U.N. Involvement in Haiti

From the New York Times, an article about the caos in Haiti as the U.N. struggles to bring stability to the country. From the article:

Nearly 20 months after the United Nations arrived to stabilize the hemisphere's poorest country and avert a civil war, there is still no cease-fire in this violent city on the sea.
Blasts from tanks and machine guns go on for hours almost every day around Cité Soleil, a steamy slum of concrete hovels and canals of raw sewage at the capital's northern edge. No one knows for sure how many civilians have been killed inside because the bodies of the slum-dwellers and local gangsters rarely make it to morgues.
But last Tuesday, two Jordanian soldiers were shot to death in skirmishes with local gangs, and another was seriously wounded. It was the third fatal strike against United Nations personnel since December, a month when relations between the international peacekeeping mission and local people worsened.
The violence has raised demands in capitals from Brasília to Washington to Ottawa for an explanation of what has gone wrong with Haiti's transition to democracy. What is clear is that the $584 million a year mission has failed to bring peace to Haiti, and the caretaker government has failed to bring elections.


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--Tom Hayes