United Nations Security Council Resolution 1608 was adopted unanimously on June 22, 2005, extending the mandate of the U.N. Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH) for 8 months until Feb. 15, 2006 and increasing its soldiers and policemen by 1000.

This was a compromise between the U.S. and France, which wanted a 12 month mandate extension, and China, which wanted only six months. China has no diplomatic relations with Haiti because of its ties to renegade Chinese province Taiwan. Haiti’s de facto president is due to visit Taiwan in July.

The resolution will increase U.N. military personnel to 7,500 from the current 6,700 and U.N. police to 1,900 from 1,622.

The council also called for legislative and presidential elections to “take place in 2005 in accordance with the established timetable” this fall (despite many omens that they will be delayed) and for newly elected leaders to take power on Feb. 7, 2006. That is the date Haiti’s elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, would have passed power to another legally elected government had he not been kidnapped and sent into exile by U.S. soldiers on Feb. 29, 2004.

As the vote took place, U.N. peacekeeping chief, France’s Jean-Marie Guehenno, was visiting Haiti to review the MINUSTAH’s efforts.

The U.N. force has had growing casualties. A Brazilian UN soldier was seriously wounded after being shot Jun. 22 during an operation in Cité Soleil. He was evacuated to the Dominican Republic and listed in critical condition. On Jun. 16 in Cité Soleil, two Peruvian soldiers were shot and wounded, one seriously. A week earlier, a MINUSTAH soldier, two Haitian Red Cross volunteers and a Haitian civilian were wounded - one severely - when unknown gunmen opened fire on the group in front of a hospital in Cité Soleil. Two Sri Lankan soldiers were wounded on Jun. 2 when their armored personnel carrier came under fire, and in April a Philippine soldier was killed.

More important than the mandate extension and troop increase, which were expected, is that the resolution empowers the U.N. to take control of the Haitian police force. The MINUSTAH now has the authority “to vet and certify new and existing HNP personnel for service,” the resolution says. It also calls on the government of de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue “to ensure that HNP [Haitian National Police] personnel do not serve unless certified [by the UN] and to ensure that technical advice and recommendations provided by MINUSTAH are fully implemented by Haitian authorities at all levels without delay.”

These new directives did not take long to implement on the ground. On June 24, several MINUSTAH police agents (CIVPOL) humiliated the Haitian policemen assigned to the capital’s Toussaint Louverture Airport. The U.N. cops cleared the Haitian cops out of a cafeteria where they were interrogating an alleged kidnapper, Jerry Narcius, whose name and nationality (Haitian or Canadian) are in doubt. Ironically, it was the Haitian police who stopped Narcius as he was attempting to leave the country through the airport. Haitian police had arrested the man the day before in Thomassin 53, a well-to-do neighborhood in the mountains above the capital, after he allegedly used the credit card of a kidnapped businessman. The Haitian cops had then turned Narcius over to the CIVPOL.

The U.N.’s takeover of the Haitian police was recommended in a May 31 report entitled “Spoiling Security in Haiti” issued by a Washington-dominated think-tank called the International Crisis Group (ICG). In addition to increasing MINUSTAH’s size and aggressiveness, the Security Council must “authorize expansion of the mandate to provide for CIVPOL executive authority over the HNP,” the report said. The ICG report also called for Haitian judges to be replaced by “international judges during the transition [to constitutional government] to preside over or participate in high profile political cases involving major crimes.”

Such sovereignty-stomping measures were not enough for the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) of Jocelyn “Johnny” McCalla. “It's not just the Haitian police force that needs to be taken over; it's the whole government,” McCalla told the Interpress Service. “The ICG is recommending an incremental takeover of the government, while what is needed is UN trusteeship and a delay in holding the elections.”

The Pentagon has also been proposing that Haiti be made a “trusteeship” or “protectorate” since last December when it became clear that the foreign occupation was not going smoothly (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 22, No. 40, 12/15/2004).

by Anthony Fenton
(The first of three installments)

“More than a year after its establishment, allegations are increasing of widespread corruption in state institutions, reaching into the offices of the prime minister and the presidency themselves.”
International Crisis Group Report, “Spoiling Security in Haiti,” p. 8.

“At a lower level, the virtuous Gérard Latortue must, for his part, face his critics. He is blamed for retaining in his entourage his nephew, Youri Latortue, a person nicknamed 'Mister 30 Per Cent' because of the percentage he demands in return for favors. Worried, not without reason, about his own security, the prime minister pays 20,000 euros a month to this former police officer implicated in various scandals for 'organizing an intelligence service'.”
Thierry Oberlin, Le Figaro, December 21, 2004,
quoted on Haiti’s Radio Métropole, December, 2004.

For the past two months, the coup-installed Haitian government led by de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue has been overseeing a climate of insecurity and generalized terror featuring, among other crimes, dramatic, high-profile kidnappings. The kidnappings and terror are - according to multiple sources - orchestrated by the PM's nephew and Security Chief, Youri Latortue. But they are blamed, in media and government circles, on the principal victims: Haiti's poor majority and specifically supporters of ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has, through UNSC Resolution 1608, extended the mandate of its 'Stabilization Mission' (MINUSTAH) to February 15, 2006, and augmented the number of personnel, adding a 750-strong 'rapid reaction force' to the 7,000 international troops already occupying Haiti, along with an additional 250 civilian police officers.

