Road to Haiti

By Bruce W. Nelan

The U.S. special forces troops removed their helmets and flak jackets to show they were not in combat mode but were officially cooperating with the Haitian army. Even so, Haitian officers watched sullenly in the compound of Camp d'Application last week as the Americans dismantled Haiti's only arsenal of heavy weapons. Church bells joyfully tolled noon as U.S. vehicles towed the few Haitian armored cars and artillery pieces through the camp's wide iron gates, past a mural proclaiming HONNEUR, DISCIPLINE, COMPETENCE. Along the road leading to Port-au-Prince, a crowd of civilians applauded and cheered.

Camp d'Application is the Haitian army's training center, but its far greater importance is as the base for the heavy weapons. The guns and armored vehicles stored there have for years been the military's coupmaking tools, equipment that can surround administrative buildings and oust governments. Three years ago, Port-au-Prince police chief Michel Francois, then an unknown police major, seized control of the heavy weapons and rolled into the capital to overthrow Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first democratically elected President. The hardware is now under guard inside the U.S. base at the airport -- and Aristide will be coming back.

Those few hours of work symbolize the way U.S. troops have begun to take control of Haiti and neutralize its army and police. For the first day or two it was far from certain they would be able to do the job. The Americans were unprepared for the kind of arrival that was negotiated for them at the final hour. They stalled temporarily, confused by their rules of engagement and their orders to establish general security without becoming street cops. As a result, they could only look on in frustration as the capital's security forces viciously attacked pro-Aristide crowds gathered to watch the Americans arrive. The liberators seemed to have become collaborators.

Then the big U.S. military machine shifted gears again. As its troop levels reached 12,000 on the way up to 15,000, its power began to spread across Haiti and through the capital. The U.S. commander, Lieut. General Henry Hugh Shelton, a big, jut-jawed Ranger, told the Haitian leaders there would be no more police violence -- or else. Haiti's military chief, Lieut. General Raoul Cedras, quickly agreed. American military police took to the streets, patrolling and even directing traffic, while U.S. troops neutralized Haitian army and police posts. There were perils: Marines engaged Haitians in a firefight in Cap Haitien, killing at least nine.

If the U.S. public heaved an enormous sigh of relief at the relative smoothness of the operation, many found the manner and the content of the deal that had forestalled an invasion distasteful. To get out of a jam, the current President had lent his authority to a failed former President. The terms of Jimmy Carter's arrangement to remove Haiti's brutal junta were so much less than Clinton had promised only days before. The agreement did not require the dictators to leave Haiti after their retirement, and they did not even sign it. It implied they and their followers were entitled to a "general amnesty" for the acts of repression that had left more than 3,000 dead since the 1991 coup. It treated men denounced as thugs as "honorable" officials worthy of "mutual respect." The blithe spirit that obliterated previous animosities even accorded a measure of legitimacy to de facto president Emile Jonassaint, 81, caricatured as the spineless puppet of the junta. No less than the President of the United States said, "I had the absolutely incorrect impression that Jonassaint was a figurehead." If Jonassaint is sanitized, indeed laureled, is there need for Aristide? While avoiding bloodshed, the agreement has raised contentious questions.

Culled from interviews with the principals and other reports, the details of how the deal was wrought are melodramatic, sometimes outlandish, with images of a marionette severing its strings, of a wife for whom honor is more important than life, of diplomacy being improvised as time runs out.

At 5:45 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 18, the order to launch the invasion went out from the Pentagon. An hour later, planes loaded with American paratroopers were in the air, heading south. Warships closed in on Haiti, and Navy SEALs stole toward shore. Then, almost two hours later, the invasion was abruptly canceled. U.S. troops were told they would go ashore Monday to "cooperate" with the Haitian soldiers they had been ready to kill the day before.

What changed the military plan was the work of former President Carter, Senator Sam Nunn and retired General Colin Powell. All along, Bill Clinton had intended to deliver an ultimatum: the military dictators had to step down or an invasion would follow at once. But two months before, Carter on his own had been trying to establish contact with Cedras, consulting with Congressman Bill Richardson, who had just been to see the Haitian leaders. Meanwhile, Cedras had been trying to find an American intermediary to step in and negotiate a settlement with Washington. As an invasion date loomed, Carter went so far as to recruit Powell and Nunn, who agreed to give it a try if Clinton approved. Carter, as he has in the past, lobbied Clinton for the diplomatic assignment. The President finally gave it to him, mainly because he and Cedras appeared to have developed a relationship.

Just what his instructions were still seems a matter of confusion. "The only thing Carter was authorized to discuss on behalf of Clinton," said a senior official last week, "was the modalities of departure." But, the same official conceded, "it was clearly understood that he wasn't going to be restricted from raising anything that was on his mind."

