The Political Interest Haiti: the Case for a Bigger Stick

By Michael Kramer

At the time last Thursday when Al Gore was preparing to lead the U.S. delegation to Nelson Mandela's inauguration, the American most deserving of that trip lay in a Washington hospital. Randall Robinson, who spent years mobilizing the opposition to South Africa's oppressive regime, was in the midst of a hunger strike protesting the Clinton Administration's policy of sending Haitian refugees back to their misery.

If the President's feckless Bosnia policy represents a sin of omission -- an unwillingness or inability to rally the world against Serbia's aggression -- then, argued Robinson, Clinton's Haiti stance reflected an even more reprehensible sin of commission. "To interdict people and then turn them back to be killed without granting them ((asylum hearings))," he said, "makes the President complicit in the killing of those people."

At first Clinton lamely agreed. "I understand and respect what he's doing," the President said. "We need to change our policy. It hasn't worked." Then, finally, Clinton moved. Two days of intensive discussions produced a change of policy last Saturday, confirmed a senior Administration official. Beginning sometime in the next few weeks, those Haitians who take to the seas will be welcomed aboard U.S. ships. Their claims for political asylum will be heard either on board those vessels or at third-country processing centers if the U.S. can negotiate their creation. Although the White House insists it has been debating a new course for some time, it's clear that the news coverage of Robinson's fast and the sight of members of Congress being arrested for protesting the President's policy in front of the White House without a permit had become a major embarrassment.

Clinton's alteration of George Bush's repatriation program, which he had blasted as "immoral" during the campaign, will quiet the President's critics and save Florida from a wave of unwanted immigrants. But the military thugs who rule Haiti will remain in power, and Clinton's promise to "restore democracy" -- and Jean-Bertrand Aristide -- will remain unfulfilled unless more is done. To that end, says the President, anything is possible, including force. For now, though, Clinton favors the sanctions endorsed by the U.N. Security Council last Friday, a set of measures certain only to further harm the average Haitian while the ruling elite escapes their full impact.

In the end, it may be that only military pressure can break the Haitian stalemate, but a truly rigorous set of smarter sanctions should be tried first. These actions just might work:

1) Freeze the foreign bank accounts and property assets of all Haitians, not merely those of the estimated 600 army officers and coup supporters expressly targeted by the new U.N. sanctions. Haiti's poor, with nothing to save or invest, would be unaffected. But the oligarchs, the rich civilians without whose support the military's murderous clique couldn't rule, would be hit in their wallets -- perhaps the only action capable of persuading them to invite Aristide back.

2) Deny visas to everyone and ban all but emergency aviation to and from Haiti. The latest sanctions again exempt commercial flights. Thus the army's wealthy supporting cast can leave at will to do business abroad -- and some of that business is conducted for the benefit of the guys with the guns. Those who have helped create the horror should be forced to remain in its vicinity.

3) Put the screws to the Dominican Republic. Any trade embargo, no matter how tough on paper, can't work if Santo Domingo's rulers continue winking at the cross-border smuggling that sustains the Haitian usurpers. Sugar exports to the U.S. account for most of the Dominican Republic's wealth, which isn't much. Serious sanctions would threaten an end to that trade if the Dominicans didn't close the border.

Clinton could impose each of these measures unilaterally, but there's no evidence yet that he is even considering such actions. Assuming, then, that the latest tepid sanctions fail, Clinton will face two other choices. He could do nothing, which would allow the carnage to continue. Or he could invade.

Yet Haiti's military, emboldened by their success at turning away the shipload of American military trainers aboard the Harlan County last October, believe that the U.S. lacks the guts for a sustained occupation. "It'd be just like Somalia," says a senior Haitian officer. "Clinton will run away when the first U.S. soldier is returned in a body bag." A military intervention, however, need not be open-ended. To limit the commitment, Clinton could embrace Canada's proposal to train expatriate Haitians to serve as the core of a force designed to protect the returned, legitimate government. Together with the estimated two-thirds of the current Haitian army the U.S. thinks would shift their allegiance to Aristide (about 4,500 troops), that should be enough to secure the exiled President's return to power. What happened then would be up to the Haitians. Clinton would have redeemed his pledge to restore Aristide. If Aristide then condoned a wave of retribution . . . well, there is only so much the outside world can do.

At some point, someone somewhere will seriously test Clinton's stomach for sending Americans in harm's way. Invading Haiti, which could be a relatively swift affair if properly executed, could demonstrate Clinton's ability to use force for a good cause, and help assure that the thousands of Haitians eager for freedom stay put -- a twofold accomplishment.