DRUG TRAFFICKERS FIND HAVEN IN HAITI

Influx Brings Cash, Crime, Corruption

LEOGANE, Haiti -- For Del Lydes, the drug planes that circle over the
cornfields have become as common as the flies that buzz around his cows.
They swoop down past the trees and roll to a stop along the two-lane road
that slices through the fields.

Then men with machine guns stash their cargo -- cocaine -- into cars.

"Around here it is a cocaine area," Lydes said. "A lot of people have
moved. But others come at night to wait for the planes."

The "others" are his impoverished neighbors, who gather in hope of
snatching a few bags of cocaine they can then sell for a fraction of the
drug's street value in the United States. Recently gunmen kept a mob at bay
while unloading the drugs, then abandoned the plane. The crowd tore it
apart in a vain search for drugs.

"People think they are going to get rich from cocaine," Lydes said. "When
they see a plane they gather around, but when the pilots see them they
scare off the plane."

Unwittingly, these mobs have become perhaps Haiti's only front-line
deterrent to the Colombian cocaine traffickers, who, ever adept at finding
a weak spot in the Caribbean through which to funnel their drugs northward,
have flocked to impoverished Haiti bringing cash, crime and corruption.

Haiti's inexperienced, understaffed and underpaid police force and courts
have proved irresistible to smugglers who ferry cocaine aboard speedboats
and small planes before hiding it in ships bound for Miami and Puerto Rico,
or just trucking it into neighboring Dominican Republic.

"My only broad-gauge assessment is that Haiti is a disaster," said Gen.
Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the U.S. anti-drug effort. "We've got weak
to nonexistent democratic institutions, a police force that is on the verge
of collapse from internal corruption and an eroding infrastructure that is
creating a path of very little resistance. We are watching an alarming
increase."

Since October, U.S. Customs officials have confiscated almost 7,000 pounds
of cocaine -- three times the total for the previous year -- in Haitian
ships docked in the Miami River. U.S. law enforcement officials estimate
that 67 tons, or 14 percent, of the cocaine that enters the United States
now comes through Haiti.

In general, more than half of the cocaine headed for the United States
flows through the Caribbean.

In recent years, U.S. anti-drug agents have tried to focus more on Haiti,
but have been hampered by a political paralysis that has left the country
without a functioning legislature for the last year and therefore prevented
passage of money-laundering laws. In addition, Haitian law enforcement
officials say, the Americans are wary of sharing information.

Almost no drugs are confiscated in Haiti, which is woefully underequipped
to wage the war on narcotics. There is a 3-year-old anti-drug police squad
with just 25 members. Local authorities have no radar or helicopters to
monitor Haiti's airspace and fewer than 10 boats to patrol the coastline.
Some 250 police officers have been dismissed for drug-related crimes.

Evidence of the riches trafficking has brought can be seen in Belvil, a
sprawling gated community of luxury homes that has boomed conspicuously in
an otherwise desperate economy. Construction is everywhere, and new gas
stations dot the Port-au-Prince area, some offering to wire money in $1,000
installments to Colombia.

In other parts of the country, the coasts are littered with the burned
shells of speedboats and the roads with the wrecks of small planes that
have skidded into steep embankments. No one knows how many make it through
unscathed.

The Haitian police have seized some cocaine shipments in recent months,
including 550 pounds inside a Belvil home. Local crowds have stolen parts
of other shipments; in the town of Grand-Goave in May, the police recovered
only 323 pounds of a suspected 4,400-pound shipment. Among those who tried
to steal drugs was the town's deputy mayor, who was shot dead by his
bodyguard in a dispute over his share.

"I think the volume is progressively increasing," said Pierre Denize, the
director of the Haitian National Police. "The Colombians went from fast
boats to more and more airdrops and clandestine landings. They have this
world-renowned capacity to stay one step ahead of the repression."

Haitian law enforcement officials said that drug pilots had free run of the
skies once the international airport and its radar closed in the early
evening. Even when U.S. surveillance planes spot a drug plane entering
Haitian airspace, limited manpower and rough roads mean there is little
authorities can do to intercept it.

"We follow planes and boats into Haiti, but there is no endgame," said
Raymond Kelley, the Customs Service commissioner. "There is no entity on
the ground that can respond quickly. We need help. They need help."

Even searching sitting targets can be daunting to the few inspectors
assigned to outlying areas, like the busy port of Gonaives.

"If you go to any harbor outside of Port-au-Prince and try to find a law
enforcement person, it's like finding Waldo in those kids' books," said a
U.S. Embassy official. "Very few take the initiative to search the boats
because they have no way out. Twice in the past year, the Haitian Coast
Guard had to go to Gonaives to take personnel off the pier because they
were being threatened."

The Drug Enforcement Administration has eight agents stationed in Haiti,
where they train the local anti-narcotics squad, which in the last 12
months has confiscated $4 million in drug profits that were being smuggled
out of the country. The U.S. Coast Guard also has permission to patrol
Haitian waters, and it is helping the Haitian government open several new
ports, which would allow Haitian anti-drug officers to spread out from
Port-au-Prince.

Haitian officials said they have asked banks to collect information on
people depositing more than $10,000 in cash. But money-laundering laws that
would allow closer investigations have been stalled in Parliament.
Immigration authorities require visas for visitors from Colombia, and the
airport police routinely question arriving Colombians and keep their
passports until they leave.

Haitian law enforcement officials, for their part, complain that
cooperation with the United States has been disappointing. "Given how much
cocaine the United States says comes through here, you'd think they'd be as
good at catching drug boats as they are with stopping refugee boats, which
they excel at," said a high-ranking Haitian official. "They say this is a
war, but is it?"

Several high-ranking Haitian law enforcement officials said they almost
never got advance word about suspicious incoming planes.

"The United States sits where it sits and says we are not doing anything
about this," Denize, the police chief, said. "Hey, I'm willing. But I can't
initiate the interception or the radar or the boats or the intelligence
sharing. I can't go bust someone if I don't know who or where he is."

But U.S. officials are worried that drug-related corruption has penetrated
the police force and even the government. Earlier this year, the police
inspector general was transferred to a diplomatic post when he investigated
several police supervisors on suspicion of helping the drug smugglers.

There has also been constant talk that several recently elected senators of
the Family Lavalas party, which is headed by former President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, are involved in the drug trade. Party spokesmen deny this charge,
saying it is misinformation spread by political opponents to discredit the
party.

"I would suspect there are officials who are involved," an American
diplomat said. "We have some evidence of that. The question is how high it
goes up. We have no corroboration of any kind suggesting that it is at the
highest levels of government."

Some U.S. officials admit that they are careful when sharing information
with Haitian counterparts. "The fact is we factor in corruption as part of
our strategy when we are dealing with Haitian smuggling," a customs
official said.

McCaffrey said that given the "collapsing" relationship with Haitian law
enforcement agencies, the United States was focusing on the drugs after
they leave Haiti and reach the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.

"The ability of the noncorrupt Haitian law enforcement and customs
authorities to combat this is diminishing rapidly," McCaffrey said. "The
political will to support them isn't there."