[News] Haiti: Disaster Capitalism on Steroids

[Anti-Imperialist News]

March 10, 2010:
<http://www.caar-web.org/caar-news/news-single-view/datum////haiti-disaster-capitalism-on-steroids-7.html>http://www.caar-web.org/caar-news/news-single-view/datum////haiti-disaster-capitalism-on-steroids-7.html

Haiti: “Disaster Capitalism on Steroids”

By: Johnny Van Hove

“Two months after the devastating earthquake, the 
situation in Haiti is downright criminal,” says 
Robert Roth. According to the spokesperson of the 
activist network Haiti Action Committee, major 
western players such as the US are more 
interested in defending their own geopolitical 
interests in Haiti than truly helping the hard hit Caribbean country.

An interview.

DeWereldMorgen: Haiti has disappeared almost 
completely from the front pages. Since you are in 
close contact with a number of Haitian grassroots 
organizations via the Haiti Action Committee, 
could you describe how the situation down there is at the moment?

Robert Roth: The situation is a catastrophe. At 
this point about 230,000 people have died and 
3,000,000 people are still left homeless. 
Hundreds of thousands of people have no shelter 
whatsoever and are literally sleeping outside. 
Under sheets, not in tents. In many, many areas 
there is no water, no tents, no health care. One 
to two million people are in internal refugee 
camps that are now dotting Port-au-Prince. They 
were set up by international aid agencies, but they are in terrible shape.

The lack of housing is truly astounding. We have 
been getting numerous requests from the poorest 
communities in Haiti for funds for tents. With 
the rainy season coming, there is a very grave 
danger of the spread of typhoid, measles, and 
dysentery. It could be one these situations in 
which the aftermath of a disaster is even worse 
than the disaster itself. The situation was and is truly criminal.

Considering the hundreds of international aid 
organizations working in Haiti, how could it have come to this situation?

The total amount of financial support that has 
gone through aid groups is close to one billion 
dollars. Haiti is truly flooded with aid 
organizations and yet very few aid goods have 
been distributed. Most goods have been sitting at 
the airport or in big warehouses. People who were 
pulled out under the rubble by Haitians could not 
receive medical aid because it was not distributed efficiently.

You have to distinguish among the aid groups, of 
course. Two groups which have been very 
consistent in distributing aid goods are Partners 
in Health and Doctors Without Borders. On the 
other hand, the Red Cross has been mostly 
invisible in the poorest communities in Haiti. 
There have been protests directly at the Red 
Cross warehouses and offices, demanding that the 
aid be distributed. The effectiveness of a number 
of the aid agencies has been astonishingly weak. 
And when a country has been occupied, when its 
democratic organizations have been repressed, and 
when community-based organizations are 
marginalized, earthquake relief just will not 
immediately get into the hands of the people.

What is the role of the UN and the US – which 
have been major players in Haitian history – in the current catastrophe?

The UN and the US have looked at their role as a 
security measure. Their concept of aid has been 
militarized, which means that they have not been 
diligent in handing out aid to communities. The 
US military has eleven thousand soldiers down 
there, the UN nine thousand. Six thousand UN 
troops have been there since the coup against the 
democratically elected president Aristide in 2004 
and they have been a repressive force, an 
occupying army in Haiti. In the wake of the 
earthquake, the US and UN armies have been 
essentially patrolling Haiti. I am not saying 
that there has been no help. They have started to 
distribute food, tents, health supplies. But it 
has been much more limited than you would expect. 
There have been many reports from various 
communities about how armed vehicles just drove 
by their communities without helping them.

What were the effects of the “militarization” of 
the relief aid by the US, amongst other countries 
– Canada and Japan sent hundreds of troops too, 
for instance? The American/Haitian activist 
Marguerite Laurent suggested on her blog that 
humanitarian aid was blocked in favor of military 
equipment after the US took over the Haitian 
airports in the first few days after the earth quake.

The militarization of the relief aid really 
delayed the distribution of food, water, and 
particularly medical aid. One of the effects was 
that in the first few days after the earthquake, 
five cargo planes of Doctors Without Borders were 
turned away and rerouted to the Dominican 
Republic. Partners In Help estimated that about 
20,000 people died each day that aid was delayed.

Is the lack of security in Haiti an explanation 
for the heavy emphasis on sending in forces? 
Numerous media reports after the earthquake 
suggested that insecurity, rapes, and violence 
erupting during foreign aid handouts were mounting.

The images of insecurity in the media are not 
accurate at all. There are always security issues 
in any country. But what is remarkable is the 
discipline, the non-violence, the resilience, the 
creativity, and the cooperation that Haitians 
have exhibited in the face of this catastrophe. 
Even days and days and days after not receiving 
aid, the US and UN could not point to any major security issues.

If Haiti has not been as insecure as hinted at in 
the media, how can the massive military response of the US be explained?

The primary fear of the US was popular, political 
unrest. Haiti truly has a very politically 
conscious population which has never gone down 
easily. After the coup in 2004, thousands of 
people were killed and thousands more imprisoned 
and held without charges. Every member of the 
Lavalas government – from high level ministers to 
local officials – were removed from office. Others were forced into exile.

Still, there has never been an end to grass roots 
organizing. Labor unions protested the price of 
gas and the privatizing of the phone company. 
There were major demonstrations demanding 
Aristide’s return. Just recently, there was a 
very successful electoral boycott because the 
Haitian government denied Lavalas the right to 
participate in the election, even though it is 
the most popular political party in Haiti.