It turned out there was plenty on Carter's mind. As soon as he boarded the Air Force plane carrying his delegation to Port-au-Prince, he pulled out a % laptop computer and continued work on a draft agreement to present to Cedras and the other junta leaders -- Chief of Staff Brigadier General Philippe Biamby and Lieut. Colonel Francois, the capital district commander. But the Carter team's most important piece of strategic advice would come to them after they reached Haiti. According to Nunn, a former World Bank official urged "very strongly that a key to getting General Cedras to be willing to step down was his wife. He strongly suggested that we meet as soon as possible with Mrs. Cedras."

Arriving in Port-au-Prince at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 17, the three Americans went into negotiations with various sets of Haitian officials that lasted almost continuously until 8 p.m. the next day. It fell to Powell, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to open the talks by describing in detail the wave of firepower that would envelop Haiti if Cedras and his fellow officers did not step down. Powell ticked off the naval, air and ground troops, the unstoppable fighting forces and machines. When Powell had finished, Cedras leaned back in his chair and stared at him. "Well," Cedras finally said, "after all that arrives, we will no longer be a militarily weak nation."

That brought a laugh, easing some of the tension. Subsequent sessions, Nunn said later, were cordial and respectful. "General Powell and President Carter," he said, "appealed to their sense of honor, their sense of dignity, their sense of obligation, their sense of wanting to protect their country." Still, Cedras made it clear he thought he would be assassinated if he tried to flee. "I would rather take an American bullet in the chest," he told the Carter team, "than a Haitian bullet in the back."

The first day of talks went on until 1:45 a.m. Sunday, and Clinton had given his negotiators a deadline of noon. As Carter was leaving the room, he told Cedras he would like to meet the general's family. In the middle of the night, Carter says, he called Cedras' brother to set up a meeting. The next morning, Cedras invited the team to his house, where they finally met Cedras' wife Yanick, a woman Nunn described as "very attractive, very smart and very tough."

He added, "The first thing that she said to us was that when her husband got home the previous night, she had gone and gotten her three children -- a 17-year-old son, a 14-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son -- to come get in bed with them and spend the night with them, because that was going to be their last night of life." Unless Carter, Powell and Nunn could persuade her, there looked to be no deal. In French, she told the Americans she knew she and her children had been targeted by U.S. special-operations forces and they had made a pact to die together. "We will die before we leave Haiti," she said, "and my husband will do the same." She spoke proudly of her own family's military heritage and insisted they would never accept the "insult" of a foreign invasion. "When she finished," said Carter, "we were stunned. We thought our mission had failed."

As the session continued, a U.S. aide informed the Carter team that Clinton was on the secure telephone in the next room and wanted to speak with one of them. Powell left the room for a 15- to 20-minute talk with the President. His absence rattled Cedras, says Nunn: "General Cedras immediately looked like he had been stricken -- he looked like it was a terrible thing for him. He was increasingly nervous as he waited for General Powell. Finally, he got up and went to the door twice. It became very apparent to me then that he was relying on Colin Powell to convince his wife that it was not the duty of the general and his family to die."

Powell proved convincing. He responded to the concerns of Cedras and his wife with a heartfelt plea to military honor: when a mission became impossible, the duty of a commander was to protect the soldiers serving under him and not get them killed. Cedras and his wife listened intently. It was, said Nunn, "a very strong and, I think, decisive argument."

Things turned sour again before Cedras finally capitulated. Well past Clinton's original noon deadline, Biamby burst into the room to report that he had received a fax and two phone calls from the U.S. informing him that American airborne troops had taken off and the invasion was about to begin. "He concluded we were part of a trap," says Nunn. Biamby told Cedras to go into hiding instantly and warned Nunn that he would commit suicide before he would flee the country. Nunn said he feared "it was over, we weren't going to get any agreement." Cedras said he had to consult his president, meaning Emile Jonassaint, the former Supreme Court Justice who had been installed by the military in May.

The two delegations drove over to the Presidential Palace. Carter and Nunn went in one car, and Powell rode with Cedras, straddling a pile of rifle grenades. And then came the final standoff. Jonassaint convened the Cabinet, and the agreement was on the table. Said Nunn: "It became very apparent that General Cedras was not going to ever say, 'I agree.' " Then Carter dramatically reached out and signed the agreement himself. Would the Haitians respond? Who among them would sign?

