Living conditions at the airport weren’t ideal. Latrines and fresh water were in short supply. Also, because the rainy season was under way and the airport runways were sloped to drain into the fields around them, we lived in a virtual swamp. Add to that the oppressive heat and omnipresent spiders and mice, and we weren’t happy campers.
Thankfully, on day two, ODA 326 and ODA 324 were ordered to find a safe house in Port-au-Prince to use as our base of operations as we cooperated with FAdH units and maintained order in the city. So far, US troops had been met with little hostility, aside from some confusion on the part of locals about why we were acting friendly toward former human rights abusers in the FAdH, rather than arresting them and throwing them in prison.
On the recommendation of someone at the US Embassy we found a dwelling owned by an American nurse who was married to a Haitian. It was located on a hill with a spectacular view of the Caribbean, and seemed large enough to accommodate two dozen men. The problem was that only the first floor had been finished. So after renting the house for $2,000 a month, we borrowed a 2.5 ton truck, loaded it up with sheets of plywood and nails, which we got from US military HQ downtown, and, with guidance from our two engineers, quickly finished the second floor.
The nurse who owned the place hired three maids to wash clothes and cook for us. All of us slept on cots with mosquito nets. The house had no air-conditioning.
While some of us readied our safe house, others patrolled the city, which in some ways was even more shocking than Mogadishu. Port-au-Prince hadn’t suffered through five years of civil war, yet it was a rotting, fetid mess. We encountered throngs of desperately poor people everywhere begging for food. According to the World Bank, half of the country’s 6.5 million inhabitants lived in extreme poverty and most families earned less than one dollar a day. That ranked it as one of the poorest countries in the world—even poorer than Somalia, and the poorest in the Western Hemisphere—with a per capita GNP of a mere $380 a year.
A third of Haiti’s population lived in Port-au-Prince, many of them packed in slums like Cité Soleil, which was built on a landfill near the harbor’s edge. There, some 150,000 Haitians lived in primitive shelters patched together out of adobe, abandoned sheet metal, and cardboard. Swollen-bellied children picked through mounds of garbage for something to eat and played in open sewage. I never imagined I would see human beings living like this.
It was especially startling because, as I learned, before its independence in 1804, Haiti had been one of the most productive and prosperous colonies in the world, generating two-thirds of France’s overseas trade. In the year 1879 alone, exports of coffee, indigo, cacao, hides, and sugar filled the holds of over 4,000 ships.
Over two hundred years later it was an ecological disaster of staggering proportions. According to UN estimates only 39 percent of the population had access to safe drinking water and 27 percent to sanitation.
We saw evidence of ecological devastation in the hills around where we lived, which had been completely stripped of trees that had been cut down for making charcoal.
Travelers to Haiti in the early nineteenth century praised it for its never-ending verdure and forests of redwood, mahogany, and pine. Now experts contend that up to 97 percent of the country has been deforested.
Charcoal remained the main source of fuel for tens of thousands in Port-au-Prince. Two-wheeled wooden carts known as brouettes piled high with hemp bags distribute charcoal throughout the city. Once burned it shrouds the slums in brown smoke.
We didn’t have to travel far to see the gap between rich and poor, which was reputedly among the highest in the world. In the hills around our safe house lived what foreign journalists called the “morally repugnant elites,” their spotless houses surrounded by high security walls covered with colorful tropical foliage and bougainvillea. Most featured satellite dishes.
As we patrolled the city in Humvees handing out whatever spare MREs and food we could find, I wondered how Haiti had devolved into the sad state it was in now. The country had achieved its independence from France after the only successful slave revolt in history and was the second free republic established in the Western Hemisphere after the US. Since its independence on January 1, 1804, it had seen thirty-five changes of government, many of them military uprisings, including the bizarre fourteen-year dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier.
I quickly learned that while most Haitians were poor, they were also immensely proud. They were happy to see the backs of General Cédras and the leaders of the military junta, excited about the return of President Aristide, but wary of their US occupiers.
