The Star Online: World Updates
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- Analysis - Haitian army: ghost of bloody past set for revival
- Afghan heroin traffic thrives in war - Russia
- Man charged with trying to assassinate Obama
| Analysis - Haitian army: ghost of bloody past set for revival Posted: 17 Nov 2011 09:05 PM PST PORT-AU-PRINCE/MIAMI (Reuters) - No one disputes that Haiti needs battalions of builders, developers and investors to help it rise from the ruins of last year's earthquake. But does it need a gun-toting Haitian army? With debris from the catastrophe still clogging Haiti's capital and nearby towns, a plan by President Michel Martelly to bring back to life an armed forces disbanded 16 years ago is triggering potentially divisive political and social tremors. Critics at home and abroad question the need to revive an entity associated with corruption, coups, abuse and killings in the Western Hemisphere's poorest and most volatile state. Major western donors, which fund a U.N. peacekeeping force of more than 12,000 in Haiti and are also shouldering the Caribbean nation's reconstruction burden after the 2010 earthquake, are balking at the idea of having to finance and train a reconstituted army. "Given the history of Haiti's military, their existence alone could be considered a threat to security," Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research think tank, told Reuters. "A brigade of construction workers would do far more good," the Miami Herald said in an editorial this week, reflecting a chorus of foreign opposition to Martelly's army plan. Major donors like the United States, Canada and the United Nations acknowledge that Haiti has the sovereign right to have its own army, but have strongly signalled they feel there are more important reconstruction priorities to attend to. This includes the urgent task of rehousing around half a million homeless quake victims still living in precarious tent camps in the wrecked capital Port-au-Prince, and an ongoing cholera epidemic that has killed more than 6,700 Haitians. Despite the negative reaction, Martelly, a shaven-headed former pop star and charismatic nationalist elected in March, is pushing ahead with fulfilling a campaign promise to restore the Haitian army as part of an ambitious program to rebrand development basket case Haiti as a Caribbean success story. He is expected to formally announce the army's restoration Friday, Armed Forces Day, commemorating an 1803 battle in which rebels defeated French colonial forces and opened the way for Haiti to become the first independent black republic. The Haitian army was abolished in 1995 by former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a left-wing populist who was ousted by a military coup in 1991 only months into his first presidency. Martelly's draft plans to restore the army and build it into a 3,500-strong force at an initial cost of $95 million have circulated in recent weeks, along with a proposal for a national spy service. ANTI-U.N. SENTIMENT "The force will be set up, but it won't be done with any rush," Martelly said in a recent interview with state television. He said his government would first ensure it created the necessary military infrastructure and obtained equipment and weaponry, blocked at the moment by remaining U.S. restrictions on arms exports to Haiti. "If we have an army and we have no weapons, we don't have an army," Martelly said. This has not stopped enthusiastic prospective recruits from training in makeshift assault courses run by ex-soldiers. Martelly argues Haiti needs its own defence force to protect its national borders and eventually take over from the U.N. peacekeeping force (MINUSTAH), whose image has been tarnished by recent scandals. MINUSTAH is already reducing its numbers amid hopes it can be withdrawn in the next few years. The president has tapped into popular resentment against the presence since 2004 of MINUSTAH, which some Haitians view as foreign occupiers in a land proud to be the world's first black republic born in 1804 out of a bloody slave revolt. "If they say we don't need an army, I wonder why we have foreign soldiers on our soil," said Maxo Benoit, a 24-year-old medical student in Port-au-Prince. Anger against the international peacekeepers, already simmering over evidence that Nepalese U.N. troops brought the deadly cholera epidemic to the quake-ravaged nation, increased after some Uruguayan troops were accused in September of raping a Haitian man. The U.N. is investigating the incident. "It does seem Martelly has sought to channel anti-MINUSTAH sentiment to bolster support for the reactivation of the armed forces," Weisbrot said, but he added that the move could backfire, because of internal divisions over the army plan. "The risk is that with this move, Haiti's bitter, longstanding divisions, which are never far from the surface, could come back with a vengeance," Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, told Reuters. Haiti expert Robert Fatton of the University of Virginia said in a recent academic paper shared with Reuters it seemed powerful sectors in the elite and political class