Making War to Keep Peace (18 page)

On October 3, the OAS passed a resolution calling for the diplomatic isolation of those who had seized power in Haiti.
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The UN Security Council agreed to receive Aristide in a formal meeting and, although it did not adopt a resolution, Mérimée condemned the coup and voiced support for the OAS resolution. On October 4, President Bush stated in an executive order that the Cédras coup constituted “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
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He suspended $90 million in nonhumanitarian aid to Haiti. At a news conference that day, he said he hoped that democracy could be restored without using force; however, he did not rule out U.S. participation in a multinational force:

According to James Baker,

The OAS delegation met with General Cédras and others on October 6 and 7. By then Haiti was on the edge of chaos, and the ministers determined that outside assistance was necessary to restore constitutional order in the country.
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Some members of the delegation were roughed up by Haitian soldiers.
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On October 8, the OAS adopted a resolution recommending that member states impose a trade embargo (exempting humanitarian aid) against what was already being called the “Cédras regime.”
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On October 11, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning “the attempted illegal replacement of the constitutional President of Haiti”; demanding the “immediate restoration of the legitimate Government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, together with the full application of the National Constitution and hence the full observance of human rights in Haiti”; and appealing to member states to “take measures in support of the resolutions of the Organization of American States” concerning the condemnation and isolation of the regime in Haiti and the trade embargo.
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Embargo Against Haiti

Experts believed that the Haitian economy, already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, could be paralyzed in a month by comprehensive international trade sanctions. The country's acting prime minister, Jean-Jacques Honorat, warned that “Haiti cannot withstand an embargo for more than three days. It is a country that produces nothing.”
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In late October 1991, the U.S. government announced a strict ban on “all commercial trade with Haiti, both exports and imports of goods and services.”
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Haiti quickly ran out of fuel—it soon lacked gasoline for buses, kerosene for lamps, and electricity for factories and hospitals. It also ran out of money. At least sixty-five thousand Haitians lost their jobs in the first month of the embargo.
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Farmers could not get their bananas, coffee, and cacao to market. Food became scarce, and medical supplies were nearly exhausted within a few months. “We don't even have fuel for our generators to operate our blood banks,” said Haitian Red Cross director Dr. William Fougere in late November.
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People began taking to the sea in small boats; about half were picked up and returned, and the other half drowned. The local director of Project Care told the
New York Times
, “People…are starting to eat roots and things that animals eat.” An international relief worker said, “The international embargo…has increased the pain of poverty in ways that are likely to lead thousands more people to set out for the U.S., regardless of the perils of the sea journey.”
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The embargo was designed to force the restoration to power of Haiti's elected president. But the effects were economic, not political, and they fell on the poorest people and on the country's small middle-class commercial and business sectors. The embargo made life even more difficult for the many Haitians who normally lived on the razor's edge of subsistence, pushing the country toward a tragedy on a massive scale. Medicines, fuel for basic services, and foodstuffs such as wheat, sugar, rice, flour, and cooking oil were permitted, but these commodities were not provided. Haiti's economy was extremely feeble and heavily dependent on America for basic necessities. It could be argued that, in imposing the embargo, Washington was responsible for creating famine in the poorest nation in the hemisphere.

The OAS and the Bush administration used the embargo to demonstrate their collective commitment to democracy in the hemisphere, but it was a strange decision. You do not promote democracy by denying food to desperate people, destroying a rickety economy, or pushing a society over the edge to anarchy and chaos. The U.S. government could not solve all of Haiti's terrible problems, but, as I argued at the time, we could stop pretending that we did not bear the lion's share of responsibility for the stream of refugees making their way toward Miami and that Haiti's problems could be resolved simply by returning Aristide to power.
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Non-OAS states continued to send trade shipments to Haitian ports, and within a few months many OAS members, including the United States, began to carve out substantial loopholes in the embargo. Tankers delivered fuel during the winter and spring of 1992. The U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) reported that “at least a dozen countries routinely ignored the embargo.”
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In February, the United States announced unilateral exemptions to the embargo on a case-by-case basis for American-owned companies in the assembly industry in Haiti. The administration explained that the shift in policy was intended to put as many as forty thousand Haitians back to work and keep U.S. businesses from leaving the country.

Still, the embargo continued to take a serious toll, and sanctions would be tightened repeatedly over the next two years, often at the urging of Aristide. In May 1992, the OAS reiterated its call for member states and all other countries to respect the embargo.
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President Bush complied, banning vessels that traded with Haiti from U.S. ports. In a May 28 statement, he explained:

Meanwhile, the boat people continued to take to the sea. Contemplating the waves of Haitian refugees heading for American shores, international lawyer Lori Fisler Damrosch noted: “Ironically, the economic sanctions that became the chosen instrument of international involvement turned out only to exacerbate that problem for the United States, while bringing the crisis no closer to resolution.”
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If Bush and Baker did not see a vital U.S. interest (or, at least, one sufficient to merit military action) in Haiti, they couldn't mistake the U.S.
interest in stanching the flow of Haitian refugees pouring into Florida. After the military coup, that flow had increased from two to three thousand per week. Under a 1981 agreement with the Duvalier regime, U.S. policy was to intercept refugees and return them to Port-au-Prince. The Bush administration sought a regional solution to the new refugee problem, but only four countries expressed interest. On November 20, Bush announced that the United States would grant asylum only when petitioners could substantiate claims of political oppression. By this time, so many people were leaving Haiti that the U.S. Coast Guard began taking refugees to a camp at the American naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, for processing. When Guantanamo reached its maximum capacity of 12,500 refugees in May 1992, Bush authorized the Coast Guard to repatriate the refugees without processing them. But 1992 was a presidential election year, and Bush's decision would have political costs: Bill Clinton made Bush's policy an issue, criticizing the president's decision and calling for immediate and unconditional political asylum for the refugees—a policy he reversed soon after his inauguration.

THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION ADOPTS A NEW POLICY

Clinton had strong political ties to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), whose members strongly advocated action on Haiti, and he arrived in the White House ready to implement a more activist policy. In February 1993, less than a month after his inauguration, a joint UN/OAS international civilian mission (MICIVIH) to Haiti was established to monitor human rights practices and investigate violations.

In June 1993, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 841, imposing a mandatory oil and arms embargo against Haiti. Lori Damrosch, an expert in international law, observed at the time that “the Haitian sanctions resolution goes farther than any other to date in applying universal, mandatory, and severe economic sanctions to influence a domestic political crisis over democratic governance. Its cautious wording (stressing more than once the ‘unique and exceptional' circumstances) cannot hide its precedential significance.”
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It was widely assumed—on the basis of virtually no evidence—that
imposing economic sanctions on Haiti would hasten the return to democracy by putting pressure on the ruling junta. But it did not. It only made the Haitian people poorer. In a careful study of the effects of the sanctions, Elizabeth Gibbons, a former UN representative in Haiti, described the harsh impact of the sanctions; while the efforts of the international agencies and the strength of the Haitian people prevented outright famine, she concluded, they could not protect Haitians from the ravages of the embargo.
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The embargo had devastating effects on the poorest Haitians, especially children, and on public services. A measles epidemic killed or debilitated thousands of children. Conflicting goals created cross-cutting pressures that blocked effective humanitarian work by UN agencies.

International pressure to restore Aristide to the presidency led to the Governors Island Agreement of July 1993. Drafted by Dante Caputo, Special Envoy for Haiti of the Secretaries-General of the UN and the Organization of American States (OAS), and signed by Aristide and Cédras in July 1993, the agreement called for the retirement of Cédras and the restoration of Aristide by October 30, 1993; dialogue among Haitian political parties to allow parliament to resume normal functions; and international technical and financial assistance to build a new police force, modernize the army, and implement administrative and judicial reform. It also called for the appointment and confirmation of a new prime minister, and for amnesty for the coup leaders. Aristide selected Robert Malval as prime minister, and the selection was ratified by the Haitian parliament. In late August, the UN passed Resolution 861, suspending the embargo, and Resolution 862, deploying a UN mission in Haiti.

The Governors Island Agreement was Clinton's preferred instrument for dealing with Haiti. As late as July 23, 1993, he said, “I'm excited about this process. There's a major potential for a victory for democracy here.”
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Clinton pledged economic aid to Haiti, and he offered to send U.S. military personnel to retrain the nation's army and police force. Ultimately, though, neither Cédras nor Aristide honored the agreement, and it was never implemented. Nor was the Malval plan to restore democracy, which was put forth by the State Department after the Governors Island plan failed. Generous funding eliminated an important incentive for Aristide to cooperate: the U.S. government provided him with
$1 million a month, and the State Department authorized payments of $5 million a quarter.

While the Clinton administration waited to see whether Aristide and Cédras would honor the Governors Island Agreement, the U.S.S.
Harlan County
made its way to Haiti. The ship, carrying about two hundred American and twenty-five Canadian military and police trainers armed with light weapons, was slated for a six-month stay in connection with the UN mission. Although the Governors Island commitments were not being kept, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, his deputy, Sandy Berger, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher prevailed over Secretary of Defense Les Aspin in allowing the
Harlan County
to proceed. When the ship arrived in Port-au-Prince on October 11, it was met by a flotilla of small boats filled with several hundred armed attachés, who sought to prevent it from docking.
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The ship retreated. (This incident occurred just days after the battle in Somalia in which eighteen U.S. servicemen were killed.)

The ensuing flood of criticism got the attention of the top leaders of the Clinton administration, who did not like appearing incompetent. President Clinton immediately called for the reimposition of sanctions; the Security Council agreed, passing Resolution 873 on October 13. Three days later, after Aristide pushed to strengthen the sanctions, the Security Council voted to impose a naval blockade on Haiti. Aristide continued to press for tougher sanctions against the Cédras regime through the spring and summer of 1994, although the Haitian parliamentarians and the State Department did not agree. That spring, the Congressional Black Caucus—which supported Aristide—proposed the Haitian Restoration of Democracy Act, which would tighten the economic embargo, block financial assets held in the United States by Haitian nationals, sever commercial air links, and reverse the summary repatriation of refugees. The act was never brought to a vote, but most of its provisions were eventually adopted as administration policy.