Full steam ahead by Michel Martelly to revive Haitian army

Two articles to follow:

Ghost of Haitian army’s bloody past set for revival

Major donors wary of Martelly plan to restore military

By Joseph Guyla Delva and Pascal Fletcher, published in Ottawa Citizen, Nov 18, 2011

PORT-AU-PRINCE/MIAMI--No one disputes that Haiti needs battalions of builders, developers and investors to help it rise from the ruins of last year’s earthquake. But does it need a gun-toting Haitian army? With debris from the catastrophe still clogging Haiti’s capital and nearby towns, a plan by President Michel Martelly to bring back to life an armed forces disbanded 16 years ago is triggering potentially divisive political and social tremors.

 

Critics at home and abroad question the need to revive an entity associated with corruption, coups, abuse and killings in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest and most volatile state.

 

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See also these editorials in U.S. newspapers:
Haiti Doesn't Need an Army, LA Times, Nov 17, 2011 http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-haiti-20111117,0,824463.story
No New Army for Haiti, Miami Herald, Nov 14, 2011 http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/14/2502455/no-new-army-for-haiti.html
A New Army is not What Haiti Needs, Washington Post, Oct 16, 2011

 

Major western donors, which fund a UN peacekeeping force of more than 12,000 in Haiti and are also shouldering the Caribbean nation’s reconstruction burden after the 2010 earthquake, are balking at the idea of having to finance and train a reconstituted army. “Given the history of Haiti’s military, their existence alone could be considered a threat to security,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research thinktank.

 

“A brigade of construction workers would do far more good,” the Miami Herald said in an editorial this week, reflecting a chorus of foreign opposition to Martelly’s army plan.

 

Major donors like the United States, Canada and the United Nations acknowledge that Haiti has the sovereign right to have its own army, but have strongly signalled they feel there are more important reconstruction priorities. This includes the urgent task of rehousing around half a million homeless quake victims still living in precarious tent camps in the wrecked capital Port-au-prince, and an ongoing cholera epidemic that has killed more than 6,700 Haitians.

 

Despite the negative reaction, Martelly, a shaven-headed former pop star and charismatic nationalist elected in March, is pushing ahead with fulfilling a campaign promise to restore the Haitian army as part of an ambitious program to rebrand development basket case Haiti as a Caribbean success story. He is expected to formally announce the army’s restoration today, Armed Forces Day, commemorating an 1803 battle in which rebels defeated French colonial forces and opened the way for Haiti to become the first independent black republic.

 

The Haitian army was abolished in 1995 by former president JeanBertrand Aristide, a left-wing populist who was ousted by a military coup in 1991 only months into his first presidency.

 

Martelly’s draft plans to restore the army and build it into a 3,500-strong force at an initial cost of $95 million have circulated in recent weeks, along with a proposal for a national spy service. “The force will be set up, but it won’t be done with any rush,” Martelly said in a recent interview with state television.

 

He said his government would first ensure it created the necessary military infrastructure and obtained equipment and weaponry, blocked at the moment by remaining U.S. restrictions on arms exports to Haiti. “If we have an army and we have no weapons, we don’t have an army,” Martelly said. This has not stopped enthusiastic prospective recruits from training in makeshift assault courses run by ex-soldiers.

 

Martelly argues Haiti needs its own defence force to protect its national borders and eventually take over from the UN peacekeeping force (MINUSTAH), whose image has been tarnished by recent scandals. MINUSTAH is already reducing its numbers amid hopes it can be withdrawn in the next few years.

 

The president has tapped into popular resentment against the presence since 2004 of MINUSTAH, which some Haitians view as foreign occupiers in a land proud to be the world’s first black republic born in 1804 out of a bloody slave revolt. “If they say we don’t need an army, I wonder why we have foreign soldiers on our soil,” said Maxo Benoit, a 24-year-old medical student in Port-au-prince.

 

Anger against the international peacekeepers, already simmering over evidence that Nepalese UN troops brought the deadly cholera epidemic to the quake-ravaged nation, increased after some Uruguayan troops were accused in September of raping a Haitian man. The UN is investigating the incident.

 

“It does seem Martelly has sought to channel ANTI-MINUSTAH sentiment to bolster support for the reactivation of the armed forces,” Weisbrot said, but he added that the move could backfire, because of internal divisions over the army plan.

 

“The risk is that with this move, Haiti’s bitter, long-standing divisions, which are never far from the surface, could come back with a vengeance,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-american Dialogue think-tank.

 

Haiti expert Robert Fatton of the University of Virginia said in a recent academic paper it seemed powerful sectors in the elite and political class supported Martelly’s initiative. Fatton recalled that Haiti’s history was still stained with the bloody memories of feared private militias: the dreaded Tonton Macoutes of former father and son dictators Francois ‘Papa Doc’ and Jean-claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, and the “chimeres’ gangs that intimidated opponents of Aristide. “I am afraid a new army and a spy agency are likely to revive the seeds of authoritarianism still germinating in the Haitian political terrain,” he wrote in a paper to the Haitian Studies Association of the University of the West Indies.

 

“The strong likelihood is that (they) would end up devouring scarce resources, stamping out dissent, silencing opponents, and ultimately becoming a tool of internal repression,” Fatton added.

 

Victims of previous abuses by the old military have echoed these fears, as have some Haitian lawmakers.