With reason, as I found out. The United States had invaded Haiti once before, in 1915, to quell political unrest and prevent Germany and France from seizing control of the unstable and heavily indebted country. But we overplayed our hand in terms of extending political and economic influence, and by the time we left in 1934 we were extremely unpopular.
Also, historically, the US hadn’t been welcoming to the former slave colony, refusing to recognize the new country or allow its merchants to trade with the US until 1868, after the trauma of the American Civil War.
So I understood why even the friendliest of Haitians viewed us skeptically. As in Somalia, the women worked hard, while the men mostly lounged around waiting for something to happen. Despite the miserable conditions, the Haitians seemed like vibrant, upbeat people. One expression of their natural exuberance was the densely packed, psychedelically painted buses called tap-taps that careened through the streets. They sported English-language names like “Peace and Love Machine” and “Baby Love All Night.”
We were alerted to keep an eye on gangs of right-wing junta supporters and pro-Aristide zealots. Poor sanitation and the mosquitoes spawned in puddles produced by daily rainstorms presented a more serious challenge. Back in 1801, a third of the 25,000 soldiers Napoleon sent to Haiti to put down a slave rebellion had been wiped out by yellow fever.
Week three, I contracted dengue fever from an infected Aedes mosquito and became so weak and sick I was convinced I was going to suffer a fate similar to that of Napoleon’s troops. In my fevered state I kept reminding myself of the irony that an enemy bullet hadn’t felled me, but a tiny flying bug had. As I sweated through fever nightmares of Mogadishu and endured severe headaches and pain in every bone in my body, our team medic arrived to tell me there was no medication to treat a dengue infection.
He gave me aspirin and acetaminophen and told me to drink lots of fluids. Our maids took over and slowly nursed me back to health. Bless their hearts. Ten days later and fifteen pounds lighter, I was back on my feet, and ready to resume patrols.
Most of what we encountered on the streets and slums of Port-au-Prince were disputes over food or money. Sometimes locals would come to us with some bruised individual they had taken into custody and claimed was a henchman of the former military regime. Unfortunately we couldn’t do much except turn this person over to the FAdH, since they remained the only functioning government institution in the country.
Our most challenging assignments came whenever an LCU (landing craft utility) arrived at the port with new supplies. The sight of one approaching day or night always attracted a huge crowd, which local police and military guards, despite our instruction and training, seemed unprepared for. Inevitably, there would be pushing and shoving, then fights would break out and thugs from one of the local political gangs would fire shots in the air.
We’d move in quickly, contain the crowd, and arrest anyone who brandished a weapon. Sometimes locals would grow angry and shout that they wanted two things: food and for us to leave.
In the back of my mind, I was waiting for the situation to escalate as it had in Mogadishu, but so far so good. In the case of Haiti, the people had hope, which came in the form of returning President Aristide. As the day of his October 15 arrival approached, poor people swept potholed streets and painted walls with murals. One of them depicted US soldiers standing beside tanks and heli
copters as a beatific Aristide (known affectionately as Titid) descended from a white cloud.
The morning of October 15, we got up early to patrol the streets around the newly whitewashed National Palace, then stood guard outside the fence covered with red and blue bunting as crowds gathered, waving branches and singing accompanied by a marching band, “He’s above, he’s coming!”
President Aristide arrived by US Army helicopter to ecstatic cheers, then, from behind bulletproof glass, delivered a victory speech peppered with folk sayings that included, “Many hands lightened the burden” and “You can’t eat okra with just one finger.” He also repeated over and over, “No to violence, no to vengeance, yes to reconciliation!”
Singing and dancing continued into the night as the country celebrated the end of a long legacy of oppression by unaccountable armed thugs, including the dreaded Tontons Macoutes, who dated back to the Duvalier dictatorship of the 1950s.
