Dear Log,
«Two years after US marines whisked President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile amid an armed rebellion, the country has grown even poorer and violence-ravaged despite the presence of 9,000 UN peacekeepers. Nowhere are the failings of the interim government and the UN more glaring than in Cité Soleil, a seaside slum of an estimated 300,000 people where schools and the hospital are pockmarked by bullet-holes, young men with guns zip around in stolen SUVs, and UN peacekeepers are feared by the very people they are supposed to protect. On a recent night bullets whizzed over the roof of the public hospital and patients slept on the floor while doctors made their rounds ducking under windows.
[...]
Two UN battalions - 1,500 Jordanians with machine-guns and armoured vehicles - have been unable to root out armed groups from the warren of alleys and hovels. Four peacekeepers have been killed since Christmas and UN checkpoints sustain daily heavy fire. Many in Cité Soleil blame the violence on the UN for shooting wantonly from its tanks.»--"Haiti's fragile hopes rest on poll"
