DRUG RUNNERS ARE FINDING THE GOING EASY IN HAITI

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," Mr. 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
angry crowd tore it apart in a vain search for drugs.

"People think they are going to get rich from cocaine," Mr. 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 the neighboring Dominican
Republic.

"My only broad-gauge assessment is that Haiti is a disaster," said
Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the United States 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 last October, United States 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. American
law enforcement officials estimate that about 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, American 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
under-equipped to wage the war on narcotics. There is a three-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. New 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 American surveillance planes spot a drug
plane entering Haitian airspace, limited manpower and rough roads mean
there is often little authorities can do to intercept it.

"We follow planes and boats into Haiti, but there is no endgame," said
Raymond Kelly, 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 kid's books,"
said an American 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 United States 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," Mr. 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 American 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 officials 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 American 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.

General 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," General McCaffrey
said. "The political will to support them isn't there."