Haiti On The Brink Of Chaos Again

As the last of the departing American soldiers leaves Haiti by Sunday, there are signs that the order they established is already unraveling.

The U.N. peacekeeping force now in place has been left a powderkeg of diminishing hope and building rage.

In a sign of growing instability, Haitians who for weeks have been begging for jobs at a side entrance of the U.S. Army base here erupted in anger Friday, yelling at U.N. peacekeepers, throwing rocks and blocking a main thoroughfare.

A U.S. Embassy official said he feared the incident was only the beginning of a deterioration in control as Haitians see their hopes for a better life grow dimmer with each passing day.

“Down with elections! We need jobs!” the men shouted, shaking their fists at the line of Bangladeshi peacekeepers nervously holding them back across the airport road from Camp Democracy. Several Haitians darted past the peacekeepers and pulled concertina wire out across the road.

“We know you need a job so you can eat,” a Haitian-American soldier told the crowd in Creole from atop a truckbed across the road. “We have a lot of Haitians working here. But we can’t give a job to everybody.”

The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the incident never would have happened before the United States turned over control of the multinational force to the United Nations on March 31. Even the protesters said that U.S. soldiers had sprayed pepper gas to quell more minor flareups.

On Friday, the protesters weren’t calmed until two officers from the U.S. Army, Majors Bob Shepherd and Rick Spearman, arrived to listen to their complaints. All they could do was ask the Haitians to be patient.

The Haitians’ plea - that they need jobs more than democracy - reflects the fact that their lives have not improved since U.S. soldiers landed in September to dismantle the ruling army and restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Many thought the foreign troops would rescue them from poverty. Instead, food prices keep rising and unemployment still runs at 75 percent. Hundreds of short-term support jobs with the U.S. troops have dried up as it downsized from 21,000 to the 6,000-member U.N. force.