Global Policy Forum

By Andrew Hay

From army barracks to government ministries and Congress, Brazilians are beginning to look for a way out of a messy U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti. The apparent weekend suicide of Gen. Urano Bacellar, the Brazilian heading the force, has highlighted intractable conditions for peacekeepers and raised questions about Brazil's diplomatic ambitions.

"We cannot see a real international effort in Haiti and the U.N. structure is confused," said one high-ranking army officer in Brasilia, who served under Bacellar and asked not to be named. "It's becoming more and more difficult for me to understand why we are deploying troops abroad when we have so many problems with violence and drug traffickers at home."

Brazil jumped at the chance to lead the U.N. force 18 months ago to show it was a regional power worthy of a seat on a revamped U.N. Security Council. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva conditioned leadership of the force on international aid to rebuild Haiti after an armed revolt toppled Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide in February 2004. Some $1 billion in promised funds have largely failed to materialize and crime and kidnappings are on the rise before Haiti's planned Feb. 7 election, the first since the revolt.

Brazilian officers who hoped to mediate solutions with Haitians as fellow Latin Americans face pressure from other U.N. member forces to go into combat against armed gangs. Peacekeepers say they are seen as foreign occupiers or proxies of the United States, which helped engineer Aristide's flight.

Brazil's opposition asks why Lula is trying to restore law and order abroad when Brazilian cities have murder rates higher than countries with armed conflicts and the country as a whole has some of the widest wealth divisions in the world. "It's a complete disaster, you've got troops not able to do anything for the people of Haiti and they're costing Brazil millions of dollars," said Luiz Carlos Hauly, a congressman for the opposition Social Democrats and former president of the lower house foreign relations commission.

"Out of Haiti" read the lead editorial in Brazil's daily Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper on Thursday, which called for the country's 1,200 troops to leave after the election. "Brazil has to solve its own very basic problems before launching missions to help govern the world," it said. Defense Minister Jose Alencar said on Wednesday he hoped Brazil could withdraw its forces by the end of 2006. Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said Alencar's hopes for a 2006 withdrawal were an "optimistic evaluation in relation to what's happening in Haiti." Chilean Defense Minister Jaime Ravinet told reporters in Santiago the same day that U.N. troops would have to support the new government for one or two years.

For Brazilian analyst Reginaldo Nasser, Lula's "obsession" to win a Security Council seat naively led him into a flawed U.N. peackekeeping mission. Nasser said the U.N. deployed troops to Haiti when the country required police forces, financial aid and humanitarian workers to rebuild infrastructure and institutions destroyed by decades of coups and revolts. Bacellar's death has given U.N. members a chance to reconsider their financial commitment and speed reconstruction of Haiti after the Feb. 7 election. "Brazil needs support, from the U.S. and France in particular. Without this it has to withdraw," said Nasser, professor of foreign relations at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo.

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