Haiti’s Army: Dozing Soldiers, Decrepit Weapons

The Haitian military has revealed its preparation for any possible U.S. armed intervention--a World War II-vintage antiaircraft machine gun and a broken-down armored personnel carrier.

The .30-caliber, single-barreled weapon came out of a cardboard box, with several parts left over. It sits in a bush across the street from the army general command in central Port-au-Prince and is pointed skyward to the west. A reporter who saw the machine gun in the shrubbery noted that two Haitian soldiers--evidently the crew--were sprawled on a park bench about five yards away, mouths agape and both sound asleep in the sun.

Nearby, in the parking lot behind the headquarters, sat the armored personnel carrier, one of 10 reportedly possessed by the army. Although it hasn’t moved in at least 2 1/2 years, it too is part of the defense system. Soldiers had pulled a canvas cover from a light machine gun on the vehicle’s left fender. It was unattended but was pointed at the presidential palace on the other side of this capital’s widest street, the Champs de Mars (Field of War).

“I think that’s about it,” a European military expert here said. The Haitian military leaders “think they have to make some public display, and a couple of aging and probably inoperative guns is about what they have.”

The weaponry symbolizes the general state of the army, a collection of 7,000 uniformed soldiers and police whose only battle experience has been the killing and intimidation of the local populace.

“These guys are expert at shooting up civilian neighborhoods in the dark and at kidnaping and killing unarmed people,” one diplomat said. “But they haven’t a clue about real fighting.”

The military’s most successful recent endeavor was the September, 1991, bloody overthrow of Haiti’s first freely elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He angered the army and its civilian allies by threatening to limit corruption and restrict the power of the military.

That coup sent Haiti into collapse with severe international economic sanctions, the isolation of the country, the destruction of its political institutions and the beggaring of what was already the poorest nation in the hemisphere.

A major aim of the United States and the United Nations here has been a total restructuring of the army, cutting its size, removing key officers and creating a separate and civilian-controlled police force.

As things now stand, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras--who recently promoted himself to the rank of army commander in chief--Chief of Staff Gen. Philippe Biamby and police commander Lt. Col. Michel-Joseph Francois have until Saturday to resign and leave the country or face possible military intervention by the United States.

The officers as well as their civilian stooges have said they won’t go. Cedras has promised resistance and ordered his men to prepare themselves for battle.

But what exactly does this mean?

Soldiers here are armed, more or less, with Israeli-designed Galil assault rifles, assorted pistols and a hodgepodge of other guns, some dating from the single-shot days of World War I. The air force has no planes, the navy no ships. The armored force consists of about 10 armored personnel carriers, only two or three of which have ever been seen in operation. Most sit in bases, unable to move.

Cedras has a foreign military adviser, a former Royal Canadian Air Force jet pilot named Lynn Garrison, who once also operated an art gallery in Santa Monica.

But his influence seems to have diminished in recent days, perhaps because of his off-the-record criticism of Cedras to foreign reporters.

The current Haitian army is a vague descendant of a military force created by U.S. Marines during a 14-year U.S. occupation. Instead of the force that was intended to patrol the border, run customs posts and build roads, the army quickly deteriorated into a ragtag collection of competing officers more interested in seizing political power and stealing.

It was almost obliterated during the time of Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, the brutal dictator who dismantled much of the army, closed its officers academy and created a private security force, popularly known as the Tontons Macoutes. After his death in 1971, the army was reconstituted, again more as a political-criminal enterprise than a professional force.

Whether any members of the army--officers or enlisted men--would fight if the United States landed a force here is widely doubted. “One theory, the one I subscribe to,” said the foreign military expert, “is that they will throw off their uniforms at the first sign of a military move against them and run for the hills.”

There is another theory, one put forth by a civilian supporter of the coup.

The military, this source said, “will simply sit in their barracks with their arms folded and let the Americans take them. Then, when Aristide comes back and everything breaks loose in the streets, the Americans will have two choices--either start shooting civilians or ask the army to restore order.”