Deliverance

By Kevin Fedarko

For once, the day that Haitians will remember was one of jubilation: their first freely elected President returning in triumph to vanquish the ghosts of the country's past. On that bright Saturday afternoon, as Jean-Bertrand Aristide paced through the ceremonies of reinstatement, his euphoric nation could reasonably embrace the vision he offered them -- that it was their day of deliverance.

Aristide's joy-filled return marked more than a victory for the activist priest who transformed Haitian politics. As he gratefully acknowledged, the moment would never have occurred without the persistence of Bill Clinton, who dispatched a peaceful army to pave the way. Now the U.S. and Aristide depend on each other for success. The Haitian leader's ceremonial return was visibly orchestrated by his muscular allies. When he arrived a few minutes before noon, it was aboard a U.S. Air Force jet. For his safety, he was allowed only the most subdued reception by a privileged phalanx of dignitaries at the airport, protected by a cordon of American soldiers.

But no one would muffle the President's real welcome. The poor who form the bedrock of his constituency had begun celebrating hours before. As Aristide prepared late into Friday night, throngs of supporters were deliriously dancing through the slums of the capital, festooning the streets with Christmas lights. When the exhausted President finally went to bed for the last time in his Washington apartment, it was 4 a.m. An hour later, his mother ) roused him with a good-luck phone call. "Tonight, I intend to sleep well," he declared the next morning, "even if I'm in the Duvaliers' old bed."

As his jet approached, crowds eager to catch a glimpse of their returning savior flocked to the National Palace, packing the streets so tightly that the faces of those standing next to the fence were squeezed like lemons between the iron bars. "For three years we have suffered," said Michel Jasmine, a member of the crowd. "But God has been good to us; he has given us back Aristide. Now we face a new life." When the President finally appeared, he was dwarfed by the bulletproof shield that surrounded the podium, another sign of how fragile his safety is in this divided society. A dozen U.S. soldiers with binoculars were perched atop the palace, scanning the crowds. Another eight sharpshooters were crouched on the police station across the street. And somewhere in the capital was a top-secret team of Delta Force commandos, ready to respond if an attempt were made on his life.

For a moment, the crowd seemed overwhelmed and strangely hushed. They waited with a stilled reverence that bordered on the mystical. When Aristide finally spoke, his message was unmistakable. In Creole, English, French and, finally, Spanish, he repeated words of peace and nonviolence over and over. "Honor. Respect," he intoned. "Honor. Respect."

For much of the week, the U.S. had been spreading the same ideas, plastering pleas for reconciliation and democracy on billboards, flags and wall posters. But the people still needed to hear the message directly from Aristide. "This is a day on which the sun of democracy rises, never to set," he said, "a day of national reconciliation, a day for the eyes of justice to open and never close again." The crowd cheered wildly as he promised, "Never, never, never again will blood be shed in this country."

As he stepped down from the podium, there was a feeling that the little priest had somehow been propelled by a miracle. In returning to reclaim his place as Haiti's first freely elected leader, he had the support of a U.S. government that distrusted his competence and character; the very men who pushed him from the country three years before were forced into exile; the ruling minority who loathed him were contained by military force. He had been given an opportunity that few could have foreseen months ago to put a country whose history is steeped in decades of dictatorship on the path to democracy.

It was a moment to be savored, both in Haiti and in Washington. The taste was especially sweet in the White House, which had persisted in its plan despite opposition from almost every quarter. For once, a risky venture had rebounded favorably to a grateful Clinton Administration. A TIME/CNN survey last week showed that Americans had reversed their opinions, based on the success of the mission so far: while only 38% approved of military intervention a month ago, 55% now do, and 57% believe the U.S. will succeed in restoring democratic rule. The White House could not help crowing about its rare foreign policy victory. "Let it be noted," declared a senior official, "that we have done what we said we would do."

Yet almost everyone involved is all too aware how tenuous the triumph may prove. Hovering like tropical storm clouds above the euphoria were foreboding images of the future: the potential of Aristide's followers to plunge into an orgy of revenge; the danger of attaches who still roam the cities and countryside; the knowledge that 20,000 American troops have papered over but not solved Haiti's ills; and the sense that the entire operation was, in the words of a Clinton Administration official, "just a hand grenade away from disaster."

The next few days and weeks, predict U.S. officials, should unfold fairly smoothly under the watchful eye of American soldiers. The Haitian army and their street-bully allies have been driven underground. Ordinary people are no longer afraid, and the popularity of the U.S. troops, who have suffered only two minor casualties, is running high. Even skeptical Pentagon officials, who last month were privately forecasting a debacle, have now changed their tune. "I can't believe," an officer said, echoing a frequently heard statement, "that it's going this well."

