Washington wants to subdue Cité Soleil, the Haitian capital's most rebellious shantytown. So, the U.S. is spending $2 million to refurbish and expand the principal U.N. troop base and Haitian police station there as well as two other outposts in the 300,000 person slum.
But in expanding the base, the U.S. bulldozed about 80 houses of impoverished Haitians, seeding deep anger among them and their neighbors.
On Mar. 25, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson was joined by Hédi Annabi, the Tunisian diplomat who heads the United Nations military occupation force known as the U.N. Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH), in a ceremony to inaugurate the newly overhauled base, which will house 32 Haitian policemen, including a specialized anti-riot counter-insurgency unit, as well as a larger number of U.N. troops. Prime Minister Michelle Pierre-Louis, Haiti's National Police chief Mario Andrésol and Public Works Minister Jacques Gabriel were also on hand, along with a gaggle of other smaller officials.
After U.S. Special Forces kidnapped President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from his home on Feb. 29, 2004, Cité Soleil became the epicenter of resistance against the ensuing coup and foreign military occupation. U.N. troops and Haitian police carried out several bloody incursions and massacres in which scores of Cité Soleil residents were killed. But for three years, armed popular organizations, demonized as mere criminal gangs, held the U.N. troops and Haitian police at bay, creating a virtual "liberated zone."
Finally in early 2007, in a series of joint military operations, the U.N. troops and Haitian police captured most of the leaders of Cité Soleil's armed groups and regained nominal control of the resentful shanty-town.
In an effort to win hearts and minds, the Pentagon and U.S. State Department launched the $20 million campaign called the Haiti Stabilization Initiative (HSI) in Cité Soleil, which included paving roads, cleaning and fixing drainage canals, rebuilding bridges and schools, and sprucing up the decrepit but bustling wharf. These and other "feel good" projects helped to assuage many Cité Soleil residents early on. Washington's aim was "stability and the creation of economic opportunities for Cité Soleil residents," trumpeted a Nov. 2008 U.S. government newsletter "Soley Klere," another element of the HSI's psychological operations.
But, soon corruption bloomed, promises began to fade, and discontent returned with a vengeance.
In March 2008, the contract for rebuilding the police station and military base was awarded, not surprisingly, to DynCorp, the Pentagon's quasi-official military contractor.
"Under the Haiti Stabilization Initiative task order, DynCorp International will provide training support for up to 444 Haitian National Police," explained a Mar. 31, 2008 DynCorp press release. "The task order includes DynCorp International procurement of the Haitian police force's basic and specialized non-lethal equipment, vehicles and communications equipment. The value of this work is $3 million. DynCorp International has also been tasked to refurbish the main police station in Cité Soleil. This station will function as the primary location for this new specialized unit. The refurbishment work will be more than $600,000."
DynCorp proceeded to bulldoze 78 houses belonging to Haiti's poorest people and to build a 12-foot wall around the expanded base (see Haiti Liberté, Vol. 2, No. 6, 9/3/2008). The MINUSTAH troops are housed in the wing of the base that now sits on top of where the demolished houses once stood. Among the destroyed buildings was an evangelical church.
Cité Soleil's people are outraged that the displaced residents were never consulted about or compensated for the destruction of their houses. Formed into the Committee for Houses Being Demolished (KODEL), the residents have held several demonstrations, including a loud one in front of the police station during its inauguration.
Cité Soleil's second mayor, Gustave Benoit, responded to the demonstrators at the ceremony, saying that responsibility for compensation was not his, but that of the Interior Ministry, to which he has written several unanswered letters, he claimed.
"We in the mayor's office have no money to compensate anybody," he said.
Cité Soleil residents scoff at such excuses. Most assert that funds bound for Cité Soleil are being embezzled and diverted.
"People say that Cité Soleil's money is being invested in beautiful women and the nice cars that the mayors drive them around in," reports Haiti Liberté's Cité Soleil correspondent Jean Baptiste Jean Ristil. "Gustave Benoit is building a big new home in Tabarre and has a nice new SUV. He rents a house for 60,000 gourdes ($1,580) a year for the former mistress of a drug dealer named Eddy Mata, who is now in the National Penitentiary. He rents another house for a woman named Ti Kanyou. She is the former mistress of Evens Jeune, alias Ti Kouteau, the former so-called gang leader, who is also now in jail."
First Mayor Wilson Louis is also building a big new home in Tabarre, although he already has a house near the Police Academy in Pétionville and rents another in Carrefour, a neighborhood on the other side of Port-au-Prince where it is difficult for Cité Soleil residents to track him down, Ristil explains. Cité Soleil's third Mayor Jean Robert Charles also has built a nice house in the town of Croix des Bouquets where he lives, far from the slum he represents.
"All the mayors are building nice houses, driving nice cars, and enjoying nice women on the backs of the people of Cité Soleil," Ristil said. "Then they have the nerve to tell the people that there is no money to compensate them."
The principal beneficiary of the housing demolition and base expansion, however, is the Pentagon and its contractors like DynCorp. President Préval's has often pleaded for the U.N. occupation to turn its resources from military operations to supporting development projects. But as Ambassador Sanderson declared at the inaugural ceremonies, Washington still gives priority to establishing "law and order," U.S.-style, in Cité Soleil.