The US is still not comfortable with the popular 
movement in Haiti. You can see this in the 
continued banishment of former President Aristide 
from Haiti. While the Obama Administration has 
called on former Presidents Clinton and Bush – 
who was responsible for the 2004 coup – to help 
coordinate aid, it opposes the return of a former 
democratically elected president who wants to 
return as a private citizen to aid in the reconstruction efforts.

Surely, there must be other reasons to justify 
the militarization of the aid relief?

There is clearly a major geopolitical and 
economic interest in Haiti, most prominently by 
the US. There is a long history of US 
intervention in the area, including a direct US 
occupation from 1915-1934. This occupation 
created the Haitian military and led eventually 
to the Duvalier dictatorships. In 1991, the US 
overthrew Aristide and then again in 2004. So the 
US is clearly opposed to the social program of 
Lavalas and to its example in the Caribbean.

Haiti is also strategically located close to both 
Cuba and Venezuela. Haiti is rich in minerals, 
such as marble, uranium, iridium, and oil. Big 
corporations, such as the Royal Caribbean Lines, 
are creating a tourist center in the north which 
could have an enormous value for the tourist 
industry in the Caribbean area. And Haiti is 
looked at as a source of cheap labor. There is a 
long history of garment assembly in Haiti. 
Cherokee, Wal-Mart, Disney, and Major League 
Baseball all had relationships with Haiti. If the 
US plan for Haiti is implemented, the numbers of 
sweatshops in Port-au-Prince will surely increase.

Naomi Klein suggested that “disaster capitalism” 
is striking in Haiti. Would you agree?

Absolutely. This is disaster capitalism on 
steroids. Number one, you have had an earthquake 
that ravaged the infrastructure of a country 
which has been made poor over the centuries. 
Secondly, you have more than 20,000 troops and 
massive amounts of capital circulating there. 
Plus, the Haitian government has been a very 
passive partner in the aftermath of the 
earthquake. That is a perfect recipe. The 
reconstruction conferences in Montreal and Miami 
are indicating that Haiti will be rebuilt along 
the lines of the organizations attending them: 
the US, Canada, the World Bank, the Clinton 
Foundation, the IMF, major business corporations 
such as the Royal Caribbean Lines, the Soros 
Foundation. Haiti is like a blank board in their 
minds. It is going be a feeding frenzy soon.

The Haitian government was attending the 
reconstruction meetings too, though. What is its role in the current crisis?

What was remarkable throughout the crisis was the 
invisibility of the government. There are two 
reasons for that. First of all, the government 
really seems to have lost its connection to the 
Haitian people. President Preval has been major 
disappointment since he was elected in 2006. He 
has basically been an arm of the occupation 
forces of the UN. Secondly, the government of 
Haiti has been starved for years and years by the 
international lending organizations, including 
USAID. Even now, the government does not receive 
true support. It literally gets only one cent for 
every dollar spent on Haiti. That really creates 
a dependency on international aid agencies. When 
a crisis such as this happens, the government is 
underfunded and the aid agencies take over. All 
in all, the invisibility and compliance of the 
Haitian government is a token for the fact that 
the US, the UN, and the NGOs have taken control of the country.

Since the relief agencies are not performing 
efficiently, who has been providing aid at the grassroots level in Haiti?

What is happening in Haiti is that local 
communities are helping themselves. The 
mainstream image of Haitians is that they cannot 
help themselves, that they are dysfunctional and 
violent. The truth could not be more different. 
Haiti is a very well organized country at the 
grassroots level. There are community committees 
in every one of the poor neighborhoods, which 
have been organizing protests in order to get the 
aid goods distributed. They have also been 
contacting international organizations they know 
they can trust and started distributing the aid 
goods to their local communities.

An organization which has been very important is 
the 
<http://aristidefoundationfordemocracy.org/>Aristide 
Foundation, which has been setting up aid 
programs, especially in the refugee camps. They 
have created mobile schools, they have developed 
local health clinics, and they are also setting 
up a big health center at the foundation's site. 
Partners in Health has continued to provide 
important support as well. And our organization 
is funding community projects that are not 
getting aided by the big relief organizations.

According to Marguerite Laurent in the current 
issue of the American magazine The Progressive, 
the people that could be saved were saved mostly 
by Haitians “frantically using their bare hands 
to dig through the rubble and lift pulverized 
concrete in the immediate forty-eight hours after 
the earthquake”. Does that give an accurate image 
of how the digging and rescuing took place?

Laurent is absolutely right. The chair of the 
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, for instance, was in 
Haiti with his family at the time of the quake, 
and they saw first hand how Haitians were working 
day and night to save their families and friends. 
That was basically the story in Haiti: Haitians 
saving themselves and bandaging and housing each 
other. They waited for aid that never came and 
that is why so many people have died unnecessarily.

Nevertheless, Haiti cannot rebuild itself without 
external help. The Haitian diaspora will keep on 
sending close to a billion dollars to their 
homeland every year. But what role can 
international aid agencies play? Who should be 
supported in order to help Haiti?
You can't talk about disaster capitalism and then 
donate to the big NGOs. If you donate to the Red 
Cross, for instance, some help will go to Haiti. 
At the same time, you are also donating to a 
system which is not designed to empower Haitians. 
So if you are progressive, if you want democracy 
in Haiti, and if you have some faith in the 
Haitian people, you should be looking for the 
groups most closely related to, and working with, 
the grassroots organizations.

(This interview from Johnny Van Hove with Robert 
Roth was first published in DeWereldMorgen, March 9, 2010)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Links: Haiti Action Committee: 
<http://www.haitisolidarity.net/index>www.haitisolidarity.net/index



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