~becky
Nick Nesbitt
Haiti: one more shameful UN betrayal
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
-
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/peter-hallward>
-
- Peter Hallward <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/peter-hallward>
- The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian>, Tuesday 23
November 2010
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 John
Mekalanos<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39996103/ns/health-infectious_diseases>)
made up their minds to that effect several weeks ago.
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 little resistance
to – the disease. All the bacterial samples taken from Haitian patients are
identical and match a strain endemic in southern
Asia<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11669079>.
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,
journalists<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101028/ap_on_he_me/cb_haiti_disease_outbreak>visited
Mirebalais and found evidence that untreated waste from UN latrines
was pouring directly into an Artibonite tributary.
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.
Probably as a result of UN negligence, more than 1,200 people are already
dead <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11802488> 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.
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 presidential elections on 28
November<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11811338>.
Protesters have been met with tear gas and bullets; so far at least three
have been killed.
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.
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.
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 – 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 Fanmi
Lavalas<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanmi_Lavalas>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 prevent it.
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.
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.
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 Cité Soleil in
2005<http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/yearman/cite_soleil.htm>and
2006 <http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/1_21_7/1_21_7.html>, 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 January's
earthquake<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/haiti>
.
Today, cholera or no cholera, the UN's priority is to ensure that next
week's elections go
ahead<http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AF5L220101117>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.
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 barred from
participation in the election <http://ijdh.org/archives/13138> (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
turnout<http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46537>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.
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 Patrick
Elie<http://dizzyshambles.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/interview-with-veteran-activist-patrick-elie/>.
Properly managed, it may even provide an opportunity for rightwing
presidential candidates like Charles
Baker<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Henri_Baker>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.
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.