Jonassaint went around the room consulting the Cabinet. The defense and information ministers objected to the deal. Nevertheless, Jonassaint said, "I will sign. I will not let my people experience this tragedy. Our back is against the wall." Said Nunn: "We were in one heck of a fix because President Clinton had told us that we could not get the signature of president Jonassaint, whom we didn't recognize. Cedras said it was a court-martial offense for him to sign for the government because he wasn't the government." Nunn turned to Carter. "We can't do this unless we call Clinton. I'm for signing this, but . . ." Carter and Powell then left and got Clinton to agree on the phone.

With Clinton's approval in hand, Jonassaint signed the agreement. The Defense Minister quit on the spot. Cedras sat mute. Then Powell asked him point-blank if he would accept the agreement. Cedras stood erect and pledged his word of honor that he would "obey the command of my president."

"I told President Clinton that we had an agreement," said Carter, "and he turned the planes around."

Almost immediately the loud and public reappraisals began. Why were the junta members being allowed to remain in Haiti? Why had Francois, who is blamed for police attacks on Aristide supporters in the first days of last week, not participated in the negotiations? Why did the agreement provide for a "general amnesty" and speak of "honorable retirement" for dictators and U.S. military cooperation with the Haitian armed forces? None of that sounded like the clean sweep of the monsters that Clinton had promised just a few days before.

In Clinton's defense, Administration officials offered two basic arguments: the great virtue of a bloodless landing in Haiti outweighs the other details of the agreement, and now that U.S. troops are ashore in overwhelming force, they can make the unpalatable details irrelevant. In the view of U.S. officials, after the junta members leave office they will decide to go abroad, no matter what they say now. When Aristide is running the country and foreign troops are everywhere, in this view, the generals will find it unhealthy to remain. Says an American official in Port-au-Prince: "Somebody's going to kill ((Cedras)) if he decides to stay."

Biamby is considered tougher than Cedras, but also an America hater, so he could decide either to leave or stay and fight. Francois was originally reported to be in hiding but in fact is working at his office in police headquarters. He held at least two meetings last week with U.S. officers to discuss "liaison" arrangements. Haitian officials say Francois offered weeks ago to do whatever would help the situation -- resign, leave the country, be exiled or even be shot.

The amnesty issue has already become a major problem. If it is not voted by Parliament before Oct. 15, the junta leaders could later be arrested and tried by Aristide's government. While Aristide can grant the army and police amnesty for political crimes -- mainly the coup -- his supporters are, for the most part, opposed to any parliamentary attempt to forgive what they call "blood crimes" like murder and rape. American officials say this is a domestic Haitian issue and the shape any amnesty finally takes -- or fails to take -- does not matter. Cedras, Biamby and Francois are obliged to resign anyway, and 15,000 U.S. troops will be on hand to make sure they do.

Aristide's reconstruction plan will cut the Haitian army from 7,000 to 1,500 and create a professional civilian police force. But first the thugs have to be purged. Aristide's aides are preparing lists of good guys and bad guys. Known abusers of human rights will be dismissed or arrested. Those who are not arrested but are not needed in the army or police are to be put into job retraining programs and helped to find work as civilians.

A few U.S. forces are now billeted with Haitian troops and may start sharing patrols with them. The Americans were to begin collecting ammunition from the Haitian army and have started addressing the problem of the irregular attaches the army used as neighborhood enforcers. To encourage them to give up their guns, the U.S. will pay the attaches $50 for each weapon turned in. One American official characterizes this process of remaking the military as "arms control, not disarmament."

Reforming the Haitian armed forces and taming the country's violent politics will take many months, if not years. But the U.S. military intervention may not have that long. The American troops will come under pressure to become more and more involved in the reform process, humanitarian aid, economic development. At the same time, in Congress and in U.S. public opinion, the pressure will build the opposite way, toward bringing the troops home without delay.

Which way will Clinton lean? The Administration is talking about keeping U.S. soldiers in Haiti four to six months, or long enough to make the country secure for a U.N. force of about 6,000 -- which will include as many as 3,000 Americans. In Washington the House Foreign Affairs Committee is looking at the timetable this week. It is likely to produce a bill that will set March 1, 1995, as the pullout deadline.

The best Bill Clinton can hope for from the Haiti policy his negotiators brokered for him is that the military phase will end quickly, that there will be no loss of American life and that he will have given Haiti a chance at some sort of democracy. That outcome would be an enormous accomplishment and would be worthy of praise indeed. But whatever happens, Bill Clinton is never likely to get much praise for his foray into the forlorn little nation of Haiti, and should the widely invoked quagmire scenario come to pass, he will be hard pressed to escape the blame.

With reporting by Sam Allis, Cathy Booth, Nina Burleigh and Bernard Diederich/Port-au-Prince, and James Carney, J.F.O. McAllister and Mark Thompson/Washington