Policy At Sea

By Kevin Fedarko

Presidents who travel overseas know they can never entirely leave their problems back home. But for Bill Clinton, on a seven-day trip to Europe for | the G-7 economic summit, the crisis in Haiti pursued him like a bad nightmare. Throughout the week, refugees continued to risk their lives and take to the seas by the thousands, undeterred by the Administration's newly enunciated policy of diverting the boat people to other Caribbean countries rather than the U.S.

Then, about 45 minutes after leaving Warsaw on Air Force One Thursday night, Clinton got word from Washington that Panamanian President Guillermo Endara was having second thoughts about his decision to make space in his country for 10,000 refugees. After the plane landed in Naples, Clinton stayed on board to wait for one more call from Vice President Al Gore while members of the reception committee made small talk on the tarmac. The news was bad: Panama had backed out.

The President and his advisers tried to downplay the blow. While "sharply disappointed," his aides said, Clinton was not angry. Other Caribbean countries, they promised, would be found to replace Panama; Grenada, for instance, had agreed "in principle" to provide a haven for at least some of the refugees. But the sudden change of heart by Panama only deepened the impression that the Administration was practicing a kind of voodoo diplomacy toward Haiti, lurching from headline to headline and hoping that somehow the country's leaders would magically change their ways or disappear.

Thus the floundering seemed to increase the likelihood of Clinton's pursuing the one option that would make him look the most decisive: a full-fledged invasion of Haiti. All week there were signals that plans for military action were being accelerated. On Thursday, the Defense Department dispatched four amphibious warships carrying 2,000 combat-ready Marines to the waters off the coast of Haiti. The Pentagon revealed that three weeks ago Army Rangers and Navy Seals had conducted practice runs for an invasion of Haiti: staging a mock attack on an isolated airfield at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and "capturing" a port along the Gulf coast. The exercise, which one military expert described as a "final rehearsal," was similar to maneuvers conducted just before the U.S. invaded Panama in December of 1989 to overthrow Manuel Noriega.

Just how imminent the invasion might be remained vague. The refugee crisis has increased the urgency for some sort of action to end the oppressive military rule in Haiti, and there is a sense that the Administration is backing into an invasion almost out of desperation. "No doubt about it," said one senior Pentagon official, "the stakes have gone up because of Panama's decision. We need to get ourselves into position." On Friday, Clinton issued another veiled warning to the military clique that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in September 1991. "I think the conduct of the military leaders will have more than anything else to do with what options are considered when," said Clinton. "And their conduct has not been good."

Though Clinton aides are confident that U.S. troops could oust Lieut. General Raoul Cedras and his cronies fairly swiftly, it is a prospect that few in the Administration relish. As in Somalia, an invasion of Haiti would trap the U.S. in the role of enforcer, saddled with the job of first establishing and then upholding law and order in a country that lacks the institutions of a democratic civil society. White House and State Department officials still retain a hope that saber rattling might be enough to induce the military leaders to abandon the country before any shots are fired. "The sense that there's a possibility of an immediate military intervention -- that is not our way of thinking," said one senior official. "That's not where our heads are now."

Just where the Administration's heads are on the matter of Haiti has been a major puzzle for weeks. After enduring intense criticism from human-rights activists and others over its policy of repatriating any Haitian refugees picked up at sea, Clinton announced a major shift on May 8. Rather than automatically send boat people back to Haiti, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said, it would conduct seagoing interviews and admit to the U.S. refugees judged to be fleeing repression.

Since the policy took effect on June 16, more than 17,500 refugees have poured out of Haiti on frail and often overloaded boats, driven out by political repression as well as a U.S.-led trade embargo that has left the poorest country in the western hemisphere isolated and destitute. Tragedies at sea have mounted. Two weeks ago, a boat disaster near the village of Baie du Mesle left at least 65 people dead. Last Monday, when more than 400 people swarmed aboard a small craft moored at a remote spot five miles north of the smuggling port of St. Marc, the overloaded boat listed violently, then keeled over, trapping passengers under the deck. Dozens drowned.

Horrific scenes like that perhaps did less to persuade the Administration to take action than did the sight of Coast Guard cutters being overwhelmed by Haitian refugees. At a meeting of Clinton advisers on July 1, serious consideration was given to re-adopting the policy of summary repatriation. Secretary of State Warren Christopher -- who earlier opposed the liberalized policy, warning that it would result in an upsurge in refugees -- argued now that going back to the old policy would be a devastating turnabout. His advice was heeded this time, but a compromise was struck: rather than being promised asylum in the U.S., the refugees would be sent to other countries. This, it was hoped, would cool the fervor of Haitians to leave. "If you take a new boat," warned a radio message broadcast in Creole over Haitian radio by the U.S. embassy, "one thing is certain: You won't get to the United States."

