Reconstitution of Haiti’s Tontons Macoutes: Trained by the U.S. and Integrated in the UN Occupation Force MINUSTAH

The peaceful territory of Haiti, which has the lowest crime rate in the Caribbean, is occupied by more than 19,627 armed personnel. Specifically, at the last count on October 31, 2014, there was a domestic force of 11,228 established police and 1,144 in training, plus a United Nations force of 4,965 “peacekeeping” troops and 2,290 police officers. This occupation force amounts to about one machine-gun toting individual for about every 500 Haitians or fewer, even without counting the ubiquitous security people who guard the businesses and homes of the rich.
A national police trained by DynCorp
In principle, there is a distinction between the personnel from the United Nations Mission for the (de)Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the men and women of Haitian law enforcement, because the latter presumably all reside in Haiti and are Haitian nationals who have never renounced their citizenship. In practice, however, the UN force and the increasingly foreign-trained “Haitian police” force have become quite indistinguishable. The Director General of the Haitian National Police (PNH), Godson Orélus, formally commands this domestic force and is called to answer for its actions; nevertheless it is trained by advisors from the Virginia-based United States private military and security contractor(PMSC) DynCorp, who are inserted in the UN, probably as part of its supposed “international civilian personnel” (343) or “Volunteers” (130). In April 2013, DynCorp received a $48.6 million contract from the US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, for a one-year base period with three one-year options, for the insertion of its trainees into the UN police force in Haiti. On the occasion, DynCorp boasted of having already trained over 400 “Haitian police.”

From gendarmerie to FAd’H
Such a US-controlled police force was tried before in Haiti during the 1915-1934 occupation. Then a US-loyal gendarmerie, which answered directly to the US Secretary of State, was set up to replace the highly regarded national army. The gendarmes functioned like a mafia that lived from extortion; furthermore, even after the occupation, they stood ever ready to organize countless bloody coups d’état on orders from Washington. For example, General Paul Magloire’s coup against President Dumarsais Estimé in 1950 was a US-sponsored action via the gendarmerie, as was the 1991 coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The only respites from this bloody army have been its castration in the 1960s by Francois Duvalier’s Tontons Macoutes, a militia of peasants loyal only to him, and Aristide’s disbanding of the army altogether in 1995. Aristide replaced the army, by then renamed the Armed Forces of Haiti (Forces Armees d’Haiti, FAd’H), with a civilian police force, the Police Nationale d’Haiti (PNH), on the advice of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sánchez and after reasoning that Haiti ought not to spend 40 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on an army of 7,000 soldiers, even though the country has no hostile border.

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