U.N. Seeks More U.S. Troops for Haiti Mission

Facing serious shortages of specialist troops, senior U.N. military officers arriving in Haiti this week told U.S. commanders that they will need at least 1,000 more American troops than originally planned for a U.N. force that they now say will not be prepared to take over the U.S. military mission here until well into next year.

In meetings with U.S. officers in Port-au-Prince during the last two days, key officers of the future U.N. military command said that after soliciting forces from more than 80 nations, they have commitments for fewer than 60% of the 6,000 multinational troops that planners estimate will be needed to maintain stability and democracy after the United States hands over command to the United Nations.

The bottom line, according to the U.N. officers: At least 3,000 American soldiers will remain in Haiti, probably until February, 1996, under U.N. command, even if the U.S. force commanders and the bulk of the troops withdraw from the mission early next year.

Those are just some of the hard realities likely to fuel the American debate about the length of its Haitian intervention as the United Nations begins to prepare for its first joint military mission with the United States since Somalia.

Briefing reporters a day after arriving in the Haitian capital, commanders of the 60-member U.N. advance team that will eventually run the U.N. Mission in Haiti--it already has an acronym, UNMIH--said they told deputy U.S. forces commander Maj. Gen. David C. Meade that they will need the extra American forces, particularly engineering, aviation and logistics specialists.

“The Bangladeshis would love to give us another battalion of infantry troops, but our biggest problem is getting the specialized troops we need to make this mission work,” said Canadian army Col. William Fulton, who heads the advance team and will serve as chief of staff, the third-ranking officer in the future U.N. multinational force.

Fulton said it is too early to predict when the United Nations will be prepared to assume command. First, he said, his team must determine that the U.S. forces have created a “safe and stable” environment in Haiti. That probably will take at least three or four more weeks, he said.

Only after Fulton’s determination is approved by U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali will the United Nations begin to deploy its multinational force and the United States begin to withdraw its troops, a process he said will take at least several months.

“By early next year,” he said, “we should be well on our way to being halfway through the transition.”

With just 260 of those U.N. troops in Haiti so far, a combined force of soldiers from Caribbean nations, Fulton and U.N. civilian officials here said that the details of their future mission have yet to be determined.

Just who will command that force remains unclear--and a potential source of conflict between the Clinton Administration and Boutros-Ghali.

Fulton said Boutros-Ghali is insisting that a general officer from a Caribbean nation serve as commander of the entire U.N. force, including all U.S. forces in the contingent. The mission’s deputy commander would be an American general who also reports directly--and only--to the secretary general, U.N. officials said.

A similar command structure caused frequent conflict in Somalia and was partly blamed by U.S. military planners for some of the failures in the bloody mission, which left 42 U.S. servicemen dead before President Clinton pulled Americans out.

“This operation will work only if the American troops here follow absolutely the chain of command and the chain leads directly back to Boutros-Ghali--not the White House,” one U.N. source in Haiti said. This source stressed that U.N. peacekeeping experts in Somalia blamed the mission’s failures on America’s dual chain of command there.

The Pentagon is equally emphatic, however, that the U.N. force in Haiti will be commanded by an American, with a separate command channel leading back to Clinton.

In Washington, Pentagon officials said Friday that they expect that a Jamaican will be commanding the U.N. contingent and that they are satisfied with that.

Despite any potential differences over command, the arrival of Fulton and his team just two weeks into the U.S. military intervention in Haiti underscored one major lesson that U.N. officials said the United States and the United Nations learned from Somalia.

“We’re increasing the level of cooperation right from the start,” said Eric Falt, the U.N. mission spokesman here. “It will not be a sudden transition as it was in Somalia.”

Army Lt. Col. Michael Bailey, a Pentagon planner who arrived with Fulton and will serve as his operations chief in the future mission, added that the meetings with U.S. commanders are aimed specifically at ensuring that the United Nations is better prepared here than it was in Somalia. There, an undersized U.N. force was attacked by fighters of Somalia’s most powerful clan just a month after the world body took over command from the U.S. Marines.

“For Col. Fulton, the most important thing is that we have sufficient force and we have sufficient logistical apparatus before we take over the mission,” Bailey said. “These are the lessons learned in Somalia, and we’re doing this one smarter.”

Bailey, a native of Claremont who served briefly in Somalia, said he learned those lessons largely by taking part in a highly classified, monthlong post-mortem on the Somalia mission and the future U.S. military role in U.N. operations.

Nicknamed the Montgomery Board, the seminar at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., was chaired by U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Thomas Montgomery, who was deputy commander of the U.N. military mission in Somalia.

Bailey said another key lesson learned from Somalia will be to avoid personalizing the mission in Haiti. Critics of the Somalia operation, originally a humanitarian mission, say that the decision to portray Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid into the main villain and to hunt him changed the nature of intervention.

“What caused much of the problem in Somalia was the hunt for Aidid,” Bailey said, referring to the futile, months-long search by U.S. Army Rangers for the warlord after his supporters attacked and killed 25 Pakistani peacekeepers.

“What we’re doing here in Haiti is demonstrating a process--a democratic process. It has nothing to do with personalities.”

In addition, Bailey and nine other U.N. military planners here said the Somalia mission taught “how important it is to understand the environment we’re in, to be more sensitive to the culture.”

Despite the similarities between Haiti and Somalia, Fulton and his team stressed that there is one key, fundamental difference. As Bailey put it: “The biggest difference right now is that the Haitians want us here.”

Crucial to maintaining that public support through a U.N. mission that is likely to last a year and cost more than $500 million, though, will be a clear explanation to Haitians about the reasons and goals of the U.N. mission.

Members of the U.N. advance team acknowledge that much has to be done before that is clear--even to them.

An officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for example, said he has yet to learn how his U.N. police observers and trainers will relate to a parallel U.S.-sponsored mission led by former New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

U.S. military sources said Kelly’s International Police Monitor program, which is funded by the State and Justice departments, eventually will merge with the U.N. police observers, who will then take over training at a new, U.S.-financed Haitian Police Academy and observe Haitian graduates in the field.

U.N. officials, however, said they hope that the police transition will be as deliberate and gradual as the transfer of military command.

“Somalia has created a trauma within the U.N. system,” one U.N. official said. “We’re still reeling from it. We cannot allow the Somalia experience to be repeated. And at this point, at least, we are going to make sure it’s not going to happen, because we’re establishing good relations with the Americans right from the start.”

* AMNESTY APPROVAL: Haiti Senate passes bill on amnesty for coup participants. A12