MINUSTAH DEVELOPMENT WORK PROGRESSES

UNCLAS PORT AU PRINCE 000389 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR WHA/EX AND WHA/CAR S/CRS SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD STATE PASS AID FOR LAC/CAR INR/IAA (BEN-YEHUDA) WHA/EX PLEASE PASS USOAS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL KPKO HA SUBJECT: MINUSTAH DEVELOPMENT WORK PROGRESSES REF: A. PORT AU PRINCE 2367 ¶B. PORT AU PRINCE 342 ¶1. (U) This message is sensitive but unclassified -- please protect accordingly. ¶2. (SBU) Jean-Philippe Laberge, MINUSTAH's civil affairs coordinator for the West Department, spoke to Poloff about MINUSTAH's plans to engage local government, specifically the new mayor, in their efforts to rehabilitate Cite Soleil. Cite Soleil was not a municipality until 2002 and has no infrastructure to support local government. MINUSTAH intends to work with the newly elected cartel to help organize the area. (Note: The projected winner of the mayoral race is political unknown Wilson Louis of the "Pel e Pikwa" cartel. End Note.) Plans include getting people on the payroll of the municipality to clean the area and finding a proper building for them to use as an office. At the moment the area has no municipal building and the current mayor works out of what they call "the annex", which is a small room at the base of a radio tower. The office of civil affairs also plans to work with the new mayor to flesh out new ways to collect revenue. This is especially important because when the municipality lines were drawn, the industrial area around Cite Soleil was not included, which means that the municipality loses out on taxes collected from those businesses. Laberge's ideas included formalizing the Cite Soleil market place and taking control of other commerce now used by gangs to extort money from the citizens. -------------- Progress in Martissant, Finally -------------- ¶3. (SBU) Laberge also reported on MINUSTAH's progress in Martissant. They finally secured a school building to serve as their base of operations after a six-month delay (ref A), and have been conducting joint patrols in the neighborhood since January 26. The patrols bring together Chinese formed police units (FPUs),UNPOL, and the Haitian National Police (HNP) twice each day. Additional HNP and UDMO (crowd-control) units patrol 24 hours a day. In a mix of targeted operations and random sweeps, by February 6, 20 gang members had been arrested as well as recovery of some of their weapons. Prior to the instigation of patrols on January 26, Martissant averaged three deaths per day. In the subsequent ten days, only four people died total as a result of violence. The office of civil affairs is now working to bring international investment to Martissant, including asking the World Bank to fund a road to connect Martissant with the rest of Port-au-Prince. ¶4. (SBU) Comment: The civil affairs section's enthusiasm for moving quickly into Cite Soleil is encouraging, as is Laberge's sentiment that coordination among the different branches of MINUSTAH has improved drastically in recent months. Post will look for opportunities to coordinate development efforts with MINUSTAH, especially regarding the Haiti Stabilization Initiative (ref B). TIGHE