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<h1><font size=6 color="#C00000"><b>Haiti: one more shameful UN
betrayal</b></font></h1><font face="arial" size=2>Cholera is just the
latest disaster to be linked to the UN in Haiti and the election won't
change the nature of the mission</font>
<ul>
<ul>
<li><font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689"><b>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/peter-hallward">Peter
Hallward</a></b></font><font face="arial" size=2> </font>
<li><font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian">The
Guardian</a></font><font face="arial" size=2>, Tuesday 23 November 2010
<li>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/23/haiti-shameful-un-betrayal" eudora="autourl">
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/23/haiti-shameful-un-betrayal</a>
</ul>
</ul>Almost everyone now accepts that the United Nations brought cholera
to Haiti last month. The evidence is overwhelming and many experts
(including the head of Harvard University's microbiology department,
cholera specialist
</font>
<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39996103/ns/health-infectious_diseases">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">John
Mekalanos</a></font><font face="arial" size=2>) made up their minds to
that effect several weeks ago.<br>
<br>
Poverty and a lack of rudimentary infrastructure compels much of Haiti's
population to drink untreated water, but there has been no cholera there
for decades. Haitians have no experience with and therefore litttle
resistance to the disease. All the bacterial samples taken froom
Haitian patients are identical and
</font><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11669079">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">match a strain endemic in
southern Asia</a></font><font face="arial" size=2>. Cholera broke out in
Nepal over the summer, and in mid-October a new detachment of Nepalese UN
troops arrived at their Haitian base in Mirebalais, near the Artibonite
river. A few days later Haitians living downstream of the base started to
get sick and the disease spread rapidly throughout the region. On 27
October,
</font>
<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101028/ap_on_he_me/cb_haiti_disease_outbreak">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">journalists</a></font>
<font face="arial" size=2> visited Mirebalais and found evidence that
untreated waste from UN latrines was pouring directly into an Artibonite
tributary.<br>
<br>
By early November, Mekalanos couldn't see "any way to avoid the
conclusion that an unfortunate and presumably accidental introduction of
the organism occurred" as a result of UN troops. Mekalanos and
others also refute UN claims that identification of the source should be
a low public health priority.<br>
<br>
Probably as a result of UN negligence,
</font><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11802488">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">more than 1,200 people are
already dead</a></font><font face="arial" size=2> and 20,000 infected,
and the toll is set to rise rapidly over the coming weeks. So is the
number and intensity of popular protests against this latest in a series
of UN crimes and misadventures in Haiti in recent years, which include
scores of killings and hundreds of alleged rapes.<br><br>
Rather than examine its role in the epidemic, however, the UN mission has
opted for disavowal and obfuscation. UN officials have refused to test
Nepalese soldiers for the disease or to conduct a public investigation
into the origins of the outbreak. Rather than address the concerns of an
outraged population, the agency has preferred to characterise the fresh
wave of protests as a "politically motivated" attempt to
destabilise the country in the runup to
</font><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11811338">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">presidential elections on 28
November</a></font><font face="arial" size=2>. Protesters have been met
with tear gas and bullets; so far at least three have been killed.<br>
<br>
So far, in fact, so normal. The truth is that the whole UN mission in
Haiti is based on a violent, bald-faced lie. It says it is in Haiti to
support democracy and the rule of law, but its only real achievement has
been to help transfer power from a sovereign people to an unaccountable
army.<br>
<br>
To understand this requires a little historical knowledge. The basic
political problem in Haiti, from colonial through post-colonial to
neo-colonial times, has always been much the same: how can a tiny and
precarious ruling class secure its property and privileges in the face of
mass destitution and resentment? The Haitian elite owes its privileges to
exclusion, exploitation and violence, and only quasi-monopoly control of
violent power allows it to retain them. This monopoly was amply
guaranteed by the US-backed Duvalier dictatorships through to the mid
1980s, and then rather less amply by the military dictatorships that
succeeded them (1986-90). But the Lavalas mobilisation for democracy,
which began in the 1980s, threatened that monopoly and with it those
privileges. In such a situation, only an army can be relied upon to
guarantee the security of the status quo.<br>
<br>
Haiti's incompetent but vicious armed forces, established as a delegate
of US power, dominated the country for most of the 20th century. After
surviving a brutal military coup in 1991, Haiti's first democratically
elected government led by president Jean-Bertrand Aristide fi finally
demobilised this hated army in 1995; the great majority of his
compatriots celebrated the occasion. Lawyer Brian Concannon recalls it as
"the most important step forward for human rights since emancipation
from France". In 2000, Aristide was re-elected, and his
</font><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanmi_Lavalas">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">Fanmi
