More arms no solution for Haiti

More arms no solution for Haiti
By ROBERT MUGGAH
Thursday, April 7, 2005
Globe and Mail

Flying in the face of a promising recovery strategy, the United States
has quietly begun shipping arms to Haiti's interim government, despite a
13-year arms embargo on the Caribbean nation. The new arms are meant to
brace up a shaky security force, but the reality is that they could
actually undermine security by jeopardizing an innovative disarmament
effort just getting under way.

The island is increasingly in chaos. Armed militia and former army
soldiers terrorize the countryside and urban slums with impunity. More
than 1,000 people have been killed since fighting began in late 2003,
and several hundred since Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted as president
in February of 2004. Fiefdoms controlled by various armed factions have
emerged throughout the country, reminiscent of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Large sections of the capital, already unstable, are now no-go areas,
with protests regularly turning violent. The UN multinational
stabilization mission has not dramatically improved the situation since
its arrival last June. Hampered by a shortfall of personnel, the full
contingent only arrived in December. Haiti's interim government and many
bilateral donors are growing impatient. About $1.1-billion in
international aid offered in July by 13 donor countries cannot be
disbursed.

Guns are already omnipresent in Haiti, with illegal weapons flowing into
the country regularly. A study by our Small Arms Survey identified the
presence of illegal weapons from more than a dozen countries. A large
number of arms is known to have been shipped in from gun dealers in
Florida. Jamaica and the Dominican Republic are also notorious sources
of guns, and narco-traffickers who distribute weapons to intermediaries
and armed gangs are known to use Haiti as a transit point for at least
10 per cent of the cocaine now entering the United States.

As troubling as illicit trafficking, however, is the leakage of weapons
from national police and former army officers into the hands of
criminals and insurgents. This is a result of contradictory ties of
allegiance within the security sector itself. The new police force
includes former army officers who are openly sympathetic to the
insurgency, which is led by the onetime police commissioner of Gonaïves,
Guy Philippe.

Now, the United States has provided almost $7-million (U.S.) in new
weapons for the Haitian security sector. Given the instability of the
interim government and its security forces, and the popularity of the
rebellion in some areas, some of those weapons will undoubtedly be
circulated among the population.

That would be most unfortunate.

The UN is now adopting a new and radical approach to disarming and
reintegrating the many armed groups in Haiti. The program does more than
just pay for weapons, giving equal attention to reconfiguring behaviour
and attitudes toward weapons.

By educating people about the dangers of militarization, the UN effort
aims to reshape their preferences for guns. Small-scale credit,
vocational training and communal development projects, such as health
clinics and schools, are possible incentives for voluntary disarmament.
It is only by working with communities that the seeds of sustainable
security can be sown.

The new disarmament program is built on the understanding that
demilitarizing the minds of civilians is as important as collecting the
weapons themselves. It is the right approach and it can succeed if given
the opportunity.

That means increasing the efforts to reduce the flow of weapons into the
country. The United States, Canada and its multilateral partners should
step up interdiction to end illicit trafficking from U.S. shores and
elsewhere. It should no longer be possible for weapons purchased in
downtown Miami gun shops to reappear in the streets of Port-au-Prince.

Similarly, it is damaging to disarmament efforts to supply an unstable
security sector with new weaponry when we know that some of those
weapons will almost certainly end up in insurgent and criminal hands.
The U.S. embargo should remain in force without exception.

It is time to recognize that true peace in Haiti will not come from the
barrel of guns, but from disarmament, dialogue and development.

Robert Muggah is project manager of the Small Arms Survey at the
Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva