Rebuilding Job: Starting From Ground Zero

By KENNETH FREED

Sept. 23, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti —

“The American military takeover is easy,” the industrialist said. “The soldiers simply point their guns and things get done. Rebuilding this country, now that is hard.”

The industrialist was being flip, but the assessment was right on point. Haiti is so manacled by devastation and economic despair that the task is not one of rebuilding but one of constructing, almost from scratch.

Haiti has never had anything resembling a modern economy, and the overwhelming majority of its people have lived as virtual peons to a handful of rich plutocrats. Life expectancy has never been higher than 45 years, more than 10% of all babies die at birth, and more workers than not have never received wages.

And since the Sept. 30, 1991, military overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, what passes for life has become even worse.

The last three years of brutal military rule, awesome corruption, mismanagement and a crushing international economic embargo have left Haiti truly beggared, a largely barren lump of infertile dirt.

Of the 2,400 miles of roads that theoretically traverse this Maryland-sized nation, only 600 are “paved.” Most of the rest can barely be described as dirt tracks. According to engineers, only one highway is capable of carrying heavy trucks safely and at reasonable speed: a 50-mile stretch built recently between Port-au-Prince and the Dominican Republic border to carry smuggled gasoline.

Most assembly plants and a large section of the country’s shrinking agricultural areas have crumbled and are idle. Those that could be made productive in a hurry are no longer connected to anything by serviceable roads.

There is virtually no electricity outside Port-au-Prince, where service is so severely curtailed that lights are available for perhaps four hours a day to only a handful of neighborhoods.

Telephone service is a cruel joke. Not one of the country’s 6.5 million inhabitants has access to public potable water. Most public workers have not been paid in two months; there is a shortage of local currency; inflation is at least 80%; an estimated 90% of the work force is unemployed.

“What we have here is a pre-primitive society,” a European economist said as he looked around. “Most primitive societies are self-sufficient. Haiti now can’t even feed itself, let alone produce anything.”

No matter the street stability brought by the presence of the 15,000 U.S. troops still pouring into the country, no matter the restoration of Aristide, no matter anything the Haitian people themselves do, constructing a new Haiti will be almost entirely in the hands of foreigners, according to several economic and political experts.

The necessary money--at least for a start--is there, in theory. Various government and international financial institutions have pledged about $1 billion over the next half a decade, with about half of that for the first year.

But the gossamer nature of such commitments is underlined by the evaporation of more than $500 million in additional aid that had been earmarked for Haiti two years ago as the political crisis dragged on.

“The problem then,” an international economist said, “was the bleak outlook for a settlement. The (international) agencies simply couldn’t hold all the funds in abeyance, and it went elsewhere.

“A major problem now is the inability of Haiti to even absorb a lot of money. We’ll need approved plans (from a restored Aristide government) and proof that the funds will be used efficiently and productively.”

Now and for the foreseeable future, even lifting the international embargo will strain the country’s capacity to unload and process new goods. The two main ports, here and in the northern city of Cap Haitien, are occupied by U.S. forces.

Other ports either are too small or lack working equipment to handle even mid-sized ships. Discounting the American military equipment, the Port-au-Prince docks have only one working crane and one forklift.

Warehouse capacity is weak, and existing petroleum storage tanks cannot handle more than one tanker at a time. So even when sanctions are lifted, there still won’t be sufficient gasoline.

Another barrier is disagreement within Haiti about what should be done first.

International lending institutions and the private financial sector have accepted a free-market economic approach written by Haiti’s most respected economist, former Finance Minister Leslie Delatour. And nearly all experts agree that the first task is political--the establishment of a stable, rational political system that will draw foreign investment.

But after that, the discord starts.

Marc Bazin, a discredited political figure for his support of the coup but still a respected economist, argues for immediate construction of infrastructure--”utility lines, wharves, refineries, factories, all connected by good roads. It makes no sense to build these things and then leave them useless and cut off,” he said.

Leaders of the assembly-plant sector, which provided 36,000 jobs in 140 factories making everything from T-shirts to baseballs until forced to close by the embargo, say what is needed after political stability is an immediate improvement in the lives of ordinary people.

“We have to address the poverty, open real schools, stabilize prices with emergency measures, increase the money supply, create jobs,” one businessman said. Then, he said, the infrastructure can be addressed.

Lurking behind all the plans, proposals and hopes is concern among the business community and among diplomats and economists over Aristide’s incoming administration.

During the seven months he was in office before the coup, Aristide delayed several major loans and financial-aid plans, either by failing to develop workable proposals for the money’s use or by not addressing the corruption that seemed to be copied from the practices of his dictatorial predecessors.

“It took us six months to deliver $25 million in aid,” said one international financial expert of the president’s initial term, “because Aristide did not sufficiently explain how he was going to use the money or satisfy us that it wouldn’t just vanish into the pockets of his people.”

U.S. diplomats and even some business leaders are optimistic that Aristide’s return engagement will be different, even if the president doesn’t want them to be.

“He’s only got a year to go” before his term expires, one diplomat said, “and he won’t be able to do much harm, even if he wants to, and I don’t think he wants to. Aristide knows that if he is to change this country and have a political future, he needs the foreign money. So he will behave.”

Besides, a business leader said, “15,000 American troops will remind him of who is really in charge. He’ll do what they tell him needs to be done.”

The real issue, a diplomat said, “really isn’t efficiency or even honesty of the government. What really matters is whether Haiti can ever recover.”

MISSION OF MERCY: U.S. troops enjoy new role as peacekeepers. A5