Tiny Rays of Light in Haitian Crisis : U.S. special envoy reports hopeful developments

The political crisis in Haiti has gone on so frustratingly long that it would be easy to overlook a couple of small but significant signs of progress there recently for the Clinton Administration.

Under the fresh leadership of William H. Gray III, head of the United Negro College Fund and a former member of Congress, whom President Clinton recruited as his special envoy to Haiti, the United States has begun to rally the kind of regional support that will be needed to wait out the military junta that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in late 1991.

Meeting with officials of the Dominican Republic, for example, Gray was able to get their cooperation in cracking down on the cross-border smuggling that has allowed the Haitian junta to get around an international economic embargo. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola, and despite a history of rivalry between the two nations the Dominican government had turned a blind eye to smuggling of oil and other goods into Haiti in violation of the U.N.-imposed embargo.

That was until Gray visited the Dominican Republic and persuaded President Joaquin Balaguer, whose recent reelection to office is being internally criticized due to election irregularities, that this might be a good time for him to be on good terms with Washington. As a result, Balaguer ordered hundreds of Dominican border guards transferred and replaced by elite troops from the Dominican army. The result has been at least a short-term drop in smuggling.

On Tuesday, Gray was in Jamaica to work out the final details of an arrangement to better deal with the continued flow of Haitian refugees to the United States. Henceforth, rather than be returned directly to their homeland, as has been U.S. policy, Haitian refugees will be taken into the Jamaican port of Kingston by the U.S. Coast Guard. From there, refugees with legitimate claims to political asylum will be transferred to the United States or to a refugee center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But while encouraging, both of these steps are only temporary fixes. They help relieve some of the political pressure on Clinton to “do something” about Haiti, and quickly. The problem is that this pressure could tempt the White House to invade Haiti. Ousting the thuggish clique that ousted Aristide would be easy work for the Marines, of course. But getting the Marines out of Haiti after an invasion would be much more complicated.

That is why simply waiting out the Haitian junta is still the preferred option. Haiti’s military leaders must be convinced that Washington and the rest of the world intend to make life as difficult as possible for them until they step aside and allow their nation’s first popularly elected president to return. Gray’s recent achievements in the Caribbean are important because they will contribute to that methodical long-term strategy.