By Douglas Farah
                  Washington Post Foreign Service

                  MARIGOT, Haiti—Five years ago, when 20,000 U.S. troops were
                  dispatched to this poor nation to oust a military dictatorship, President
                  Clinton justified the move in part by saying Haiti's generals trafficked in
                  drugs.

                  But despite the restoration of an elected government and the creation of a
                  new police force, more cocaine than ever before is coursing through Haiti
                  from Colombia en route to the United States, according to U.S. and
                  Haitian officials who identify the country's southern shore as one of the
                  hemisphere's busiest conduits for illegal drugs.

                  U.S. officials estimate that about 59.4 tons of cocaine -- almost one-fifth of
                  the total reaching the United States -- passed through this small nation in
                  1998, a jump of 9.2 tons over the previous year.

                  Haiti's southern shore is just eight hours north of the Colombian coast by
                  oceangoing speedboat. Outfitted with extra gas tanks, the traffickers' boats
                  can leave at dusk and arrive at dawn, avoiding aerial surveillance. Haitian
                  officials concede that drug traffickers run little risk of being caught in a
                  country with a three-year-old police force and a notoriously corrupt
                  judiciary.

                  "Haiti has the weakest police and is the . . . easiest way to go from
                  Colombia to the United States," said Robert Manuel, the country's minister
                  of public security. "Any stupid person could see that. We are basically
                  across the street from Colombia, and our capacity to monitor our coastline
                  is severely limited."

                  Besides complicating U.S. efforts to stem the flow of illegal drugs, Haiti's
                  burgeoning cocaine trade is corroding the country's already weak
                  institutions and undermining its fragile democracy, U.S. and Haitian officials
                  say. This is happening, moreover, at a time when the United States is
                  preparing to pull out the last of its occupying force, now down to 500
                  troops.

                  "The situation in Haiti is very grim," said Barry R. McCaffrey, the Clinton
                  administration's national drug policy director. "There are major corruption
                  problems preventing fragile institutions from consolidating. Our fear is the
                  Colombian traffickers will continue to exploit Haiti and corrupt law
                  enforcement and judicial officers, leading to a drop in public confidence in
                  these institutions."

                  That confidence already has been battered by the bitter political infighting
                  that marked Haiti's shaky transition to democracy. The country has had no
                  functioning parliament since Jan. 11. Most mayors' terms have expired.
                  For the past two years, parliament refused to approve President Rene
                  Preval's choices for prime minister -- costing the country hundreds of
                  millions of dollars in international aid -- aid that could not have been
                  disbursed because there was no functioning government to receive it.

                  The political impasse contributed to the U.S. decision this year not to
                  certify Haiti as a reliable partner in the drug war. However, Haiti was
                  granted a presidential waiver that spares it from the economic sanctions
                  that normally accompany decertification.

                  While Washington says the Preval government has shown the will to fight
                  drug trafficking, the country's fractious parliament failed to pass Preval's
                  anti-trafficking law, which, among other things, would have made money
                  laundering a crime.

                  "Haiti is the hot spot in terms of the Caribbean," said Michael Vigil, the
                  Drug Enforcement Administration's special agent in charge of the
                  Caribbean. "The Colombians are taking advantage of the situation in Haiti
                  and are moving in so they can take direct . . . control."

                  Drug trafficking in Haiti is not new; Haitian officials note that military
                  governments supported or tolerated by the United States profited from the
                  trade throughout the 1980s and early '90s. But the quantities smuggled
                  during that period did not approach current levels.

                  As described by U.S. and Haitian law enforcement officials, Colombian
                  drug traffickers -- equipped with satellite-assisted Global Positioning
                  System devices that allow them to pinpoint delivery sites -- typically drop
                  their loads from airplanes into the hills or deposit them on the beach with
                  speedboats. From Haiti, the drugs are taken overland across the porous
                  border with the Dominican Republic and shipped north or loaded onto
                  ships bound for south Florida.

                  Colombian drug traffickers in Haiti have made their presence felt in
                  conspicuous ways, building gaudy new mansions in the hills around
                  Port-au-Prince, the capital, for example, or driving the rutted roads in
                  Rolls-Royces and other luxury cars, according to Pierre Denize, the
                  national police chief. Meanwhile, the traffickers' tendency to settle business
                  disputes with violence has bred a general sense of insecurity and stymied
                  foreign investment.