The impression of success was greatly enhanced by the ignominious exit of the three men who engineered the coup against Aristide. By Oct. 4, Michel Francois, the principal architect of the September 1991 rebellion, had already fled to the neighboring Dominican Republic. Six days later, Lieut. General Raoul Cedras stood on the stairs of the army headquarters in Port-au-Prince to announce that he was leaving too. The event turned out to be an exercise in humiliation.

Dwarfed by the 6-ft., 5-in. frame of the crimson-bereted U.S. military commander, Lieut. General Hugh Shelton, whose soldiers had already emasculated the Haitian general's army, Cedras addressed an angry crowd of several thousand. No one heard a word. His speech was drowned out by bawdy yells and scatological catcalls that reflected the deep bitterness and cynicism his predatory rule provoked. Even Cedras' normally implacable wife Yannick seemed taken aback by the verbal abuse.

When the general left to return home and pack, much of the crowd crossed the street to the National Palace to call for the resignation of Emile Jonassaint, the puppet president installed by the military earlier this year. The next morning, after 500 U.S. soldiers took over the National Palace and other government buildings, they began escorting Jonassaint's ministers to the door and clearing a path for Aristide's men to move in. By Wednesday, the octogenarian president had announced his resignation. That set the stage for removing the final obstacle to the exiled President's return: actually getting Cedras out of the country. After months of dramatic posturing about his obligation to defend his nation, the general spent his final hours mired in a real estate spat over how much the U.S. would compensate him for the property he was leaving behind.

The dickering was resolved around midnight when Jimmy Carter, busily pecking away on his portable computer at home, faxed a final agreement to Cedras and to the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince. Based on intensive discussions Carter had held with Cedras and his wife, the agreement provided that the U.S. would rent at least one of the three houses belonging to the Cedras family. The price: a hefty $5,000 per month. U.S. soldiers would also protect the other villas for six weeks to make sure they weren't looted.

Suitably satisfied, Cedras and his family finally sped through the night to the airport and boarded a U.S.-chartered Boeing 757 at 2 a.m. for the flight to their new home in Panama. They were accompanied by his chief of staff, Brigadier General Philippe Biamby, who had once declared that he would rather commit suicide than face a life in exile. A second plane delivered 23 close relatives and friends to asylum in Miami. By the following morning, the Cedras family was safely ensconced in a second-rate Panama City hotel.

Amid the drama surrounding the junta leader's exit, few remarked on the yawning vacuum of police power he left behind. That absence only deepens the need for American involvement, despite White House protestations that the U.S. ! commitment is limited and temporary. From the Haitian capital to the remotest corners of the countryside, civil authority has melted away. Even with Aristide on the way home, U.S. soldiers were forced to immerse themselves in the minutiae of Haitian daily life.

In Port-au-Prince, Shelton has become the de facto proconsul; his 10th Mountain Division is for the moment Haiti's replacement army, civil service, utility company and public relations firm. In the countryside, 31 U.S. Army Green Beret A Teams, each made up of about 12 soldiers, have quietly fanned out to key towns and villages. They are holding town meetings in Pilate and Plaisance. Further south in Hinche, Special Forces soldiers just completed "Operation Light Switch," getting a generator up and running to restore some power. "The people are now out in the streets," said a secret report sent to the Pentagon that was read to . "Civilians are starting to go out at night." In Haiti that is progress.

While these measures have generated enormous gratitude, nothing the U.S. military can do will solve Haiti's core problems, which are not just military or economic, but political. "We have this naive notion that we can introduce democracy into this country," says a U.S. analyst. "But we're doing nothing to deal with the underlying conditions. All the gadgetry and gizmos and fancy names for troops don't speak to the fact that the Haitians are trying to sort out basic racial divisions from the past 200 years."

Behind the cheering crowds and smiling faces that have accompanied the American intervention so far lies a complex, alien and highly polarized society. If Aristide is to heal those divisions, which have defied similar efforts for centuries, the keystone to his success will be reconciliation. Aristide must show from the start that he can work with a prickly parliament. He needs to persuade an entrenched elite that detests him that they should contribute to a new kind of Haiti. He will have to quell those of his followers who lust for revenge, and back up American soldiers if they have to use force against looters or other mobs. "He must be Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel at the same time," says Michael Mandelbaum at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, "conciliating his enemies while disappointing his supporters."

Crucial importance will be placed on his ability to reform the judicial system and give Haitians a sense that the rule of law exists. The country now has no civilian police, no functioning judiciary and no tradition of nonviolent political discourse. Before he can move forward, Aristide must reconstruct institutions that will repudiate past government abuses and formally enshrine basic human rights for all citizens.