Last week's policy shift left Administration critics fuming. Ernest Preeg, who served as U.S. ambassador to Haiti from 1981 to 1983, contended that the new repatriation policy has "an element of desperate groping." Kweisi Mfume, the Maryland Democrat who is head of the Congressional Black Caucus, denounced the Administration's "policy of anarchy." Said he: "We cannot continue a back-and-forth, up-and-down, in-and-out policy on Haiti and expect to have any measure of respect in the world community."

Nor has the switch, so far at least, improved the situation in Haiti. Refugees were continuing to flee at the rate of 2,000 a day. Ad-hoc refugee camps at Guantanamo naval base and elsewhere were jammed to capacity, and Coast Guard cutters were nearly overwhelmed. In the Haitian countryside, many villages are being depopulated by the exodus; once bustling main streets are now virtually deserted, and more homes seem to be boarded up than inhabited.

The military's campaign of violence against political opponents, meanwhile, has been revived with new viciousness. Nowhere is this more evident than the coffee-rich area in the Bourg Mountains, where some 300 soldiers have spent the past four months hunting down peasant supporters of exiled President Aristide. Those who have escaped the region claim the army has conducted a scorched-earth policy in an attempt to deprive Aristide's allies of their food and livelihood. "They took everything we possessed," says Wilna Nelta Joseph, whose home in the town of Petit-Bourg was looted in April. "They left me with two empty hands." One farmer describes the destruction wrought by the army in the village of Petite-Riviere on April 25: "They burned down houses with everything in them. They cut down the banana trees, fruit trees, coconut trees. They shot cows, goats, pigs, cattle. They didn't leave anything," he says, tears in his eyes. "If only you could see the things they did, you wouldn't believe it."

The economic embargo has hurt as well. There is no electricity along most of the northern coast, even in major towns like Cap Haitien. At night women sell their wares by the light of kerosene lanterns and candles. Because most Haitians are now so poor that they cannot even afford the batteries for their transistor radios, few actually heard the brief Creole-language spots aired last week by the American embassy on local radio, which warned listeners that "the U.S. is not a land with streets paved with gold."

A poignant index of the economy's collapse is found at La Providence Hospital in Gonaives, where 163 beds serve a region with 700,000 people. A third of those beds are now without mattresses. There is no ambulance, and the hospital pickup truck has no tires. Moreover, despite the sicknesses that ravage the region, only 20 of the facility's beds are filled. "People can't come anymore because gas is so expensive," explains administrator Claudette Munro. "If they arrive here, it's to die." In the hospital's morgue, Munro pulls open a drawer holding the bodies of eight children. A newborn lies on top, still clad in pink knit baby booties. Next to him is the body of a young boy, whose ribs are so clearly visible they can be counted through the dead skin. "His father brought him in yesterday," explains Munro. "We gave him an IV. He opened his eyes finally -- and died."

Amid all this, the Haitian military seems to have embraced a surreal attitude halfway between apathy and stubborn denial. On Thursday morning, 200 green-uniformed soldiers, some carrying bazookas, marched through downtown Port-au-Prince in a show of force, occasionally breaking into a spirited goose step. On Friday, top military officials gathered in the parking lot next to the General Quarters to celebrate Cedras' 45th birthday. On the menu: croissants, Teem and sugary schadec juice, made with Haitian grapefruits.

According to military sources, the Haitian leaders have virtually no plan for defending themselves from an invasion. Some soldiers have openly admitted their intention to drop their weapons at the first sign of trouble. Indeed, when an American helicopter recently flew over the town of Jeremie on surveillance, the local army unit thought the invasion had begun and simply ran away. The paramilitary units that aid the army in terrorizing ordinary Haitians have announced that their response to an invasion will be to "evaporate" into the civilian population and begin a guerrilla war. The clandestine campaign, they say, will involve poisoning water supplies, spreading diseases among the invaders and employing voodoo powders to "incinerate the skins" of enemy troops. "We have been told to fire on civilians when the Americans come," says amember of the paramilitary group FRAPH, "and then disappear in the panic."

Despite indications that Haitian resistance would be negligible, Clinton's aides insist that the President still has not made up his mind about an invasion. Yet by rattling the saber so loudly last week, Clinton has left himself little alternative but to invade. If he does nothing, he risks looking even weaker and more indecisive than he already appears. And that is a scenario the Administration relishes even less than the prospect of military action.

With reporting by Edward Barnes/St. Marc, Cathy Booth/Petit-Bourg du Borgne, James Carney with Clinton, Bernard Diederich/Port-au-Prince and Ann M. Simmons/Washington