THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 20, 1994 TAG: 9409200342
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
The Pentagon was almost giddy with relief Monday, but officials warned against a false sense of security from the smooth beginning of the U.S. mission in Haiti.
In a mid-afternoon briefing, a senior defense official told reporters the military is determined not to repeat mistakes it made in Somalia - the last place where Americans intervened so directly in another country's internal disputes.
The Pentagon has identified ``mission creep'' - the gradual expansion of American objectives to tasks for which the military was unsuited - as the problem in Somalia and a potential enemy in Haiti, the official said. For their current mission, American troops are to ``impose essential civil order'' but have been directed not to go beyond that.
``We are not going to hand out traffic tickets. We are not going to worry about who steals bicycles,'' the official said.
In Somalia, an American mission to combat starvation turned into an exercise in nation-building and a manhunt for the renegade leader of one faction in the country's civil war. The effort went tragically awry as the warlord escaped capture and a group of American troops was ambushed and killed last October.
In Haiti, Americans will concentrate on creating an atmosphere - in partnership with the United Nations and a group of Caribbean countries - in which Haitians learn to police themselves and build such democratic institutions as an independent judiciary and representative parliament.
American military police, for example, will join in training Haitian police, and may work alongside some of them for a time, the official indicated. But absent full-scale rioting, American forces will leave it to the Haitian police to put down possible skirmishes between civilian factions supporting and opposed to exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Even that is more than military forces traditionally have done, other officials acknowledge. But it's the sort of job that American troops have trained for with increasing intensity in recent years - ``special operations,'' in military jargon, including but not restricted to the commando forces.
About 6,000 of the Americans now in and around Haiti have had special operations training, said Army Lt. Col. Bill Darley of the Pentagon's special operations command in Tampa, Fla. The Army units that will be the bulk of the force ashore include specialists in civil affairs and psychological operations, some of whom speak Creole, the Haitian language, and have been schooled in local culture and customs.
Robert Gaskin, a retired Air Force officer who was a senior Pentagon planner in the Bush administration, said the military's involvement in noncombat roles like those it's undertaking in Haiti inevitably detracts from its ability to fight.
Troops training Haitian police or guarding public service facilities, for example, will miss out on training exercises the military uses to maintain their combat readiness.
Gaskin, now with Business Executives for National Security, a pro-defense lobby, noted that the Congressional debate on military peacekeeping operations tends to revolve around questions of cost. ``Nobody argues policy,'' he said. ``Should we use combat troops as road guards? ... I myself don't think it's very wise, but you really don't have a lot of other choices.''
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, Republicans declared that the military's apparently flawless initial execution of the peace agreement forged Sunday should not end the debate over the Clinton administration's use of military force on the troubled island.
He was pleased by the day's events, but ``the president's policy is wrong, has been wrong and will continue to be wrong,'' said Rep. Herbert H. Bateman, a Newport News Republican, in a typical expression of GOP sentiment.
Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he's already working on a letter to committee chairman Sam Nunn, D-Ga., suggesting that the panel take a detailed look at noncombat uses of the military.
``We have to view the armed services as an asset,'' he said. ``(But) is this an efficient use and cost-effective use, or does it detract from readiness?''
KEYWORDS: HAITI by CNB