supported Martelly's initiative. Fatton recalled that Haiti's history was still stained with the bloody memories of feared private militias: the dreaded Tonton Macoutes of former father and son dictators Francois 'Papa Doc' and Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier, and the "chimeres' gangs that intimidated opponents of Aristide. RISK OF "TOOL OF REPRESSION" "I am afraid a new army and a spy agency are likely to revive the seeds of authoritarianism still germinating in the Haitian political terrain," he wrote in a paper to the Haitian Studies Association of the University of the West Indies. "The strong likelihood is that (they) would end up devouring scarce resources, stamping out dissent, silencing opponents, and ultimately becoming a tool of internal repression," Fatton added. Victims of previous abuses by the old military have echoed these fears, as have some Haitian lawmakers. With donor financing, the United Nations is already training a renovated Haitian National Police, which has expanded to 10,000, although experts believe its number will need to be doubled to be able to effectively keep the peace by itself. "The way forward is really to focus on the Haitian National Police and their being able to get stronger and larger and more capable at doing their jobs," a senior U.S. official said last month when asked about Martelly's plan to revive the army. Fatton and other analysts said Haiti's main security threat was not an external aggressor but crime, including transnational drug-trafficking gangs, and that this should be the responsibility of the expanding police force. Despite its unpopularity, the U.N. peacekeeping mission was important, Fatton said: "It is at the moment the only force that can keep a relative sense of security in the country." He said Martelly's determined insistence on pursuing the army's restoration could rekindle fears that surfaced during his election campaign about his links with former military figures and about a potential messianic authoritarian streak. The former entertainer swept to his March election victory with an energetic message of change carried in his campaign slogan "Tet-Kale," a Creole play on words that invokes Martelly's shaven head and also signifies "all the way." "The danger is Martelly may assume that his electoral triumph and his current popularity, as well as his image as a man of action, will give him carte blanche to do as he pleases ... To that extent (Martelly)'s rise to the presidency raises questions about Haiti's democratic future," Fatton wrote. But for some jobless young Haitians, a new army offers hope: "Maybe I can be one of the soldiers," said Jonel Metelus, a resident of Port-au-Prince's poor Martissant neighbourhood. (Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Eric Walsh) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| Afghan heroin traffic thrives in war - Russia Posted: 17 Nov 2011 09:05 PM PST CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. efforts to eradicate Afghanistan's opium poppy crops, which cover an area about the size of New York City, have been "unsatisfactory," Russia's anti-drug czar said Thursday.
Russia is the world's largest per capita consumer of heroin and is coping with an epidemic of HIV/AIDS spread by dirty needles. Afghanistan has long been the world's leading producer of opium, used to make heroin, and one-quarter of its production traverses its porous border with former Soviet states and supplies as many as 3 million Russian addicts. Viktor Ivanov, director of Russia's Federal Service for the Control of Narcotics, in Chicago for meetings with his American counterparts, said he agreed with the dim assessment of U.S. poppy eradication efforts by some members of the U.S. Congress. "Their words were that the efforts are unsatisfactory," Ivanov said through an interpreter in an interview with Reuters. He referred to Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and Republican Senator Charles Grassley, who co-chair a caucus on international drug trafficking. Russia has said the United States made a mistake in 2009 by phasing out crop eradication efforts to focus instead on intercepting drugs and hunting production labs and drug lords. President Barack Obama has committed to turning over security to Afghan control by the end of 2014. The United States launched the war weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, targeting al Qaeda and the Taliban. Joint Russian-American anti-drug operations have appeared to tail off since a raid in October 2010 seized a ton of heroin and destroyed four drug-producing laboratories. There were four more joint raids conducted between December 2010 and February 2011, but Ivanov said it was cumbersome to obtain military approval quickly, given time-sensitive intelligence. IDEOLOGICALLY NEUTRAL In spite of concerns that the Taliban and other insurgent elements were financed by illegal drug profits, Ivanov said absentee landowners and traffickers who reap the bulk of the $7 billion in illegal drug proceeds did not have an ideological stake in the decade-old war. The Taliban earned $150 million annually from drug trafficking, he said. But