Round 2 for US nation-building in Haiti

Under pressure from a skeptical Congress, the Clinton administration agreed to an exit strategy for Haiti that would curtail much of the US presence within two years. After elections in 2000 that many condemned as fraudulent, the US rallied the European Union and international financial institutions to cut off most assistance.

"The Clinton administration - whose nation-building competence was largely discredited as a result of Somalia - had to proceed cautiously," says James Dobbins, who was Clinton's envoy to Haiti for two years after 1994 and worked on Afghanistan under the Bush administration. "The fears they had to answer then were of mission creep, so they agreed to an exit strategy - but that was not compatible with getting the job done."

Mr. Dobbins, who is now director of international security affairs at the RAND Corp., says putting a failed state back on its feet requires three investments from the international community: people, money, and time. The last Haiti effort was shortchanged on money and time, he says, while the one shortfall in the Iraq reconstruction project may be in manpower.

"We're putting into Iraq in the first year 100 times more monetary assistance than our whole effort in Haiti," Dobbins says. "You can argue that Iraq is a larger and a more important project, but not 100 times more important."

The issue of "importance" of a particular country leads to the question of why undertake nation-building projects at all. With Iraq and Afghanistan the threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction have been cited.

But what of little Haiti? The Caribbean country has emerged as a growing link in the hemisphere's drug trade as law enforcement has collapsed and fallen to corruption. Threats of a mass exodus of Haitians to US shores have also been cited. The functioning democratic institutions a successful nation-building program would help create are remedies to both problems, experts say.

Citing development of the national police as a "relative success story" of the Clinton program, Dobbins says that "withered on the vine" after aid was cut off. Critics say Aristide had made much of the police his personal domain by then anyway.

But domestic politics offers another explanation for the US focus - and failure - in Haiti. Dobbins notes that of all US nation-building efforts, "Haiti has been the most partisanly controversial."

Republicans, always disdainful of Aristide's leftist rhetoric, have lent moral and financial support to the opposition. On the other hand, the Congressional Black Caucus emphasized Aristide's status of a democratically elected leader and labeled US abandonment of Aristide as "racist."

Pierre Robert Auguste, president of an association of entrepreneurs in Haiti that is part of the Group of 184, disagrees that US Republicans were involved in undermining Aristide. "Yes, they held seminars about building civil society, but that's the kind of thing we need," he says.

Others say the fact that US experience in Haiti is so recent should help in avoiding past mistakes. "We have a memory that cautions in favor of building up institutions and not a man," says Mischa Gaillard, a prominent opposition member. "It's our job to do, but for the international community to help they need partners in Haiti to work with."

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