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<b><u>Confronting the Occupation: Haiti, Neo-liberalism, and the US
Occupation<br><br>
</u>Written by Kali Akuno <br>
National Organizer, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement<br>
Sunday, April 11, 2010<br><br>
</b>The three-month marker for the earthquake that devastated Haiti is
now upon us. The significance of this marker is not one determined by the
Haitian people, but rather by the enemies of the Haitian people and
peoples’ movements throughout the world. <br><br>
According to Milton Friedman and the intellectual guru’s of
neo-liberalism there are critical timelines and stages that must be
strictly adhered by to successfully capitalize on a catastrophe and
transform a society. The three month marker is one of these critical
timelines, and in the words of Friedman himself “ a new administration
has some six to nine months in which to achieve major changes; if it does
not seize the opportunity to act decisively during that period, it will
not have another such opportunity.” Based on experiences in Iraq,
Sri Lanka, and New Orleans over the past ten years several things must be
in place at the three-month marker in order for the catastrophe to be
fully exploited. These include: sufficient military force to contain the
population, the dispersal and fragmentation of the affected population to
limit its ability to mobilize resistance, and the legislation and
implementation of a new policy regime that seeks to privatize nearly
everything and eliminate all financial controls. <br><br>
One of the central enemies of the Haitian people is the guru’s of the
ideology of neo-liberalism. These guru’s are the neo-liberal
theoreticians and policy hacks who control Wall Street, the US Federal
Reserve, the Bretton Woods institutions – the IMF, World Bank, and WTO,
and most of the central banks of the world since the 1990’s. These
gurus, most particularly the theoreticians, created a script in the
1970’s to exploit catastrophes, natural and human created, not only for
material gain but radically regressive social transformation. After
waging an incessant ideological war against socialism and communism the
theoreticians won critical support amongst the commanders of government
and the captains of capital by the early 1980’s and were able to start
fully unleashing their fury on the world after the test run of General
Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile during the 1970’s. This
neo-liberal script is a form of what Karl Marx termed “primitive
accumulation”, and what David Harvey calls “accumulation by
dispossession”, and is becoming popularly known via the works of Naomi
Klein as “disaster capitalism” and the “shock doctrine”. <br><br>
A key ideological and strategic tool of this neo-liberal script is the
concept of “humanitarian interventionism.” Despite how well intentioned
this concept sounds, it is a tool developed through the auspices of NATO,
under the guiding hand of the US government, to be executed through the
UN to allow the imperialist powers to legally and morally interfere in
the domestic affairs of weaker nations. Stated plainly, it is colonialism
dressed in fine linen. As a practice it gained legitimacy after the
imperialist induced atrocities in Rwanda, Burundi, and the former
Yugoslav republic in the 1990’s to allegedly put an end to crimes against
humanity such as ethnic cleansing and genocide. In the wake of these
atrocities the UN under the direction of the US and its European allies
has executed the doctrine of humanitarian intervention in all of the
aforementioned countries and the Congo, Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti.
<br><br>
The latest imposition of humanitarian interventionism in Haiti was in
2004, after the US overthrow of President Aristide and the Lavalas
government, allegedly to restore order and maintain peace. But, this cut
was just a deeper penetration of the affliction of neo-liberalism imposed
upon Haiti by US imperialism with the willing aid of Haiti’s own decadent
ruling class beginning in the 1980’s under the regime of “Baby Doc”
Jean-Claude Duvalier. <br><br>
The current US occupation (the third since 1915) of Haiti removes the
mask of the UN occupation in place since 2004, and is promoted and
(sadly) widely unquestioned, in the US and throughout the world, as a
“humanitarian operation” allegedly to stabilize the situation in Haiti in
order to provide quake relief - which is nothing more than a
perpetuation of the long standing racist view of the US government that
the Haitian people are incapable of adequately presiding over their own
affairs. The fact is, with the advancements and refinements in the
application of the “shock doctrine” stemming from the occupation of Iraq,
the political transformation of Sri Lanka following the Tsunami of 2004,
and the social and demographic transformation of New Orleans and the Gulf
Coast following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the US government and
transnational capital are seeking to apply a “coup de grace” on the
people’s movement in Haiti in order to clear the way to remake it as a
neo-liberal paradise. <br><br>
<b>Stakes is High <br><br>
</b>The stakes at play in the US occupation couldn’t be much higher for
the people’s movement and the working and peasant masses of Haiti. Under
US military rule the overwhelming bulk of the international relief aid
(materials and finances) is centrally controlled by a handful of relief
agencies hand picked by the US and the UN, who along with elements of the
Haitian elite, control who gets anything and when, and thus turned relief
aid into a weapon of social and political control. The major ports of
entry into the country and its main transportation arteries are under
tight US control restricting people’s ability to organize and mobilize
under the ongoing dire circumstances. Potential routes of refuge to the
US via the sea and the Dominican Republic via land have been effectively
closed and legally barred. And the political repression unleashed after
the liquidation of the Lavalas government in 2004 by the Haitian ruling
class, former military and Tonton Macoute forces, and MINUSTA (the UN
Stabilization Mission in Haiti) is intensifying, particularly with the
ongoing banning of the Fanmi Lavalas Party from running in upcoming
elections. And the hunting down by the US military and mercenary
forces of political prisoners associated with the Lavalas movement and
government, who were liberated by the collapse of several prison
facilities during the January 12th earthquake. To top it all off, the
Hurricane season is approaching rapidly, and no one, not the US military,
the UN and NGO relief agencies, or the Haitian government is prepared to
face it and the potential calamities it could bring, particularly as it
relates to further displacement, the deepening of food insecurity, and
the spread of infectious diseases. <br><br>
And these are just the short-term issues posed by the US occupation and
the militarization of the relief and reconstruction effort. The long-term
issue is the suppression of the people’s movement for self-determination
and the imposition of permanent structures of dependency and subservience
that the US government and the transnational ruling class are seeking to
impose via a prolonged occupation. US imperialism is seeking to do no
less to Haiti than it did with the occupation of 1915 – 1934, and that is
to remove the threat of social revolution in Haiti and rebuild the
Haitian military to serve as a repressive instrument against it in the
service of transnational capital. <br><br>
The US occupation of Haiti is not just a singular containment initiative.
