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<font size=3>March 10, 2010: <br>
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<a href="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</a>
<br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Haiti: “Disaster Capitalism on Steroids”<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>By: Johnny Van Hove<br><br>
“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.
<br>
<br>
An interview. <br><br>
<b>DeWereldMorgen</b>: 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? <br><br>
<b>Robert Roth</b>: 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. <br><br>
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. <br>
<br>
<b>Considering the hundreds of international aid organizations working in
Haiti, how could it have come to this situation? <br><br>
</b>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. <br><br>
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. <br>
<br>
<b>What is the role of the UN and the US – which have been major players
in Haitian history – in the current catastrophe?<br><br>
</b>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.<br>
<br>
<b>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.<br>
<br>
</b>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.<br>
<br>
<b>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.</b> <br><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>If Haiti has not been as insecure as hinted at in the media, how can
the massive military response of the US be explained?</b> <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.
<br><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Surely, there must be other reasons to justify the militarization of
the aid relief?</b> <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Naomi Klein suggested that “disaster capitalism” is striking in Haiti.
Would you agree? <br><br>
</b>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.<br>
<br>
<b>The Haitian government was attending the reconstruction meetings too,
though. What is its role in the current crisis?</b> <br><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Since the relief agencies are not performing efficiently, who has been
providing aid at the grassroots level in Haiti? <br><br>
</b>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. <br><br>
An organization which has been very important is the
<a href="http://aristidefoundationfordemocracy.org/">Aristide
Foundation</a>, 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.<br>
<br>
<b>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? <br><br>
</b>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.<br>
<br>
<b>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?</b> <br>
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. <br>
<br>
(This interview from Johnny Van Hove with Robert Roth was first published
in DeWereldMorgen, March 9, 2010)<br><br>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
Links: Haiti Action Committee:
<a href="http://www.haitisolidarity.net/index">
www.haitisolidarity.net/index</a><br><br>
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