Hti: Coked up economy

At least one plane carrying 500 to 1,000 kilos of cocaine lands in Haiti almost every day -- the same rate as in the months leading up to Feb. 29, when former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide left the country amid a revolt, the officials said.

''Drug trafficking is the only thing that consistently works here,'' one Western diplomat said.

U.S. officials estimate that 7 to 15 percent of the cocaine reaching U.S. streets flows through Haiti. The money that traffickers pay to make sure their cargo gets safely through is one of the country's biggest revenue sources.

So lucrative is the business that many observers suspect that the rebels who helped drive Aristide out of power did so, in part, to seize control of the drug channels. Rebel leader Guy Philippe has been accused of drug trafficking when he was police chief in northern Haiti, and Western officials said they suspect that drug profits financed his rebel group -- a charge Philippe vehemently denies.

WEAK LINK

Haiti is a natural stepping point for cocaine between Colombia and the United States; a weak link midway between traffickers with unlimited supplies and Americans with endless appetites.

''There is so much money in drugs and the country is so poor, it will corrupt any government,'' said Leslie Voltaire, a former Aristide Cabinet member. ``As the African proverb says, when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.''

With the recent revolt, the extent of the problem is just becoming public. In the last two months, U.S. agents have arrested four senior Aristide-era security officials on drug charges, including the heads of palace security and the police drug squad. Tuesday, they arrested Fourel Celestin, a former president of the Senate.

Using information from several defendants-turnedinformants, prosecutors are trying to build a case against Aristide himself. His Miami attorney, Ira Kurzban, has said Aristide fought the drug trade, and that the inquiry is politically motivated.

Whether the agents will go after other factions allegedly involved in the drug trade -- Philippe's rebels, upper-class bankers and corrupt officials of pre-Aristide regimes -- remains to be seen.

Some say the United States is using the drug arrests and investigations as a means to influence Haitian politics.

''It's a way for the U.S. to deter certain people from thinking they can get into politics,'' said Robert Fatton Jr., a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia.

No one knows exactly how much Haitians collect in so-called transit fees to get the product through the country. A low estimate is 5 percent of the coke's wholesale price in the United States. At a minimum, that would pump $220 million into Haiti every year, drug experts say.

But Haitian economists and U.S. officials say it's likely a close second to the country's other major revenue stream -- the estimated $800 million a year in remittances from Haitians abroad.

''Without these two sources of hard income, it would be very hard to live in this country,'' said Kesner Pharel, an economist and chairman of the consulting firm Group Croissance.

Pharel said the drug money shows up mainly in the housing sector. East of Port-au-Prince, builders are turning empty hills into gated neighborhoods of new mansions.

Now Haiti has an emergent crack problem -- as if life isn't hard and bad enough.