It is also an initiative to further the rollback of progressive social
transformation that has swept large parts of Latin America and the
Caribbean since the late 1990’s. The first major rollback
initiative under Obama’s command was the Honduran coup that successfully
ousted President Manuel Zelaya. The second, albeit with far less US
intervention, was the election of a right wing government in Chile, under
the leadership of billionaire President Sebastian Pinera. The occupation
of Haiti is the third and by far the most deeply penetrating of these
rollback initiatives. With it US imperialism is seeking to contain
initiatives like ALBA, which in English translates into the Bolivarian
Alliance for the Peoples of our America, initiated and principally led by
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as an alternative of the FTAA. ALBA,
through the solidarity initiatives of the Cuban and Venezuelan
governments, was making significant headway in Haiti prior to the
earthquake with the creation rural hospitals and schools and the
provisioning of subsidized oil and low-interest development loans. Under
the US occupation these initiatives are being stunted and contained in
their growth. The greatest rollback threat however, is the occupation
itself. It is a stark reminder to the aspiring progressive governments
and social movements in Latin American and the Caribbean that as far as
US imperialism is concerned the Monroe Doctrine is still in full effect
over its historically claimed “backyard”, and that there are limits to
the progressive reforms it is willing to tolerate. <br><br>
<b>Solidarity and Joint Struggle: What is to be done? <br><br>
</b>The US occupation is not just a problem for Haitians, and social
movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, it is and must be
understood as a problem for the progressive social movement within the US
itself. Sadly, the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) has been divided and
largely demobilized in relation to Haiti since the 2004 coup, in large
part due to differences over how to view, understand, and relate to Fanmi
Lavalas and President Aristide. Many have succumbed to accepting the
grave distortions and outright lies perpetuated by the US government and
right wing and ultra-left Haitian forces against President Aristide,
Fanmi Lavalas and the Lavalas Movement. This position ignores the popular
will of the Haitian masses and distorts the significant contributions of
the Lavalas movement and government towards the realization of a
participatory democracy and a people-centered path of economic and social
development as an alternative to neo-liberalism. Similar dynamics have
also occurred within Caribbean and Latino social movements within the US.
And for the most part Haiti and the UN, and now, US occupations hardly
register at all within the largely white dominated anti-war movement
(gaining even less attention than the ongoing occupation of Palestine).
Undoubtedly, racism, particularly the long-standing specter of the Black
hoards of Haiti, is at play in this sad scenario. <br><br>
This situation must change, and the varied forces of the Black Liberation
Movement must lead the way. The Haitian masses and popular movement
without question are and will continue to fight valiantly to end the US
occupation, but they cannot be left to fight on their own. It is
incumbent upon the forces of the Black Liberation Movement to organize a
multi-national and/or racial anti-imperialist initiative and coalition
within the US that fights for the immediate end of the US occupation and
the neo-liberal impositions it seeks to impose. The initiative must also
take a committed stand in support of the demands of the Haitian popular
movement that call for the return of Aristide, freedom for political
prisoners, reparations and restitution (particularly from France for the
brutal Indemnity imposed in 1824), and the cancellation of foreign debt
and the negation of their structural adjustment conditionalities. In
short, we must seize the opportunity to create our own script to counter
neo-liberalism and humanitarian interventionism in support of the
people’s struggle for self-determination and sovereignty in Haiti.
<br><br>
This initiative must be conceived as one of joint struggle. One that is
clear on the mutual and reinforcing self-interests of the social movement
in Haiti, with its peasant and working class base, and the social
movements in the US, and their multi-national, working class base, in the
context of the ever increasing interrelated and interdependent capitalist
world-system we live in. Our actions should not be contingent on charity
or (worse) pity. But a firm grasps that as the social movement in Haiti
goes, so goes the potential for the social movement in the US, for the
allowance of one tyranny is the spawn of a hundred more. As we gather our
forces to support the resistance of the Haitian people, and join with it
in common struggle against imperialism, we will appear as a new defiant
spirit and a force to be reckoned with. <br><br>
<i>Kali Akuno is based in Atlanta, GA and works as the Director of
Education, Training and Field Operations at the US Human Rights Network
(USHRN) and is in the process of writing a book about his experiences
organizing in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina
tentatively called “Witness to a Cleansing”. <br><br>
<br>
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