the traffickers have hijacked the military's transportation infrastructure in Afghanistan to help them ship their product, he said. The rising number of violent clashes in Afghanistan worked against any effort to persuade farmers to grow legal crops instead of opium poppies, Ivanov said. "Ask any farmer if he's growing wheat and at the same time his country is torn by all sorts of military clashes. How safe will he feel about the future of his crops and the eventual sale of his crops?" Ivanov said. "That's why we think the most efficient and effective measure is to destroy the product, the drug plantations and the drug laboratories," he said. The United Nations said land devoted to opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan rose 7 percent this year to 1,310 square kilometers (506 sq miles), much of it in the less-secure south and east. "This tremendous amount of heroin is produced on a relatively small territory ... about the area of New York City," Ivanov said. He lobbied for creation of a digital poppy map that would identify poppy plantations and show where eradication was working, or not. The publicly accessible map would use surveillance data gathered by American drones and possibly a Russian-American satellite dedicated to the task. Ivanov said Russia, which fought its own costly war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, had also embarked on a concerted effort to treat its own addicts, which critics say it has often failed to do up to now. Scientists were working on a new pharmaceutical approach that would suppress the urge to use while not substituting one drug for another. Russian officials have rejected methadone, saying it is merely exchanges one addiction for another. U.S. addiction rates were also on the rise, Ivanov warned, with many users smoking or inhaling purer Afghan heroin. (Editing by Eric Beech) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| Man charged with trying to assassinate Obama Posted: 17 Nov 2011 09:05 PM PST PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - A 21-year-old man who called President Barack Obama the "devil" and "anti-Christ" was charged on Thursday with trying to assassinate the U.S. leader by opening fire on the White House with an assault rifle. Obama and his wife, Michelle, were not in Washington at the time of the shooting Friday night and no one was hurt. Oscar Ortega-Hernandez of Idaho Falls, Idaho, appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Pittsburgh, who ordered him transferred to Washington. He was arrested on Wednesday at a hotel near Indiana, Pennsylvania. No one was hurt in the shooting on Friday night. The Secret Service said one bullet broke a White House window but was stopped by protective ballistic glass, and the other round struck the exterior of the building. A witness reported seeing the occupant of a dark car shooting at the White House and speed away, while another witness reported hearing eight "popping" noises from a dark car that sped away, according to court papers. A Honda Accord with Idaho licence plates was found abandoned nearby with a semi-automatic assault rifle with a large scope as well as three loaded magazines of ammunition, nine spent shell casings, an aluminium baseball bat and brass knuckles, according to court papers. A witness reported seeing the car's driver flee on foot. The Honda was registered to Ortega-Hernandez, the court papers said. FBI investigators who scoured the White House grounds on Wednesday found several bullet impacts on the south side of the executive mansion on the second story or above. The president's family quarters are on those upper floors. Ortega-Hernandez was charged with attempted assassination of the president, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Kitchen said at the court hearing. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison. He appeared in court wearing a white jumpsuit and said nothing except "yes, ma'am," when asked by Judge Cynthia Eddy if he understood the charges against him. A witness interviewed in Idaho who "knows Ortega-Hernandez well" said he had become increasingly agitated against the government, according to a FBI affidavit. The witness told authorities that Ortega-Hernandez wanted to "hurt" Obama and referred to him as "the anti-Christ," according to the affidavit. Another witness interviewed in Idaho told authorities that Ortega-Hernandez "was very specific that President Obama was the problem with the government" and that he was "the devil," according to the court papers. The witness said Ortega-Hernandez had been "preparing for something," the affidavit said. Earlier on November 11, police in Arlington, Virginia had responded to a report of a suspicious person who identified himself as Ortega-Hernandez, the affidavit also said. Arlington police took photos of him and released him after he declined to let them search his car, which was nearby, it said. (Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington, editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Doina Chiacu) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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