Another early priority will be to establish a firm grasp on the levers of government, something he cannot do without making peace with the middle-class bureaucrats who run his ministries and departments. When Port-au-Prince Mayor Evans Paul returned to city hall on Sept. 22, he found chaos. The desks had been rifled; none of the telephones worked; records were so disorganized that by last week the mayor still had no idea how many employees were on the city payroll. The same is true for most of the municipal offices and government ministries.

Equally important, the new President must carve out a detente with Haiti's business elite, the only group with the capital he needs for the economic progress his followers demand. "You're not going to get that economy going again if the merchants and businessmen don't participate," warns a Pentagon analyst.

Setting Haiti back on its feet will require an uncommon flair for delicacy, balance and compromise. As a priest turned President who tended to see the world in terms of moral polarities, Aristide spurned the bargaining, horse trading and messy compromises of democratic politics. Despite his many progressive policies in tax reform, family planning, reforestation and community policing, he often ruled largely on his own. "One of Aristide's problems," says a U.S. observer, "was that he wouldn't work with parliament and the government. We need to support parliament. It may be weak, but it's symbolic."

While he is juggling all that, Aristide must instill a spirit of realism among follows who have been swept up in the wild euphoria of his return. Their immense anticipation has generated hopelessly extravagant expectations -- so inflated, in fact, that the President risks failing before he is even given a chance. "People will hold him to unfairly high standards," says an American official. "There are exaggerated expectations of his -- and our -- ability to make fundamental changes."

If he cannot rein in his followers' demands, those fantasies could explode when they collide with reality. Haiti's economic, social and physical foundations are in ruins: "The ultimate developmental nightmare," says a $ State Department official. Even before the coup and the embargo, the country had the lowest per capita income, lowest life expectancy and highest mortality rate in the Americas. More than half the children are malnourished; tuberculosis and AIDS ravage the population. The nation's domestic output has declined every year since 1981. "Haiti is not on the way to becoming a basket case," said a recent unclassified report from U.S. AID. "It is one."

One of his first orders of business, Aristide says, will be to shift the balance of power away from the executive branch and place more responsibility in the hands of local government, like labor unions, grass-roots organizations, community groups. But to do that, he must redefine the military's role, separating the army from the police and the local section chiefs who established a draconian choke hold on rural Haiti.

Fortunately, he will get some economic help. The international trade embargo, enforced in June 1993, officially ended on Sunday. Even before the President took command, shipments of oil and gas were on their way to Haiti. Relief is also trickling back in, the beginning of what will eventually become a deluge of assistance. In the next 12 to 15 months, the United Nations plans to give $555 million. The U.S. is setting up a jobs program that in theory will put 50,000 Haitians to work by 1995. And the U.S. AID has set aside $140 million for jobs and small loans. Together those packages should help wipe out most of Haiti's debts to international lending institutions, allowing new loans to flow in.

That international-aid spigot will close quickly, however, if Aristide strays too far from the orthodoxies of free-market democracy. He will have to make sure his preferences for social spending do not overwhelm the development of a paying economy. U.S. officials will be watching closely to ensure he keeps his ideological fervor in check. "President Aristide and President Clinton probably don't see the world the same way," warns a State Department aide. "Aristide's view of modern society stands well to the left of mainstream America. It is going to require a lot of blood-pressure medication for a lot of people in Washington."

That uncertainty will not be assuaged by anxiety about the quality and capabilities of the man himself. Certain things about Aristide are obvious. His long journey from a child of poverty to church prodigy to returning President; his willingness to court rejection, ridicule and even violent $ reprisal; his passionate loyalty to the poor and disenfranchised -- all bespeak a man of depth, conviction and courage. Yet as a President, Aristide remains opaque. In the weeks preceding his return, he seldom spoke to the press, conducting his business with the U.S. government behind a virtual wall of silence.

Thus he arrived amid a cloud of speculation about whether his recent obeisances to the need for forgiveness and reconciliation amount to artful public relations or a genuine change in his thinking. One clue that may answer that question will be how he will work with an opposition-laden parliament in setting up a new regime. "Nobody is sure how he's going to behave," said a congressional aide. "He has to start governing before we can figure out whether he has learned anything."

Since Aristide has promised not to run again, he has barely a year to give his nation a whole new political architecture. If the reborn President can set reforms in motion, he may transform the system sufficiently so that power can pass peacefully to his successor 14 months from now. "If we have come this far," said Renald Clerisme, an Aristide confidant, "what victories may we not see in the future? I think it's possible that we may actually see, far down the line, the beginnings of real democracy and democratic institutions in Haiti." In the process, the priest from the impoverished village of Port Salut will have truly liberated his country from the terrible legacy of its past.

With reporting by Edward Barnes, Cathy Booth, Bernard Diederich and Amy Wilentz/Port-au-Prince, Nina Burleigh, J.F.O. McAllister and Douglas Waller/Washington