LIKE AN ARMY OF ANTS, HAITIANS BY the hundreds scurry up and down the dusty banks of the Massacre River with their gallon plastic jugs. Their day's work done, they head home carrying vessels filled with a precious pink fluid: gasoline smuggled across the river from the Dominican Republic. For the people of Ouanaminthe in northeastern Haiti, the daily trek has become an economic necessity since last October, when the United Nations reimposed a fuel embargo against the country's recalcitrant military rulers.
The embargo is nearly six months old, and the military is still in power -- awash in gasoline and...