Ill-Starred Voyage Shows Foundering of U.S.’ Haiti Policy

The ill-starred voyage of the hijacked Gonave en Fleche, which ended Monday where it began two weeks ago for 120 weary passengers and crew, bears witness to a faltering, $2.3-billion U.S.-led effort to rescue Haiti from itself.

The 120-foot intercity ferry left the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, on May 16, just five days before national elections that U.S. officials spent $20 million to finance. Their hope: that the vote would deepen democracy, foster stability and deter a new wave of Haitian boat people from seeking asylum on U.S. shores.

According to numerous witness accounts, once the Gonave en Fleche set sail, 10 present and former officers of the Haitian National Police--which the U.S. has spent tens of millions of dollars more trying to build and train--commandeered the vessel at gunpoint, along with at least 60 accomplices posing as missionaries.

Their demands: that the captain make for Florida, and then, six days later, that the U.S. grant them political asylum after the Coast Guard rescued the vessel, adrift and out of fuel 30 miles off Andros Island in the Bahamas.

Except in the case of a single 13-year-old on board, those requests were denied after teams of FBI and immigration agents investigated. And early Monday, when they emerged from the Coast Guard cutter Confidence, the 120 returnees disembarked in a homeland still mired in uncertainty, chaos and fear.

Six years after 20,000 U.S. troops entered Haiti to restore democracy and stem an illegal migrant flow that had sent more than 67,000 Haitian rafters to Florida’s shores between 1992 and 1994, the number of Haitian boat people has increased anew this year.

With Monday’s landing in the Haitian capital, Coast Guard officials in Miami say that already this year they have stopped and sent home 883 Haitian boat people en route to the U.S.--more than any other nationality in the Caribbean and nearly double the number for the same period last year.

Hundreds more Haitians headed for the U.S. have landed in the Bahamas, which also is turning them away in growing numbers. Scores more Haitians have been arrested and deported by U.S. immigration authorities after landing illegally on Florida soil.

And in the aftermath of the May 21 elections, which were marred by violence, intimidation and delays--even as the Gonave en Fleche passengers returned Monday, no official results had been released--independent analysts and Haitians themselves say many more would-be migrants are likely to follow.

Ship Rented by Group of ‘Missionaries’

As it unfolded in dockside interviews Monday, the bizarre saga of the aging ferry also showed how increasingly sophisticated and creative these voyages have become.

Crew members, passengers and some of the hijackers themselves said the vessel had been rented for about $2,000 by a group claiming to be Protestant missionaries bound for a rural town in northern Haiti. All dressed in white shirts and carrying Bibles, they unfurled a flag emblazoned with the words “Church of His Holiness,” danced and sang impassioned hymns on deck, and cheered as the boat sailed out of Port-au-Prince harbor.

But then, after two hours at sea, 10 men suddenly emerged in police uniforms. One put a gun to the captain’s head, ordering him to change course for Florida, and the “missionaries” became captors who tied up and beat some of the crewmen and 20 or so genuine passengers.

“We didn’t hijack the boat. We hijacked its destination,” protested Haitian traffic policeman Michel Everricks before he was arrested along with his colleagues when they came ashore in Haiti on Monday.

Everricks and others said they had planned the operation for a month. All of the present and former police officers on board were staunch supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, several of them said. And all were recruited and trained for the Haitian police by the U.S. from among Haitian boat people taken to the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1994.

The eight former officers said they seized the ferry because they were embittered after they were fired in 1998 for various lapses or offenses. The two active-duty officers offered no explanation.

As the journey showed, though, the Clinton administration and the U.S. as a whole have more at stake in Haiti than preserving the foreign policy victory Clinton initially declared in 1994 when the U.S. force cleared the way for Aristide’s return in Operation Restore Democracy.

Citing “strong national security interests,” the State Department’s special Haiti coordinator, Donald Steinberg, recently told a Senate committee that U.S. taxpayers have spent $746 million since 1995 attempting to build democracy, alleviate poverty and, thus, deter illegal migration and drug trafficking in Haiti.

Even Steinberg conceded that “the record has been decidedly mixed.” But he said: “We cannot turn our backs on a fledgling democracy nor on the extreme poverty on our doorstep.

“If the U.S. and the international community [resist] the easy solace of fatigue and frustration, future generations may look back to the year 2000 as the period in which the roots of democracy, national reconciliation and economic recovery finally took hold,” he added.

Boat’s Namesake Island a Source of Emigration

Last week, however, as Jean Claude Edmond looked back on the most recent elections, he saw far different roots taking hold.

The 39-year-old former dockworker ran as an independent candidate opposed to Aristide’s ruling Lavalas Family party on the Haitian island that was the ill-fated ferry’s namesake. In fact, he said, Ile de la Gonave off Haiti’s west coast traditionally has been the single largest source of Haitian boat people headed for America.

After an election that he and every other opposition candidate on the island boycotted, asserting it was heavily biased from the start in favor of Aristide’s ruling party, Edmond was sharply critical of both Aristide and the U.S., where he lived for 20 years before returning three years ago “to help develop my country.”

“This place is a mess. There are no roads, no hospitals, no electricity, no security,” he said. “And now Aristide is creating a new dictatorship by trying to win every single office any way he can.

“What we need first is a real democracy, where local officials have the power and the money to develop their towns. But what we’re seeing now is democracy only in name. It’s a show, a masquerade, so America can say: ‘Look, there’s democracy in Haiti. No need for political asylum. All you Haitians should now stay home.’

“Well, I can tell you, they won’t.”

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Patrick Scott in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.