The occupation of Haiti, possibly ill-advised and off to a fumbling start last September, has gone better than could have been expected -- so far. That is the significance of the U.N. Security Council decision to replace the primarily U.S. forces, 21,000 at their peak, with 6,000 U.N. troops (of whom 2,400 and the commander will be American) and 900 police, by March 31.
In an important companion development, a World Bank meeting in Paris has approved a $660 million reconstruction aid package -- with $240 million more pledged for the following year. The American contribution was reported as just over $207 million.
The first 375 recruits to what is meant to be the first professional, non-military, non-political police force in Haiti's history have begun training under supervision of a U.S. Justice Department unit that has provided similar training in Central America. That came a day after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide broke ground for a new housing project in a slum where thugs torched hundreds of homes of his presumed supporters in December 1993.
Since Haiti has never experienced democracy, only a rash optimist would express confidence that it has just taken hold. But President Aristide seems to have heeded the advice he earlier resisted of broadening his base beyond original supporters. He is committed to hold an election in December for his successor, and to step down in February 1996, when the police force that has now begun training will serve a government led by someone else.
There is still fear that gun caches remain in the wrong hands and that FRAPH thugs still influence parts of the countryside. A transfer of power and authority from the U.S. to the United Nations may inspire testing by thugs and trouble-makers, as a similar transition did in Somalia in 1993.
The United Nations force in Haiti will have an Algerian civilian administrator, who speaks French, and numerous peace-keepers from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal, who presumably do not. Its administration will be more cumbersome than the present U.S.-run occupation.
Things can still go wrong in Haiti. So far they have not. That needed to be said.