UNSC Resolution 1608 also calls upon the transitional government to conduct “thorough and transparent investigations” into human rights abuses, “particularly those allegedly involving HNP (Haitian National Police) officers.” To counter the UN’s rapidly deteriorating situation in Haiti, the UNSC calls for a “proactive communications and public relations strategy, in order to improve the Haitian population’s understanding of the mandate of MINUSTAH and its role in Haiti.” The resolution echoed many of the recommendations made at the Montreal International Conference on Haiti, which brought together many members of the coup government with sponsors in the Canadian, French, and U.S. governments and business community. UNSC 1608 is at least in part a response to increasing calls from Haiti’s elite for a more “robust” security presence in response to the rise in violence that has Haiti in its grips.

The rise of kidnappings has contributed to the perception that Haiti is “plagued by insecurity,” “chaotic,” and that these criminal activities are among deliberate movements to “destabilize” the country before the elections, scheduled for October (local) and November (legislative and presidential) of 2005. Some are saying that the kidnapping enterprise affords pro-Aristide gangs “the means to arm themselves” and wage an “urban guerilla war” while “holding slum-dwellers hostage” in areas such as Cite Soleil and Bel Air. The reality is different.

The Media’s Kidnapping Scourge
The“kidnapping scourge,” as NYT’s Ginger Thompson termed it on Jun. 6, has been responsible for hundreds of kidnappings for ransom in recent months, with an estimated 6 to 12 kidnappings taking place daily. Among these have been high-profile kidnappings of an Indian businessman, a Russian diplomat, two Mexican telecommunication workers, a Canadian man and a 65-year old businesswoman from Montreal. No Americans have been kidnapped to date, although a U.S. embassy vehicle was fired upon prompting the Embassy to issue a travel warning on May 25 “in the midst of a spate of kidnappings and carjackings in the country.” (St. Petersburg Times, May 27, 2005)

On May 8, visiting Chilean diplomats were quick to attribute the new violence to Haitian criminals that are being deported from the U.S. Over 30 such convicts have been deported since the February 2004 coup. Because the prison system is full of political prisoners, many of these criminals are free in Haiti. De facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue echoed the statements of the Chileans a few weeks later, saying “the origin of the insecurity, especially in matters regarding kidnapping, is something that is exported to us here,” implying that the Americans were doing the exporting.

On the heels of the U.S., Canada issued a heightened travel warning on May 27, stating that "kidnappings and carjackings are on the rise.” Ottawa reiterated this warning on Jun. 21, citing “an increasingly deteriorating security situation.” In a May 28 article discussing the travel warning after the kidnap and release of a Canadian man, the Canadian Press made sure to note that, in one case, “police officers pursuing the abductors in the slum of Bel Air came under heavy gunfire from armed gangs.” Bel Air is known to be the launching point for large demonstrations calling for Aristide’s return.

On Jun. 2, Canada’s National Post blamed the violence on “continuing confrontations with supporters of Jean Bertrand Aristide.” The same day, the Associated Press reported that “[U.S.] Ambassador James Foley said Haitian police, armed mostly with pistols and shotguns, are outgunned by pro-Aristide gangs armed with heavy machine guns. The gangs have been blamed for increasing violence and kidnappings.”

The frenzied atmosphere caused by the kidnappings prompted calls for “tougher action” on the part of Haiti’s business elite. Reginald Boulos, millionaire, President of the Haitian chamber of Commerce, longtime opponent of Aristide and Aristide’s popular movement, Lavalas, and longtime recipient of USAID funding, recently threatened to call a general strike if security measures were not increased. He also called on the government to allow people like himself to create their own private militias and be permitted to brandish their own automatic weapons.

The anti-Aristide Group of 184 spokesperson Charles Baker complained that MINUSTAH is protecting the “bandits,” and called for more guns and ammunition for the HNP to “fulfill their duty.”

Haiti’s Police Chief Léon Charles said on May 30: “We must say that it is a movement of destabilization. The truth is that there is a war in Haiti. Armed individuals are shooting at the people. It is urban guerrilla warfare. An urgent solution needs to be found to this situation. Actually, we are working with Minustah [UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti], despite all the misunderstanding, so that we can find a solution to these problems.”

In a Jun. 5 article, the New York Times wrote “Justice Minister Bernard Gousse and other officials said Friday that authorities planned tougher action against armed gangs in pro-Aristide slums, where victims of a recent wave of hundreds of kidnappings are often said to be held.” Reporting on a manifestation of this “tougher action,” the NYT documents how “as many as 25 people were killed in police raids on Friday and Saturday in the slums of Haiti's capital after the government said it would get tougher on gangs.”

Just a few days later, on Jun. 8, U.S. Ambassador James Foley and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega were on hand to present Charles and his HNP with $2.6 million in police equipment.

Justice Minister Bernard Gousse, who resigned his post on Jun. 15 after being publicly rebuked for incompetence and corruption by US Congressman William Delahunt and 10 other Congress people on Jun. 10, announced the creation of a new, multinational SWAT team as one of his final official acts on Radio Vision 2000 on Jun. 4: “Regarding kidnappings, there is a mixed SWAT team. A foreign SWAT team has arrived here and will work together with our local SWAT team to respond rapidly to kidnapping situations. There is an intelligence cell, which police spokeswoman [Jessie Cameau] Coicou has spoken about, that will reinforce the judicial police's intelligence cell. We are also going to create other brigades that will face up to the bandits and intervene in the areas where the bandits operate. The purpose of this action is to prevent the bandits from feeling safe wherever they are in the metropolitan area.”

Gousse did not state what country the foreign SWAT team is from, and has not responded to interview requests.

To be continued

(First published Jun. 26 on Znet)