[News] In Hurricane Matthew’s Aftermath:Is Washington Again Using Disaster Aid to Haiti as a Trojan Horse?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume10-14/In%20Hurricane%20Matthew%20s%20Aftermath.asp#.V_8W47huN_Z.facebook 



  In Hurricane Matthew’s Aftermath:Is Washington Again Using Disaster
  Aid to Haiti as a Trojan Horse?

Kim Ives - October 12, 2016

The images and accounts of Haiti’s devastation following Hurricane 
Matthew’s passage on Oct. 4 are gut-wrenching. The death toll is in the 
hundreds and continues to rise. Entire villages in the country's 
southwest were obliterated. The response of a Haitian government, left 
besieged and without resources by decades of foreign plunder, is anemic. 
The victims’ anguished appeals for help are heart-rending. The United 
Nations now says 1.4 million people are in need of assistance, urgent 
and immediate for half of them. Distressed onlookers around the world 
want to do something, anything, and fast.

But the greatest danger in the hurricane's aftermath may not come from 
the destruction of crops and infrastructure, the inevitable spike in 
cholera cases, or the sudden homelessness of tens of thousands. It may 
come from the aircraft carriers, foreign troops, food shipments, and 
hordes of NGO workers which are now descending on Haiti ostensibly to 
help the storm’s victims.

This supposed aid may end up undermining local food production, 
sabotaging pending elections, reinforcing the foreign military 
intervention in the country, and generally subverting Haiti’s recent 
moves to regain its sovereignty.

We saw this scenario almost seven years ago, following the 7.0 
earthquake that leveled the town of Léogâne and the region around the 
capital city of Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010. In the days after the 
earthquake, the United States deployed 22,000 troops to Haiti without 
the permission of the national government, took over the Port-au-Prince 
airport, and militarized the humanitarian response 
<http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume4-48/U.S.%20Worried%20about%20International.asp>.

“Marines armed as if they were going to war,” exclaimed the late 
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in early 2010. “There is not a shortage 
of guns there, my God. Doctors, medicine, fuel, field hospitals, that is 
what the United States should send. They are occupying Haiti in an 
undercover manner.”

(That intervention and much else about U.S. meddling in Haiti have been 
detailed in a joint publishing project begun in 2011 between Wikileaks 
and /Haiti Liberté/weekly newspaper/,/which partnered with/The 
Nation/magazine on many English language articles. 
<http://canadahaitiaction.ca/wikileaks>)

Today, the U.S. has sent the aircraft carrier USS George Washington and 
an amphibious transport vessel, the Mesa Verde, with 300 Marines 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/devastation-in-haiti-after-hurricane-matthew-pounds-the-country/2016/10/05/76041fe2-8a66-1>on 
board, as well as 100 Marines 
<http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume10-13/Hurricane%20Matthew%20Devastates.asp>with 
nine helicopters from Honduras.

Richard Morse, who runs Port-au-Prince’s iconic Oloffson Hotel, returned 
to Haiti on Oct. 9 and tweeted: “Lots of U.S. military on the plane.”

In contrast, the day after the hurricane hit, Venezuela flew 20 tons of 
humanitarian aid to Haiti – food, water, blankets, sheets, and 
medicines. It dispatched two more shipments in the following days, 
including a ship containing 660 tons of material that includes 450 tons 
of machinery to remove debris and fix roads and bridges and 90 tons of 
non-perishable foods and medicines, supplies, tents, blankets, and 
drinking water. It has also dispatched 300 doctors, many of them 
Cuban-trained. All this despite very difficult economic conditions in 
Venezuela as well as a relentless political assault by Washington 
against the Venezuelan government.

In this latest disaster, “Venezuela was the first to help Haiti,” said 
the Haitian Ambassador to Caracas, Lesly David.

Cuba, meanwhile, has supplemented 
<http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuela-Cuba-Show-Solidarity-with-Haiti-After-the-Hurricane-20161008-0002.html>its 
revered 1,200-doctor medical mission to Haiti 
<http://medicc.org/ns/>with 38 personnel from the Henry Reeve 
International Contingent of Physicians Specialized in Disaster 
Situations and Serious Epidemics, which set up field hospitals in Haiti 
in 2010 as well. As Washington sends soldiers, Venezuela and Cuba send 
doctors.

In the longer term, it is likely that Washington will seek to use the 
post-hurricane crisis to bolster its proxy force, the UN Mission to 
Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH), which has occupied Haiti in violation of 
Haitian and international law for 12 years, following the overthrow of 
Haiti's elected president on Feb. 29, 2004. (MINUSTAH was expanded 
<http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/minustah/documents/minustah_press_factsheet_012011.pdf>from 
7,000 to 11,500 soldiers and police officers after the 2010 earthquake.)

