Word: haiti
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...will have to do it largely on his own. The U.S. gave Haiti $235 million last year; this year Clinton has asked for $115 million, and Congress has so far coughed up almost nothing. International lenders have turned off the spigot until Haiti adopts austerity reforms. Washington has declared the country a "safe and secure environment," which allows the peacekeepers to depart. By the measure of organized assassination, violence has subsided: only 20 killings that the U.N. delicately calls "commando-style executions" have taken place, a huge improvement over the 3,000 or so notched up by the military regime...
ARISTIDE MAY HAVE ABOLISHED the army, but life is still perilous on Haiti's mean streets, where the poor are growing impatient and predatory. Near the National Palace, a woman who cadges $1 secretes it for safekeeping in her underpants. A gang of thugs dubbed the Red Army ravages Cite Soleil, a Port-au-Prince slum that police are afraid to enter: the last time they did, a shoot-out claimed the lives of several innocent bystanders. In La Saline members of a local vigilante patrol discover the dead body of their leader. They swiftly select four suspected "robbers...
...retain 1,800 for another six months. Even though the peacekeepers may serve only as a psychological deterrent, the Americans have been vital to U.N. credibility. But at the very moment when the country's insecurity is growing, the U.S. is leaving. A senior American diplomat familiar with Haiti says, "Of course it's not the right decision...
...advent of democracy that Washington calls its No. 1 accomplishment goes only skin-deep. Seriously flawed parliamentary elections produced a legislature so thoroughly controlled by Aristide's Lavalas Party that fledgling opposition parties boycotted subsequent balloting, making Haiti effectively a one-party state. Only 28% of the populace bothered to vote in the December presidential election because most Haitians reject the constitutional restrictions that bar Aristide from serving successive terms. Bound by a promise extracted by Clinton, Aristide grudgingly stepped down, but the charismatic populist shows every intention of running again in 2000 and will hover powerfully over the political...
...expiring economy to ashes. In the 15 months since Aristide's return, "they've done zilch" about the economy, says a U.S. diplomat. Agrees Lavalas Party chief Gerard Pierre-Charles: "Benefits are not visible." While inflation has dropped from above 50% to 17% and foreign loans have paid off Haiti's back debts, Aristide spent money on new ministries and instant gratification like backpacks for schoolchildren rather than investing in infrastructure. He only pretended to cut the civil service, hiring as many people as he fired...