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
Peter Hallward
The Guardian,
Tuesday 23 November 2010
A A cholera
patient is treated in Saint Nicholas hospital, Haiti. Photograph: Joe
Raedle/Getty Images
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) 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.
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 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
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. 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
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 and 2006,
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.Today, cholera or no cholera, the UN's
priority is to ensure that next week's elections go ahead
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
(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
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. Properly
managed, it may even provide an opportunity for rightwing presidential
candidates like Charles 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.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/23/haiti-shameful-un-betrayal
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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