Haiti's U.S.-Backed Government Survives on Foreign Troops, Aid

SAINT-MARC, Haiti -- Police chief Jean Ronald Baptiste has a .38-caliber pistol in his holster and a nicely pressed policeman's uniform with shiny black shoes. That's the extent of his crime-fighting gear. He said he's so out-gunned and out-manned by the armed factions in this volatile town that he and his 90 officers never leave the station without an escort of peacekeeping soldiers from France.

"The police really exist only in name," said Baptiste, standing in his police station, which, like many across the nation, was looted and burned during weeks of violence that led to the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29. "For the time being, the country has no control."

Three months after Aristide left the country for exile aboard a U.S. government plane, Haiti has barely picked itself up. A U.S.-led military force of 3,600 troops has been patrolling the country since Aristide's departure, but is phasing out starting Tuesday, to be replaced by a U.N. peacekeeping team, led by Brazil, with 6,700 soldiers and more than 1,600 civilian police officers. Officials said 1,900 U.S. troops would be rotated out of the country over the next several weeks.

Haiti has been almost completely dependent on foreign troops for its security and foreign aid to stave off insolvency and feed its people. Floods last week that killed at least 1,300 people underscored the country's near-total dependence on international assistance. For days, the only aid to reach people in the disaster areas was donated food ferried in on U.S. and Canadian military helicopters.

"The government doesn't have control of the country; it is very weak and very slow," said Pierre Esperance, head of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights in Port-au-Prince. "If the government was willing to make more effort, they could do more. But you don't see their efforts, you don't feel them."

The spasm of violence that killed scores of people in February is over, but violent pro-Aristide and anti-Aristide groups have not been disarmed. Baptiste, Esperance and others said the foreign military presence is the only thing keeping those gangs from picking up their weapons again.

Esperance credited the international forces with bringing general security back to the streets, but said they should be doing more to confront the remaining armed gangs: "The international forces are not here on vacation; they should be disarming these people."

The new prime minister, Gerard Latortue, presides over an interim government that is seen by foreign observers and many Haitians as honest but weak. Some said it was too soon to judge the government's performance, especially given the enormous problems it inherited in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

In addition to preparing for new presidential elections next year, Latortue's chief mission at the moment is to fix the financial "mess" he inherited from Aristide to keep the country from going broke, said a Haitian government official familiar with economic policy.

A review of the country's accounts revealed that Aristide's government went on a "spending spree" in its last five months in office and that tens of millions of dollars from government checking accounts were unaccounted for, said the official, who showed a reporter government financial records on the condition that he not be identified.

He said at least 60 percent of the Aristide government's spending, not including salaries and debt service, was run through discretionary accounts with no records of who received the money. For example, he said, the government last year appeared to have overpaid for new Port-au-Prince city buses by at least $3 million under a contract brokered by a friend of Aristide.

"It is hard for me to fathom that level of spending," the official said.

Asked if Aristide stole money from the treasury, Leslie Voltaire, a U.S.-educated former minister in Aristide's government and one of his closest advisers, said, "I don't know." Asked about allegations by Aristide's critics that the former president was also involved in drug trafficking, Voltaire said, "I don't think so," and added, "There are a lot of rumors."

The economic official who reviewed Haiti's accounts said that largely because of the unaccounted-for spending during Aristide's final months, Haiti is facing a "very precarious" economic situation. He said it is seeking at least $80 million to pay its daily operating costs through the summer, plus at least a half-billion dollars in the next two years to begin rebuilding nearly nonexistent institutions, including systems of justice, health and education.