ARTICLE - NEW ARMY? - FEARS ABOUND

A NEW HAITIAN ARMY? FEARS ABOUND
(Chicago Tribune) - By Joseph Guyler Delva, Reuters

"The dignity of the Haitian people is coming with the creation of the armed forces."

PORT-AU-PRINCE — For weeks, an armed band of former Haitian soldiers has occupied an old military camp in the capital, where they carry out military training in defiance of the government.

"We took control of something that is ours. No one can force us to leave this place," said David Dorme, the leader of the group and a former sergeant in Haiti's army, which was disbanded in disgrace almost two decades ago.

The camp and others that have sprung up in different parts of the country are the latest manifestations of a push to revive Haiti's army, which was long considered responsible for decades of human rights abuses and corruption, as well as a bloody military coup in 1991.

The former soldiers have ignored appeals by President Michel Martelly to put down their weapons and leave the camp, where men brandishing assault rifles and handguns proclaim they are defending the nation's constitutional right.

That may be in large part because Martelly has himself declared the army's reconstitution a central goal of his government, much to the dismay of Western governments that believe Haiti has far greater priorities in the wake of a devastating 2010 earthquake.

Martelly faces mounting international pressure to take tougher action to evict and disarm the would-be soldiers before they grow any bolder and pose a threat to political stability.

"We expect … concrete actions to put an end to this ad hoc process of regrouping, which is an unnecessary provocation," the head of the U.N. mission in Haiti, Mariano Fernandez, declared in an official statement last month.

Martelly said recently that he had asked government officials to find ways to clear the sites being occupied by former soldiers and directed a commission to study the issue.

The United Nations and major financial donors to Haiti's earthquake recovery question the country's need for an army, arguing that Haiti faces no external threats. Then there's the question of money, how Haiti could afford to assume the cost of arming and training even a small army.

"Haiti doesn't have the money, and the international community has no appetite for funding something like this," said Mark Schneider, vice president of the International Crisis Group think tank, which monitors Haiti closely.

U.N. officials also worry that talk of reviving the army could undermine international efforts to train and equip a new civilian police force, a key goal of the U.N. mission in Haiti.

"The choice to re-create or not a force is a legitimate question and a sovereign decision," Fernandez conceded in his statement. "However, this initiative must not come at the expense of the capacity building and staffing of the National Police of Haiti."

Haiti currently has a U.N.-trained police force of about 10,000, with plans to train another 5,000 to 6,000 over the next three years.

But Martelly, a popular former folk singer who took office last May, argues that the army was never constitutionally dissolved and can be restored by presidential decree. He says it would be an important step back toward sovereignty in a country that for much of the past two decades has been overseen by U.N. forces and foreign aid agencies.

Martelly announced his plan last November, on the anniversary of a major battle two centuries ago during Haiti's struggle for independence from France. "The dignity of the Haitian people is coming with the creation of the armed forces," he said.

"The whole thing smells bad," said Jocelyn McCalla, a Haitian-American political strategist in New York, recalling Haiti's experience with a homegrown military, as well as offshoots such as the notorious National Security Volunteers, better known as Tonton Macoutes, during the dictatorships of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

In 2004, a ragtag rebel army that included former soldiers toppled then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and attempted to take power, until U.S. troops intervened to restore democracy.

McCalla and others worry that any new military apparatus, together with a proposed intelligence service, could once again be used as a repressive force.

The Martelly proposal appears to have some popular support. The U.N. peacekeeping mission has an image problem, with some of its members accused of being responsible for introducing a deadly cholera epidemic in Haiti in 2010.