Now that order had been restored, our job was to fan out into the countryside and disarm as many of these former henchmen as we could. So we handed over our patrols of Port-au-Prince to a contingent of policemen who arrived from Australia (with plentiful supplies of Foster’s beer), and then we drove six miles over mountainous dirt roads to the seaport of Les Cayes near the tip of Haiti’s southern peninsula.
Picturesque Les Cayes boasted pristine white sand beaches and the birthplace of American naturalist and painter John James Audubon, who was born there in 1785 and went on to document all types of American birds in his color-plate book Birds of America. The sleepy port of 85,000 was also the world’s supplier of a fragrant grass called vetiver, an ingredient in many cosmetics and perfumes.
When barefooted local kids saw us approaching in two Humvees, they ran out to greet us. But the local FAdH commander, Lieutenant Colonel Evens Gedeon, wasn’t as welcoming and instructed his troops to defend their barracks. When we assured him that we hadn’t come to disarm his men, he relaxed and started to cooperate.
As a base of operations we chose a four-room house in an alley near the port with a big backyard. After hiring a maid, cook, and translator, we started patrolling the city. With the help of intel we bought from informers, we inspected houses where people were hiding weapons. On a good day, we’d confiscate as many as 200.
In addition to disarming the populace, we also tried to win hearts and minds. So while we went house to house looking for weapons, our medics would dispense medical care to the sick and elderly. As we gained trust, some locals mustered the courage to tell us about gang members, police officers, and even soldiers who had committed abuses.
We made arrests and assisted the three-man police force in others, trying to maintain the balance between imposing and reassuring that General Shelton had set as our goal. “Peace Corps with guns,” we called ourselves, as we helped repair generators, tended to the sick, and tried to settle domestic disputes. Sometimes I felt like a deputy in the Wild West administering a kind of rough-hewn frontier justice. We saved several people from being lynched or hacked to death with machetes.
We’d explain to people, “No, you can’t beat up this lady just because her husband was a member of the FRAPH,” Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti in its English translation, a paramilitary group.
Over time, the Haitians started to understand our role, which was to create a safe environment and help maintain order. Members of the FAdH who had left their posts and loyalists to the former military were the bad guys, and required constant vigilance on our part. Even in relatively calm Les Cayes we maintained guard duty every night from 11 P.M. to 6 A.M., trading one-hour shifts on the roof.
Except for a big deployment of US troops in the capital and a smaller contingent in the southern city of Cap-Haïtien, Special Forces A-teams were the sole representatives of the American Army in much of Haiti. This made it necessary for us to travel to other towns and cities once we had established order in Les Cayes.
One night, three months into our nine-month stay, we were stationed in the city of Gonaïves farther north. It was here that Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave, had declared Haiti independent from France.
One hot, sticky afternoon our intel Sergeant First Class Greg Cardott decided to go out and inspect toll booths that had been set up to collect a road tax imposed by the local government.
“Bad idea,” I warned him. “Let the locals take care of it. That’s none of our business.”
“I’m not asking your advice, Changiz,” Cardott answered.
“It’s still dicey for foreigners like us,” I explained.
He went anyway, accompanied by Sergeant First Class Tommy Davis, also of Special Forces 3rd Group.
According to Davis, the two were stationed in a Humvee near one of the toll booths when a car blew through without paying the toll. They proceeded to stop the vehicle and Cardott went over to talk to the driver. Davis, meanwhile, ordered the male passenger to get out of the car. The passenger refused.
When Davis tried to pull the unruly passenger out, the Haitian reached for a pistol under the seat.
“He’s armed!” Davis shouted. “Look out.”
Instead of firing his M16 and escalating the situation, Cardott chose to hit him with a blast of pepper spray. While the Haitian covered his eyes and screamed, Davis went for the man’s gun.
As the two men struggled over the pistol, the Haitian managed to squeeze off a shot that tore through Davis’s arm and threw him against the backseat of the car. A second shot whizzed past Davis’s head. A third hit Cardott in the chest and went straight through his heart. He never recovered consciousness and died two hours later.