 

With donor financing, the United Nations is already training a renovated Haitian National Police, which has expanded to 10,000, although experts believe its number will need to be doubled to be able to effectively keep the peace by itself. “The way forward is really to focus on the Haitian National Police and their being able to get stronger and larger and more capable at doing their jobs,” a senior U.S. official said last month when asked about Martelly’s plan to revive the army.

 

Fatton and other analysts said Haiti’s main security threat was not an external aggressor but crime, including transnational drug-trafficking gangs, and that this should be the responsibility of the expanding police force. Martelly’s determined insistence on pursuing the army’s restoration could rekindle fears that surfaced during his election campaign about his links with former military figures and about a potential messianic authoritarian streak, Fatton said. “The danger is Martelly may assume that his electoral triumph and his current popularity, as well as his image as a man of action, will give him carte blanche to do as he pleases ... To that extent (Martelly)’s rise to the presidency raises questions about Haiti’s democratic future,” Fatton wrote.

 

But for some jobless young Haitians, a new army offers hope: “Maybe I can be one of the soldiers,” said Jonel Metelus, a resident of Port-au-prince’s poor Martissant neighbourhood.

 

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Haiti president to revive disbanded army despite lack of int’l support, senior official says

By Associated Press, published in the Washington Post, November 11, 2011
 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — President Michel Martelly is going forward with a plan to restore his country’s disbanded army even though diplomats have told him their countries will not fund the project, a senior government official told The Associated Press. Martelly recently met with diplomats, including representatives of the U.S., European Union and Brazil, who suggested shoring up the national police rather than devoting resources to an army, given its long history of human rights abuses. Martelly was not persuaded, the official said.

 

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And the Canadian government stand:

 

The president was somewhat dismissive when told by the diplomats that the international community would not pay for the new army. “He said, ‘Who asked you to pay for my army?,’” according to the official, who agreed to discuss the matter Thursday night only if not quoted by name because he was not authorized to talk publicly about the meeting. The president plans to issue a decree Nov. 18 that will reinstate the army under the command of a former colonel and will ask hundreds of former soldiers to reapply, the official said.

 

The force will initially total about 500 soldiers intended to guard the borders, help fight drug trafficking, protect the country’s few remaining forests from illegal timber harvesting and help in natural disasters, the official said. It will take shape in June. “We are going to act surely and slowly,” the official told AP. “We aren’t going to do anything in a hurry.” Martelly, whose government relies on international aid to finance most of its activities, said at the meeting that he would find a way to raise the money for the military.

 

Both Martelly and his opponent in this year’s runoff election pledged to restore Haiti’s military, an idea that resonates with many Haitians who see such a force as a source of national pride, potential jobs and a way to keep order in a chaotic country. Some also see it as a replacement for the nearly 13,000 U.N. peacekeepers who came to Haiti after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in 2004.

 

But it is also an idea that frightens many people inside and outside Haiti, where the army frequently inserted itself into politics and became a tool of repression. Aristide disbanded the army in 1995, after he was ousted by a military coup in 1991 and then restored to power three years later with the help of the U.S. Former members of the military and political opponents assert that his decree was not valid because it violated the constitution.

 

Martelly’s administration said in a report sent to various embassies that it would need $95 million to launch its new military force. The new plan, presented last month at the National Palace, carries a more modest, $25 million price tag. Martelly issued a statement Saturday calling it a “new public security force.”

 

The government plans to pay for the project by taking money from other government ministries. The army will be run by the Interior Ministry, the official said. Each department will be required to pay between 1 percent to 5 percent of its budget, the official said. Inevitably, the bulk of that money will come from outside sources, which provide 60 percent to 70 percent of the government’s $2 billion budget.

 

Jon Piechowski, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, said in a statement that the United States, the Haitian government and other countries with embassies in Haiti agreed that the Haitian National Police, known by its acronym HNP, should be the center of foreign support instead of the army. “The important thing here is that the U.S. and Haitian government and the rest of the international community are all in agreement that the HNP should remain the focal point of efforts to improve security and rule of law,” Piechowski wrote in an email.

 

Referring to the army as a “civil defense corps,” he said it would not detract from efforts to strengthen the police. The police force, which has only 8,500 officers in a country of 10 million people, has been the focus of international efforts at reform.

 

One Martelly opponent said building a new army will come at the expense of the police. “The president needs to stop pushing for the army and reinforce the national police,” said Sen. Moise Jean-Charles, a vocal critic of the president. “The police could provide security throughout the whole country.”

 

The date set for Martelly to announce the decree, Nov. 18, is a national holiday marking the last major fight between Haitian and French forces before Haiti secured its independence in 1804. He is expected to tell hundreds of former soldiers and their followers to stay calm.

 

In recent months, bands of ex-soldiers have been training camouflage-clad would-be recruits in the capital and countryside with the hopes of re-enlisting or securing a job, raising concerns among international officials and Martelly opponents like Jean-Charles that they could be used as private militias.

 

On Tuesday, Samson Chery, a former sergeant who has led several dozen soldiers in the hills above Port-au-Prince in weekly training exercises, met with government officials along with his colleagues. He said Friday by telephone that he looked forward to the army’s official return. “The minute the decree comes out we will wait for orders,” Chery said. “And we will march.”

 

Their eagerness to enlist, however, is of concern to Martelly, said the government official. “This horrifies Martelly and he doesn’t condone this,” said the government official.