                  Haiti's fledgling police force -- which was formed after the country's army
                  was disbanded in 1994 and received extensive U.S. and Canadian training
                  -- is ill-equipped to deter the cocaine trade. "It is difficult for police to fight
                  drugs, and then the drug traffickers try to use, infiltrate and corrupt the
                  police, so it is a double battle," said Manuel, the public security minister,
                  ticking off the names of senior police officers fired in recent months for
                  drug corruption -- including the second in command of the U.S.-trained
                  anti-drug unit and the head of Haiti's elite Special Investigations Unit.

                  According to the State Department's annual assessment of the global drug
                  trade, 100 policemen were expelled from the Haitian force in 1998 for
                  drug corruption, but none has been prosecuted. Of 86 people arrested on
                  drug charges in Haiti in 1998, 41 were Colombians, the report said.

                  The effect of the drug trade is especially evident in and around this remote
                  town on Haiti's southern coast, where several large shipments of cocaine
                  have washed up on beaches in the past year, bringing a financial bonanza
                  for the peasants who found them.

                  "People have found enough so some have stopped working or fishing and
                  just wait to look for cocaine," said one resident of Marigot, who asked not
                  to be identified. "And suddenly people who were very poor have money
                  for big new boats. That is what everyone wants."

                  At the brightly painted police station on one recent afternoon, none of the
                  17 officers assigned there appeared to be on duty, and a group of them
                  sat, shirtless, in the rear, cooking and napping. The commanding officer
                  had taken the only radio and gone to visit his family. "We are bored, there
                  is no place to eat, [and] we have no cars, no boats, no bicycle," said one
                  officer as he hastily pulled on his shirt to greet unexpected visitors. "There
                  is only one radio. We all want to go home."

                  Residents said the policemen only venture out of their barracks on rumors
                  that a cocaine shipment has arrived. "They only show up with their hands
                  out, to take," said one resident. "They do not beat us like in the old days,
                  but all they want to do is make money now that cocaine has come."

                  Twenty miles to the west, in Jacmel -- once a bustling coffee port where
                  the better houses feature wrought-iron balconies imported from Europe at
                  the turn of the century -- police commissioner Paul Antoine Sauvignon
                  acknowledged he has a problem. On Feb. 26, he arrested six people,
                  including two senior police officers, near the Marigot police station on
                  suspicion of drug trafficking. The six, including a Panamanian and two
                  Dominican nationals, were discovered on the beach carrying satellite
                  phones and automatic weapons.

                  Six hours after the arrests, a cocaine-laden boat showed up. Finding no
                  one to receive the load, the crew abandoned the boat. Local peasants
                  grabbed most of the load, Sauvignon said, and the police recovered only
                  68 pounds out of an estimated shipment of 1,000 pounds or more.

                  Saint-Marc, one of the largest ports on the northern side of the island, also
                  has been infected by the drug trade. On a crumbling concrete pier,
                  surrounded by floating refuse and the rusting hulls of sunken ships, a young
                  man on a bicycle casually offered to sell several kilos of cocaine to a visitor
                  as police and customs officials huddled in a nearby office watching an
                  Italian League soccer match.

                  Asked what would happen if the police caught him selling cocaine, the
                  young man shrugged. "We would have to negotiate how much to give
                  them," he said. "Sometimes they want a lot, and sometimes they want a
                  little, but they never arrest anyone."

                  Even when the police do make arrests, judges often yield to threats and
                  bribes by drug traffickers, according to U.S. and Haitian officials.
                  Suspected drug traffickers live openly and when arrested spend almost no
                  time in prison, these officials said.

                  "The bottom line is the judiciary showed no signs of improvement in 1998,"
                  McCaffrey said. "There were no prosecutions at all of drug cases."

                  Denize said Colombian and Haitian drug organizations have focused their
                  efforts on corrupting the judiciary. "These people need a corrupt, mediocre
                  system to protect themselves," Denize said. "To protect themselves, they
                  invest in the status quo."

                  But there are some bright spots in the bleak Haitian picture, according to
                  Haitian and U.S. officials. The U.S. Coast Guard, for example, has been
                  carrying out extensive operations in the area and is training its 93-member
                  Haitian counterpart.

                  Denize, widely regarded as an honest and capable police chief, was
                  recently appointed to another three-year term by Preval. And inspector
                  general Eucher Luc Joseph has won high praise from international
                  observers monitoring the police for his willingness to dismiss corrupt
                  officers.

                  But the task remains enormous. Asked to suggest a solution, police
                  commissioner Sauvignon shrugged his shoulders. "We should try to have
                  police on the beach to look out -- that is all we can do," he said. "We have
                  no vehicles, no radios, and corruption. Really, there is little we can do."