 In January, Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, was levelled by the largest earthquake in 240 years. The official death toll stands at over 230,000. Those left homeless number 2 million. The city’s infrastructure has been almost completely destroyed.
All over the world, ordinary people have reacted with concern and generosity but the response of the US, Haiti’s wealthy and powerful neighbour has been appalling.
President Barack Obama, who drew so effectively on his African heritage to help propel himself into power has delivered little but a slap in the face to the impoverished descendants of one of the greatest slave rebellions in history. The President’s initial pledge for Haiti was $US100 million. To put this amount in perspective, the US government has approved over $US130 billion to continue the murderous occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Haiti’s aid is equivalent to less than 0.1 per cent of this year’s war chest. In Afghanistan, Obama has pledged the equivalent of $US1.1 million per US soldier per year to escalate the occupation.
But how much of the aid is directly benefiting the population? Reports indicate very little. Instead of aid workers and health professionals, Obama has delivered an army of occupation.
Captain John Kirby, spokesman for the Joint Task Force Haiti, was forced to admit as much on 18 January. Of flights going into and out of the only functioning airport in the country, 50 per cent had been military, rather than civilian, he said. Jarry Emmanuel, air logistics officer for the UN’s World Food Program, thought the ratio higher, telling the New York Times that “most flights are for the US military”.
“The U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region.”On 18 January, the White House announced that over 11,000 military personnel “are on the ground or afloat”. The UN sent 4000 troops and police to join the 13,500 who were occupying the country prior to the quake. In the same press release, they revealed they had only 265 medical personnel in the country.
It took until 20 January – more than a week after the quake – for the US State Department to report that they planned to begin food distribution. Yet the amount of food they were to distribute would only “meet the immediate food needs of 18,670 families, or approximately 93,350 individuals”. That’s less than 5 per cent of the homeless population.
Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) had five planes carrying 85 tonnes of medical aid and equipment diverted by the US military. At the same time, hospitals lay in ruins with hundreds of medical staff crushed under the rubble. US doctor Mark Hyman told the Huffington Post how first medical amputations were occurring “without water, electricity, or disinfectant. They used a rusty hacksaw we washed with vodka, lit by camping headlamps in an empty room with a few boxes of supplies we had packed into our plane”.
There are now at least 250 open air camps in Haiti, where hundreds of thousands of people find shelter in cardboard boxes, and where residents are reduced to sucking on salt to keep away the hunger pains.
But the US is not only keeping aid from getting in, it is preventing desperate people from getting out. Writing in the American Socialist Worker, Rachel Cohen and Alan Maass describe a “ring of mighty warships” that surrounds Port-au-Prince. Their purpose is not to provide aid, but to intercept refugees:
“To underline the point, a US Air Force transport plane spends hours in the air above Haiti…broadcasting a radio statement in Creole from Haiti’s ambassador to the US, Raymond Joseph… ‘If you think you will reach the US and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case. And they will intercept you right on the water, and send you back home where you came from.’”
The US government claims that the military presence is needed because of “security concerns”. Riots, lawlessness and violence are spreading. Without the military presence, they say, all attempts to provide aid would prove futile.
Racist lies. This is the standard line that has been used to send shivers down backs ever since the liberation of the territory in 1804: “There’s blacks down there – and ain’t no-one controlling them!” The reality is – as you would expect in a situation where people need to band together to survive – much different.
Evan Lyon, a doctor with Partners in Health described in an interview with CommonDreams.org how, in the area where he operates, “There’s no UN guards. There’s no US military presence. There’s no Haitian police  presence. And there’s also no violence. There is no insecurity.”
Christian Science Monitor has reported how, immediately after the earthquake struck, makeshift camps for the homeless were constructed spontaneously. As the rich left the city, the poor organised themselves. At one such camp, Primatur Gardens,
“a self-appointed organising committee has completed a census of the camp…and created a crude camp ID card. Volunteers have been rounded up to perform everything from the menial – litter clean-up – to the specialised, like the nurse and medical student manning the camp’s makeshift clinic. When petty theft became a problem, a citizens’ patrol was set up and a 10pm curfew was set.”
One participant in the camp related their mood: “This is state property and we respected it… But once there was a disaster and the government vanished, it became the right of the people to occupy this property and use it.”
Report after report from people actually on the ground in Haiti have said the very same thing. No security issues. Period.
US imperial designsThe real reasons for the US giving priority to its military forces relates to its imperial interests in the region. George W. Bush, whose government backed the coup against leftist President Aristide in 2004, has been put in charge of fund-raising for Haiti by President Obama.
Bush reportedly warned of “shysters” who “show up and take advantage of people’s good will”. This is a very accurate description of the US with regard to the situation in Haiti. But Bush went on, stressing a focus not simply on aid, but “a strategic perspective, because it makes sense to have a stable democracy in our neighbourhood”.
Establishment think-tank the Heritage Foundation was pushing the same line: “The U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s…government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region.”
The US ruling class has traditionally seen Latin America as their “backyard”. Yet over the past twelve years, the election of governments hostile to US domination of the region has undermined US influence. In particular, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been attempting to form a regional trading block with the power to thwart US economic domination of its smaller trading partners. While the project has been only moderately successful, the anti-US rhetoric of leaders such as Chavez and President Evo Morales of Bolivia have provided a beacon for radicalising sections of the continent.
Combined with their social and economic programs which benefit the poor, their example is one that the US ruling class is loath to see replicated. In 2008, after Ecuador announced its intention to evict the US military from Manta air base, the US re-established the Fourth Fleet. Set up during World War II and afterwards disbanded, the fleet was designed to reinforce US naval supremacy in the Caribbean. With a number of free trade agreements thwarted, and several governments seeking to increase ties with China, US gunboat diplomacy is the order of the day. The US has also bolstered its land-based military presence in South America, last year signing a 10-year agreement with Colombia (which shares a border with Venezuela) for the use of seven military bases with the country.
Haiti fits into this broad strategic agenda. Haiti lies in the middle of waters that flow directly onto the beaches of US ally Colombia and foes Cuba and Venezuela. Haiti is so important to US plans the fifth-largest US embassy in the world was constructed there after the 2004 coup against Aristide. The pattern is the same wherever the US tries to settle accounts. From Iraq and Afghanistan to Haiti, public pronouncements of benevolence and humanity have been followed by the negation of all things decent. And bodies left crushed under the dead weight of imperialism.
Ben H |
