Michele Wucker is the author of Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola (Hill & Wang, 1999).

Briefly following the 1994 U.S. occupation that ended a three-year military dictatorship and restored President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, Haiti was touted as a Clinton administration foreign-policy victory. These days -- five years and $2.2 billion later -- the common wisdom is that Haiti has been a flop. Rarely has so much high-level attention been focused on a country with so little results.

Political assassinations -- reportedly costing as low as $100 on a per-hire basis -- and random violence are on the rise. The April 3 assassination of Jean Dominique, the country's most well-known and highly respected radio journalist and an outspoken advocate of democracy, and an informal presidential adviser, has sent even the most resilient and stubbornly hopeful Haiti watchers into despair. Since March 29, there have been 10 political assassinations. Opposition-party headquarters have been sacked. Narcotrafficking is on the rise in this atmosphere of anarchy: an estimated 15% of U.S.-bound drugs pass through Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic. Haitian boat people once again are washing up in South Florida, evoking images of the massive human flotillas that helped provoke the 1994 occupation in the first place.

U.S./Haiti foreign policies address short-term goals only

The country has not been able to pull off a credible election since the anemic voting that put Aristide associate Rene Preval into office as president in 1996. In fact, for the past several months the international community has been locking horns with his government over the timing of overdue parliamentary and local elections. These elections are high stakes for the United States and for Haiti: They are being held up as the bellwether for the country's progress toward democracy. They also are a lesson in the problems of international (read United States) policy toward Haiti: The policy puts short-term goals and paternalism ahead of longer-term institution building.

How things came to this

In the upcoming elections, more than 29,000 candidates are running for 1,500 offices under the tickets of several dozen parties -- many of them new. Haiti's first elections in three years were supposed to have been held last November; when it became clear that the date was unrealistic, they were re-scheduled for March 19. But with just over two weeks remaining before that date, only about two-thirds of eligible voters had been registered, only a handful of the 12,000 needed voting-station monitors had been chosen, and one-quarter of the film and laminate needed to make voter registration cards had been lost. Amid the increasingly tense and violent pre-election atmosphere, it became clear that botched elections might send the country further down in its spiral. Electoral authorities postponed the elections again to April 9, a date that Preval refused to approve because he said he had not been consulted.

This brings us at last to the only glimmer of good news in the whole sad picture: Haitians earlier this year protested in favor of elections, the first real groundswell of such support since Aristide's election in 1990. In the end, the best thing Preval has done for democracy is, ironically, to stall. Aas a result, people have decided that they really want it. Election dates have finally been set: May 21 for the first round and June 25 in the second round.

For more than a year, it had been apparent that Haiti was not ready to hold credible elections. In fact the problem started with the 1997 parliamentary and municipal elections, which themselves had been badly botched, earning little respect and hardly conferring legitimacy on the officials elected. Haitian legislators showed as much indifference to their duties as voters had to the elections. Since 1997, they have even failed to approve an official budget; in January 1999, Preval disbanded the congress (terms had run out) and called for new elections. Over the last year there have been only nine elected officials, including the president, in the entire country.

Carrots and sticks

More than $400 million in foreign aid is blocked, including $100 million in interest-free loans for health, education and rural development projects, because legislators will not approve an ambitious privatization program. This is not surprising for several reasons, not the least of which is that such structural adjustment packages are extremely difficult to get approved, even in countries with party unity, strong presidential leadership and a consensus for reform.

Certainly, the international community has the right to ask for a country to take steps to ensure that aid money will not be sucked into a black hole. The problem comes when the requested conditions are impossible for a country to meet. In cases like Haiti, pragmatism needs to be mixed more liberally into the international community's expectations. A wiser strategy would have been to ease the conditions for aid so that lawmakers could be expected to have a reasonable chance at approving them. Even more important is that the requested reform package be developed so that the Haitian government appears to have a more active role in devising it. Otherwise, it merely appears to be one more package imposed from the paternalistic outside, and weakens the government rather than strengthening it.

This is, of course, easier said than done. And the United States and international community are not the main causes of Haiti's problems. But they do wield enough power that their policies can undermine the values that they claim to be seeking to promote.

It is understandable that Haitians have little confidence in elections, or even in the idea of democracy, considering their recent history. Factions of the U.S. government tacitly approved the 1991 coup against the democratically elected President Aristide; then once he was returned tied his hands and, since, have tied Preval's. The United States has continued to oppose the return of documents that would help bring to justice those who committed human-rights crimes during the coup years. It gives shelter to coup criminals.

Even when the United States is supposedly supporting international efforts to help Haiti, it sends a different message. A new United Nations mission with police, human-rights and judicial-system advisers was supposed to begin operating March 15 but has yet to do so for lack of funds -- including a $7.5 million contribution the United States has promised but failed to deliver.

Good intentions, bad results

Imagine what picture Haitians must have of U.S.-style democracy, if they think about the New York police officers who brutalized Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, or the ones who shot and killed Haitian immigrant Patrick Dorismond last month in a drug search gone bad. Given the close ties between a diaspora that is more than a million strong in America, it is folly to imagine that the way the United States treats minority populations does not affect Haitian perceptions of what is or is not appropriate.

Immigration policy long has given Haitians short shrift; even the 1998 Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act excludes some 10,000 Haitian immigrants, half of them with U.S.-born children, because they entered the United States with fake documents. Odd, isn't it, that legislation intended to make up for past unfair treatment of Haitians simply reinforces the past mistakes?

The question then must be: What is the message that U.S. policy sends to Haiti? In light of this, why should we be surprised that things don't turn out in line with the goals we set? Setting lofty goals is all well and good, but when the expectations are impossible to meet they do more harm than good. We now know where good intentions lead if they are not solidly backed up.