unless the U.S. recognized the government of his puppet President Emile Jonassaint, not even an invasion would force him to resign. Asserted Information Minister Jacques St. Louis, who lived for many years in the U.S. and served in the American Navy during the Vietnam War: “We are not talking anymore because we have nothing new to say. We will not discuss the departure of the military leaders. It troubles me that I might have to fight the uniform I once served in, but Haiti is my country.”

The Cedras regime summarily booted out nearly 100 human-rights monitors sent by the U.N. and the Organization of American States, contemptuously delivering to their headquarters in Port-au-Prince a plain white envelope containing a single sheet of paper ordering them to get out within 48 hours. They did, to the applause of some of Cedras’ tough-talking supporters. “These people were poison,” says Mireille Durocher Bertin, a lawyer. “They poisoned Haitian society with their lies and unverified reports.”

The regime further stepped up repression, making repeated threats of retribution against anyone advocating or preparing to cooperate with a U.S. invasion. In Haiti such threats, however vague, are not to be taken lightly — especially with the human-rights monitors gone. As the U.N. monitors were being expelled, the bodies of as many as a dozen young men — the government claimed only three — were dumped in the little village of Morne-a-Bateau. Local residents said they had been ordered to bury the bodies by soldiers who brought them in from somewhere else.

For all the U.S. saber rattling and Haitian shouts of defiance, there were still indications that a final showdown really is not imminent. The White House still hopes that Cedras and his crew can be pushed out by economic, diplomatic and psychological pressure. One means is to tighten further the embargo against Haiti. The Administration noted with pleasure that all commercial air service into and out of Haiti will end by August, when Air France will suspend its flights. Clinton signed an order for U.S. helicopters to patrol Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic, watching for gasoline shipments, which have been regularly smuggled across.

Another hint: a White House official says the Administration hopes to have human monitors stationed on the border “within a few weeks” — which does not sound as though he expects the country to be under U.S. military occupation quickly. An Army officer at the U.S. Atlantic Command in Norfolk, Virginia, who has read the cable traffic on Haiti guesses that if an invasion is ordered — and it has not been yet — it will occur during the first two weeks in August. Vague hints about the end of July had been dropped by some Administration officials, but they were based partly on a fear that the flow of refugees would become intolerable by then. In fact, it eased a bit last week — on Wednesday the U.S. Coast Guard picked up only 178, the lowest number since June 20, though that might have been because of rough seas. There are even the beginnings of a backflow: some escapees who were caught and interned have despaired of ever getting to the American mainland and have chosen to return to Haiti rather than continue living indefinitely in jammed quarters at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Even a slight easing of the refugee pressure has given Clinton some breathing space he sorely needs: there is a great deal more the Administration would have to do before it ordered an invasion. Says Admiral Paul Miller, who is in charge of the Atlantic Command and would supervise any invasion: “Haiti is not a one-day problem. You have to factor in the political, the military, the economic and the cultural ((problems)) — and what’s done the day after ((an invasion)), the week after, the month after, the year after.” Lining up international support is crucial, since the U.S. wants a multinational peacekeeping mission to take over from an American invasion force. Secretary- General Boutros Boutros-Ghali says, however, that the U.N. cannot afford to take on that job; organizing the peacekeepers and arranging to pay for them would have to be done by the U.S.

The Administration would face a tough job justifying an invasion to Congress and the public. Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged Clinton to “think . . . very carefully” before ordering an invasion of Haiti, which he termed not a vital interest of the U.S. Even the 40-Democrat Congressional Black Caucus is not unanimous. While most of its members favor an invasion, California’s Ron Dellums, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, insists that “the use of force is neither appropriate nor necessary.”

The public seems confused and ambivalent. Among 600 people questioned in a TIME/CNN poll conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, 50% agreed with the proposition that “nothing the U.S. could accomplish in Haiti is worth the death of even one U.S. soldier,” vs. 39% who disagreed. But when respondents were asked whether they approved of “sending U.S. troops to Haiti along with troops from other countries,” the breakdown was almost the exact opposite: 51% in favor, 39% opposed. Unilateral intervention, on the other hand, drew only 17% support, with 75% against the idea.

A major reason for the lack of martial enthusiasm is fear that an invasion would land the U.S. in an endless quagmire, attempting an almost impossible task of “nation building.” To overcome those misgivings, the Clinton Administration would have to persuade Congress and the public that it has a realistic plan for not just toppling the Cedras clique but also replacing it with a genuinely democratic government. That means coming to terms with Jean- Bertrand Aristide, the Roman Catholic priest who won a free election in 1990 but was ousted as President by an army coup and has been living in exile in Washington for the past 34 months.

Aristide and the Administration have been cooperating to some extent. Last Friday, Radio Democracy — which is actually a U.S. EC-130 airplane beaming radio waves into Haiti — began transmitting a 50-min. taped broadcast by Aristide promising a future of reconciliation and economic and social reform if he returns. But Aristide in June cried that “never, never and never again” would he agree to be restored to power by a U.S. invasion — a stance that would give Clinton endless trouble in justifying military action of that kind. Though Aristide last week called for “swift and definitive action,” he indicated in an interview with TIME and two other publications that invasion was still not what he had in mind. He mentioned correctly that U.S. pressure had helped dislodge previous Haitian strongmen, such as “Baby Doc” Duvalier and Henri Namphy, without the use of force. (He failed to add that the same corrupt and repressive clique continued in power.)

Some Americans fear that Aristide wants to be restored to power by a U.S. invasion he would refuse to support and would quickly denounce, thereby getting the best of both worlds. Burt Wides, an American lawyer working for Aristide, counters with a suspicion that the talk of invasion is a smoke screen behind which the Clinton Administration is trying to make a deal for a “center-right coalition”; Cedras and some friends would resign, but army thugs and the Haitian business elite would retain enough power in a new government, whether headed theoretically by Aristide or by someone else, to block any real reform.

The temptation, at least, for such a deal might well present itself, even though talk in Haiti last week that Cedras was negotiating an agreement to resign and go into comfortable exile in the Dominican Republic turned out to be a false rumor. With or without Aristide, by force or diplomacy, any attempt / by the U.S. to bring true democracy to Haiti risks inextricably enmeshing the nation in endless Byzantine intrigues — invasion or no.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 600 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on July 13-14 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 4% Not Sures omitted

CAPTION: DO YOU AGREE?

Nothing the U.S. could accomplish in Haiti is worth the death of even one U.S. soldier.

U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Haiti should be given more time to work before the U.S. takes any further action.