The news of Greg Cardott’s death hit us hard. We learned later that the two Haitians were members of the FAdH-sponsored paramilitary group FRAPH.
Sergeant Cardott’s death turned out to be one of the few dark spots on an otherwise successful mission. Order had been restored and a peaceful transition back to democracy was under way.
* * *
Sometime in February 1995, someone from the Red Cross called our administrative branch at 3rd Group HQ, Fort Bragg, to inform them that my mother had been hospitalized in California. The news was relayed to 3rd Group commander Colonel Boyett in Haiti, who passed it on to me.
“Your mom’s pretty sick,” he said. “She’s in a hospital in Santa Clara.”
I tried contacting my brother Jon but couldn’t get through. After being granted emergency leave, I packed my gear and caught a C-141 to Fort Bragg. From Bragg I reached Jon, who told me that her kidneys had failed, causing her body to bloat with liquid, which was now putting pressure on her heart.
“I’m on my way,” I told him, praying that I would make it there in time.
From nearby Charlotte I caught a commercial flight to Santa Clara.
I knew my mother had a weak heart. She’d been wheelchair bound since 1991. Throughout my life and career, she’d been a constant source of spiritual support and encouragement. The thought of losing her was terrifying.
I entered the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center with trepidation. There I saw my mother lying in bed breathing through a respirator. My brother Jon and youngest sister, Lida, rose to greet me. They explained the situation: Doctors were trying to drain the fluid out of her body to relieve the pressure on her heart.
For the next three weeks, my brother and I traded shifts and stayed with her in the hospital day and night. We did this in part because my mother’s English wasn’t good, which made it hard for her to communicate with the nurses and doctors.
* * *
Once her condition improved, I returned to Bragg. There I rejoined ODA 326, which was back from Haiti, and we handed in our M16s and had them replaced with new M4s with Pac4 scopes. Then we humped over to the firing range and familiarized ourselves with the new weapon. The M4 was six inches shorter and three-quarters of a pound lighter, which made it easier to maneuver in tight quarters, fired the same 5.56 × 45mm standard NATO cartridge, and fired both semiautom
atic and in three-round bursts. Both guns were extremely accurate at 300 meters.
The drawback of both in my opinion was the gas-operated rotating bolt action, which blows hot gases, carbon residue, and unburned powder back into the weapon’s receiver. This required frequent cleaning and lubrication. In desert environments like Somalia or Iraq, the lubricant attracted dust, causing dangerous stoppages.
In late March we were informed that ODA 326 and ODA 322 would be deploying to Senegal. Third Group, which had been deactivated after the Vietnam War, was re-formed in July 1990 with a new motto: “We Do Bad Things to Bad People.”
Its new area of operations (AO) was western Africa and the Caribbean basin. We were going to Senegal to help launch the African Crisis Response Initiative, which involved the training of African military units to respond quickly to regional humanitarian disasters and conflicts. This was a response to recent crises in Somalia and Rwanda.
With the fall of the Soviet Union and dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the US faced new military and political challenges across the globe stemming from civil wars, famine, and other internal conflicts. In order to address these problems quickly and efficiently we needed to develop regional partners who could help us negotiate the gaps of language and culture.
Twenty-four of us flew to the Senegalese capital of Dakar, which faced the Atlantic Ocean. There we were briefed by the US military attaché, who informed us that the former French colony of 12.5 million had experienced one of the most successful transitions to democratic government in all of Africa. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, its economy had shrunk by 40 percent due to the government’s stringent price and export control on products like rice, in addition to mismanagement.
It was a country with limited natural resources and exported mostly fish, phosphates, groundnuts, and other agricultural products. The people spoke French and Arabic and the majority worshipped a Sufi form of Islam. Its 12,000-man army was poorly trained and equipped, but eager to improve.
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