MINUSTAH's mandate expires on Oct. 15. In the face of Haitian and 
international outcry and the withdrawal from the force of several key 
Latin American nations – Argentina, Uruguay and Chile – outgoing UN 
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recommended on Aug. 31 
<http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2016_753.pdf>extending 
the mandate by only six months, less than the customary one-year 
renewal. He says a “a strategic assessment of the situation in Haiti” is 
needed.

However, Ban conditioned this shorter mandate on the hope that “the 
current electoral calendar will be maintained” so that a “strategic 
assessment mission would be deployed to Haiti after Feb. 7, 2017,” the 
date on which a new elected president is supposed to be sworn in.

As a result of Hurricane Matthew, it is now unlikely that an elected 
president will be inaugurated on that date. Haiti’s Provisional 
Electoral Council (CEP) has postponed indefinitely the elections which 
were to take place on Oct. 9, involving a re-do of a first-round 
presidential vote (that of Oct. 25, 2015 was patently fraudulent) and a 
run-off for several Haitian legislature seats.

The CEP is due to announce on Oct. 12 the new electoral schedule. (Leaks 
suggest it may propose Oct. 30, 2016.) It may prove impossible to hold 
the postponed pollings in time for a February presidential inauguration 
because tens of thousands of would-be voters on Haiti’s southern 
peninsula have surely lost their electoral cards while many polling 
places – mostly schools – will need repairs or complete rebuilding.

The potential absence of an elected president in time for the 
constitutionally-mandated inauguration date would surely be used as an 
excuse for the extension of MINUSTAH’s mandate, despite Haitians being 
almost unanimously opposed to the troops’ presence. The MINUSTAH, now 
numbering 5,000 soldiers and police officers, is reviled due to its 
massacres, murders, rapes, and other crimes against Haitians, but mostly 
because its Nepalese contingent introduced cholera into Haiti in October 
2010.

Nearly 10,000 Haitians have died from cholera and more than one million 
have been infected. The UN has fiercely resisted any culpability for the 
cholera disaster.

The disease spreads when cholera-infected sewage mixes with drinking and 
washing water, a situation which arises more easily when there is 
massive flooding, as after Matthew.

As for the relationship between post-hurricane rebuilding and the 
upcoming elections, the earthquake’s aftermath is instructive. Then-U.S. 
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton 
took command 
<http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume10-11/Haiti%20s%20Pay-to-Play%20IHRC.asp>of 
Haiti’s post-earthquake reconstruction through the Interim Haiti 
Recovery Commission (IHRC), sidelining the Haitian government and 
Haitian President René Préval. The resentful Préval became something of 
a figurehead, with the Clintons and their coterie running the show.

The powers behind MINUSTAH – the U.S., France, and Canada – intervened 
aggressively following the 2010 earthquake to install a pliant 
president. As Préval's electoral mandate was finishing, his party’s 
successor candidate, Jude Célestin, finished the first-round 
presidential vote in November 2010 in second place. But Washington 
intervened, led by Secretary of State Clinton, and replaced Célestin 
with the third place finisher, Michel Martelly, a ribald musical 
performer of the political extreme-right. He went on to win the March 
2011 run-off vote.

Could a similar power-play take place in Haiti’s next election, 
especially with the likely election in November of Hillary Clinton as 
the next U.S. president?

Then there is the question of emergency aid – food, water, shelter, and 
medical supplies. There is an obvious need for all of this in the 
immediate term, such as that sent by Venezuela. However, in the past, 
Washington has used its food aid to crush and debilitate local Haitian 
food production. Former CARE employee and Haiti-resident researcher Tim 
Schwartz documented this at length in his book /Travesty in Haiti: A 
True Account of Christian Missions, Orphanages, Fraud, Food Aid and Drug 
Trafficking/. He wrote that the role of food aid “was not principally to 
help people but to promote overseas sales of U.S. agricultural produce. 
The consequences have been devastating throughout the world.” That aid, 
he argued, brought ruin to small Haitian farmers.

“Westerners wanting to help shouldn’t assume that there are no resources 
available to Haitians in country,” writes Haitian Jocelyn McCalla in 
/The Guardianon Oct. 6 
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/06/hurricane-matthew-haiti-aid-long-term-economic-investment>/. 
“While charitable goods may provide temporary relief, they can hinder 
recovery in the long run to the extent that they can have a negative 
impact on the local economy.”

In 2010, most of the humanitarian disaster aid was funneled through 
international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and the result was 
disastrous. Even the Clintons’ own daughter, Chelsea, was “profoundly 
disturbed” by what she saw on the ground. She wrote in a declassified 
email 
<http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume9-10/The%20Mysterious%20Gap%20in%20Hillary.asp>in 
early 2010 that the “incompetence is mind numbing,” that “Haitians want 
to help themselves and want the international community to help them 
help themselves,” and that “there is NO accountability in the UN system 
or international humanitarian system (including for/ among INGOs).”