Lavalas</a></font><font face="arial" size=2> party won an overwhelming
majority. This re-election raised the prospect, for the first time in
modern Haitian history, of genuine political change in a situation in
which there was no obvious extra-political mechanism no army to
prevrevent it.<br><br>
The tiny Haitian elite and their allies in the US, France and Canada were
threatened by the prospect of popular empowerment, and took elaborate
steps to undermine the Lavalas government.<br>
<br>
In February 2004, Aristide's second administration was overthrown in
another disastrous coup, conducted by the US and its allies with support
from ex-Haitian soldiers and rightwing leaders of the Haitian business
community. A US puppet was imposed to replace Aristide, in the midst of
savage reprisals against Lavalas supporters. Since no domestic army was
available to guarantee "security", a UN "stabilisation
force" was sent in at the behest of both the US and France.<br>
<br>
The UN has been providing this substitute army ever since. At the behest
of the US and its allies, it arrived in Haiti in June 2004. Made up of
troops and police drawn from countries all over the world, it operates at
an annual cost that is close to twice the size of Aristide's entire
pre-coup budget. Its main mission, in effect, has been to pacify the
Haitian people, and make them accept the coup and the end of their
attempt to establish genuine democratic rule. Few Haitians are likely to
forget what the UN has done to accomplish this. Between 2004 and 2006, it
participated in a campaign of repression that killed more than a thousand
Lavalas supporters. It laid siege to the destitute pro-Aristide
neighbourhood of CitΓ© Soleil in
</font>
<a href="http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/yearman/cite_soleil.htm">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">2005</a></font>
<font face="arial" size=2> and
</font><a href="http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/1_21_7/1_21_7.html">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">2006</a></font>
<font face="arial" size=2>, and has subsequently contained or dispersed
popular protests on issues ranging from political persecution and
privatisation to wages and food prices. In the last few months the UN has
also kept a lid on the growing pressure in the capital, Port-au-Prince,
for improvement in the intolerable conditions still endured by about 1.3
million people left homeless after
</font><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/haiti">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">January's
earthquake</a></font><font face="arial" size=2>.<br>
<br>
Today, cholera or no cholera, the
</font><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AF5L220101117">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">UN's priority is to ensure that
next week's elections go ahead</a></font><font face="arial" size=2> as
planned. For Haiti's elite and their international allies, these
elections offer an unprecedented opportunity to bury the Lavalas project
once and for all.<br>
<br>
The political programme associated with Lavalas and Aristide remains
overwhelming popular. After six years of repression and infighting,
however, the political leadership of this popular movement is more
divided and disorganised than ever. Fanmi Lavalas itself has simply been
</font><a href="http://ijdh.org/archives/13138">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">barred from participation in
the election</a></font><font face="arial" size=2> (with hardly a whisper
of international protest), and from his involuntary exile in South
Africa, Aristide has condemned the ballot as illegitimate. Many if not
most of the party's supporters are likely to back its vigorous call to
boycott this latest masquerade, as they did in the spring of 2009, when
</font><a href="http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46537">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">turnout</a></font>
<font face="arial" size=2> for senate elections was less than 10%. This
time around, however, half a dozen politicians associated with Lavalas
have chosen to run as candidates in their own name. They are likely to
split the vote. Haiti's people will be deprived of what has long been
their most powerful political weapon their ability to win genuine
elections.<br>
<br>
Since it is almost guaranteed to have no significant political impact,
this is one election that might well achieve its intended result: to
reinforce the "security" (and inequity) of the status quo,
along with the many profitable opportunities that a suitably secured
post-disaster Haiti continues to offer international investors and its
business elite. "This will be an election for nothing," says
veteran activist
</font>
<a href="http://dizzyshambles.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/interview-with-veteran-activist-patrick-elie/">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">Patrick
Elie</a></font><font face="arial" size=2>. Properly managed, it may even
provide an opportunity for rightwing presidential candidates like
</font><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Henri_Baker">
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#005689">Charles
Baker</a></font><font face="arial" size=2> to pursue the goal that has
long been at the top of their agenda: restoration, with the usual
"international supervision", of Haiti's own branch of the
imperial army.<br>
<br>
And if that comes to pass, then when the UN eventually leaves Haiti its
departure may only serve as a transition from one occupying force to
another, reversing decades of popular sacrifice and political effort. In
the meantime, though, it looks as if the UN may soon have more
opportunities than ever before to fulfil its mission in Haiti. <br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
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