NEWS ANALYSIS : Haiti’s Tinkertoy Army of ‘Thugs’ Frustrates U.S.

It can’t march, its uniforms don’t match, its band doesn’t play in tune, its leaders are at each other’s throats and its commander is so splay-footed he appears to walk in three directions at once. But if the Haitian army doesn’t seem very military, it can steal, terrorize--and above all it can kill.

And for all its Tinkertoy appearance, it is the most powerful force in Haitian life, the successful defier of every American effort and tactic to bring the country under control and return it to civilian rule.

This collection of what some foreign officials have called 7,000 “thugs” has fooled, outmaneuvered and frustrated the United States throughout the crisis initiated by the Haitian military’s Sept. 30 overthrow of the country’s first freely elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Human rights groups blame the army for most of the 1,500 violent deaths that have occurred here since the coup.

“All the political solutions for solving Haiti’s problems are irrelevant because of the army,” according to one military expert. “The army does not want and will not permit Aristide to return,” said Haitian political economist Leslie Delatour.

This position has left U.S. policy toward Haiti a shambles and the army in total control of the country in spite of overwhelming public opposition, nearly total international isolation and resulting economic ruin.

The Haitian army’s dominance and its refusal to play a constructive role also has brought into question a basic assumption of U.S. foreign policy in the region: that the military contains moderate elements that can be persuaded to create a responsible, professional force in exchange for foreign military aid and international respect.

One diplomat said: “I don’t know if the United States just didn’t find the right people, or if they just don’t exist, but it’s clear to me that through either collusion or coincidence, there is no one in Haiti’s army that can be counted on to solve the problems here.”

One of the ironies of the Haitian situation is that the military itself is hardly a unified force. Rather it is a collection of small groups of shifting allegiances and members.

Discipline is marginal at best, officers assume command in the face of contrary orders and enlisted men have even staged coups and appointed their own commanders.

What unifies the military for the moment is a determination to fight off any effort at independent political control, particularly if that involves left-leaning populism of the kind represented by Aristide. But, military experts say, the military’s opposition to Aristide is not motivated by ideology but by greed, personal ambition and perhaps poor morale.

“Aristide represented a threat to the military’s privilege, its primacy over things like drugs and contraband,” one Latin diplomat said. “He fired officers and threatened the civilian elite who paid off the army.”

Another expert on the military said Aristide also tried to undermine the self-esteem of both officers and men. “In this society,” he said, “being somebody important has great value. Losing a position is a great threat.”

This psychological problem was explained further by Col. Eddy Louis, a member of the Haitian high command with the reputation of being one of the more rational members of the officer corps.

“We don’t have anything,” Louis said. “The soldiers are underpaid, they don’t have nice homes, sometimes they don’t even have proper shoes. We need respect.”

While alienation and a lack of self-esteem may contribute to a sense of isolation and paranoia, most diplomats and Haitian experts see these elements as the result of the baser characteristics of the military.

“They all are driven by corruption,” said one diplomat.

From the beginning of Haiti’s late-18th-Century drive for independence from France, the army has been notorious for corruption, double-dealing and anti-democratic tendencies. And, except for the revolutionary period when a handful of brilliant black slave and mulatto generals defeated Napoleon’s forces here, the army has been noted more for brutality than battlefield prowess.

“The military here always has been corrupt and the paid handmaiden of the elite,” said an American who has lived in Haiti since 1950, “but this period is the worst.”

And if the military seems of one mind about keeping Aristide out, most experts think it remains a nervous entity of dangerous, even murderous rivalries.

The leader of one faction is Raoul Cedras, the army commander in chief who just promoted himself to lieutenant general.

In most armies, even the coup-minded forces of the past, the rival to the commander in chief is likely to be another general or perhaps a high-ranking colonel. But in Haiti, a lowly major presents the challenge: Michel-Joseph Francois, commander of the Port-au-Prince police force and owner of the city’s only auto towing company.

Cedras, ironically, was promoted by Aristide over several earlier rivals to head the army. He rewarded the president by supporting, if not initiating, the Sept. 30 coup. Cedras has also ignored direct U.S. appeals to back Aristide. Nevertheless, subsequent U.S. strategy involved cultivating and promoting Cedras as a moderate who could be used to negotiate a political settlement that would include the return of Aristide.

Instead, Cedras has consolidated his power, appointing friends to high positions, sending potential rivals to golden exiles as overseas military attaches and establishing paramilitary forces that operate in civilian clothes to terrorize the public.

Most frightening to moderate civilians has been Cedras’ approval of a resurgence of, and an alliance of the military with, the former Tontons Macoutes, a private security force operated by the feared dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude (Baby Doc), from 1957 to 1986. The irony is that the army during the Duvalier epoch hated the Tontons Macoutes.

Maj. Francois, meanwhile, built a reputation as a brutal young officer with strong connections to the civilian elite. His lack of respect for his superiors was demonstrated last year when he simply named himself to be the capital’s police chief, disregarding the man appointed by Cedras.

U.S. officials and Latin American diplomats say Francois plays a major role in Haiti’s ballooning drug trade and huge smuggling operations. They say that his reward for abetting the greed of elitist civilians includes the Port-au-Prince towing operation and control of 20% of the nation’s cement supply.

Francois was also named by U.S. officials as a major figure in a fierce attack last month on a group of political leaders trying to find a way to bring back Aristide.

At first, U.S. officials thought Francois was acting against Cedras in helping arrange the attack, which resulted in the death of the bodyguard of Rene Theodore, a politician whom the American Embassy was pushing to be prime minister in a failed scheme to bring Aristide home from exile as president.

However, later evidence indicated that Cedras had no problem with the raid. Another officer reported to have played an even bigger role in the attack than Francois serves as Cedras’ principal aide.

Furthermore, Cedras has refused to move against Francois even though U.S. officials have told him that a refusal to act would be seen as reflecting on him and as evidence of collusion with Francois.