The current Haitian government, headed by interim President Jocelerme 
Privert, is trying to take control of the disaster relief efforts and 
funds. Following the earthquake, only one per cent of aid funds went to 
Haitian authorities. This time, the president’s office has reinforced 
the Permanent National Office for Risk and Disaster Relief 
<http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article20693#.V_r8TvkrLDd>(SNGRD) 
through which all national and international disaster relief is to be 
channeled and coordinated. What will be Washington’s response to this 
initiative?

The U.S. was angered earlier this year when the Privert government 
resisted its pressure not to form an independent verification commission 
to investigate the fraud-plagued Aug. 9 and Oct. 25, 2015 elections. 
Anger became outrage when Privert’s CEP respectedthe verification 
commission’s recommendation to redo the 2015 presidential first-round, 
and Washington and the European Union said they would withhold all 
financial support. Commendably, cash-strapped Haiti was undeterred and 
has managed to fund the elections by itself.

Haitian government leadership of the relief efforts should begin with 
its being able to establish the death toll. The Haitian government and 
foreign media are differing over how many people have died from 
Hurricane Matthew. As of this writing, the international media is saying 
that more than 900 people perished, while the Haitian government’s Civil 
Protection Directorate (DPC) gives an official nationwide count of 372 
dead, four missing, 246 injured, and 175,509 persons housed in 224 
temporary shelters.

Writing on Oct. 8, Haitian journalist Dady Chery has reported 
<http://newsjunkiepost.com/2016/10/08/haiti-facts-about-hurricane-matthew-vs-media-poetic-truth/>, 
“Once the United States military and journalists began to assess the 
hurricane’s damage by some counting system of their own invention, the 
number of Haitian casualties skyrocketed, and there were no longer any 
reports of how the dead met their fates. Indeed, the number of the 
Haitian dead from Hurricane Matthew has doubled approximately every 12 
hours since Tuesday [Oct. 4] morning and is now estimated to be 800.”

The higher “casualty counts should be examined carefully and with great 
skepticism,” Chery continues. “For one, there no longer appears to be a 
distinction between the missing and the dead. For example, the children 
from a collapsed orphanage are presumed to have died, but no evidence of 
their deaths has been offered.”

“It is in the interest of the occupying powers to pressure Haiti to 
exaggerate the human and material costs of the hurricane,” Chery concludes.

Indeed, Washington will likely use this latest Haitian crisis to further 
its own economic and political agenda and to bully and undercut 
President Privert, who has shown some temerity and independence since 
his interim appointment by redoing the 2015 presidential election in the 
face of fierce opposition from Washington, Ottawa, and Paris. After 
their experience of the last six years, the Haitian people are justified 
in being wary of foreigners bearing gifts but whose policies have always 
undermined Haiti's democracy and sovereignty.

“If people are concerned about the long-term sovereignty and capacity of 
the country of Haiti to develop its own resources, I would recommend 
against the large charities, which in my view just perpetuate the 
conditions of poverty and of political instability that cause the 
country to be so vulnerable in the first place,” Roger Annis of the 
Canada Haiti Action Network (CHAN) told the Globe & Mail on Oct. 9.

International aid by whatever agency able to deliver it is being 
welcomed by Hurricane Matthew’s Haitian victims and their government. 
But the lesson of the 2010 earthquake is that aid and reconstruction 
must be directed by Haitians and for Haitians. Otherwise, this latest 
disaster will only aggravate the long disaster of big-power intervention 
into the country. That, not inevitable storms and earthquakes, is the 
largest obstacle facing Haiti in its struggle for development and 
sovereignty.

  (Readers are encouraged to contact local Haitian consulates or 
embassies to find out how to contribute directly to the Haitian 
government or its affiliated agencies.)

/Roger Annis contributed to this article, which is also published on 
CounterPunch <http://www.counterpunch.org/>. For background to the long 
history of foreign interference in Haiti, read 'Haiti’s humanitarian 
crisis: Rooted in history of military coups and occupations 
<http://www.canadahaitiaction.ca/content/haiti%92s-humanitarian-crisis-rooted-history-military-coups-and-occupations>', 
by Kim Ives and Roger Annis, May 2011. For an assessment of 2010 
earthquake aid five years on, read, 'Haiti's promised rebuilding 
unrealized as Haitians challenge authoritarian rule 
<http://canadahaitiaction.ca/content/haitis-promised-rebuilding-unrealized-haitians-challenge-authoritarian-rule>,’ 
by Roger Annis and Travis Ross, Jan 12, 2015. The website project 'Haiti 
Relief and Reconstruction Watch 
<http://cepr.net/blogs/haiti-relief-and-reconstruction-watch/>' 
documents Haiti's difficult experiences following the January 2010 
earthquake./
-- 
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