[R-G] Hurricanes and Floods Savage Haiti: What is the UN's Responsibility?

[Anthony Fenton]

From: K M Ives <kives at toast.net>

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                             HAITI LIBERTE
                   "Justice. Verite. Independance."

                    * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                       September 10 - 16, 2008
                             Vol. 2, No. 8


HURRICANES AND FLOODS SAVAGE HAITI:
WHAT IS THE U.N.'S RESPONSIBILITY?
by Kim Ives

In the past month, Haiti has been struck or grazed by four tropical storms 
or hurricanes: Fay, Gustav, Hanna, and this past weekend, Ike. Almost every 
corner of the island is now in a state of emergency and desperation.

Gustav flooded the southern cities of Jacmel, Cayes, and Jeremie, while 
Hanna flooded the northern cities of Gonaives, Port-de-Paix, Mirebalais and 
Hinche. In Gonaives alone, more than 500 people have been killed, with the 
death toll rising.

Over the weekend, Ike killed some 60 people in the town of Cabaret, just 
north of the capital. Three bridges on the road to the north have been 
washed away. Food, water, medicines and other relief supplies can only 
arrive, slowly, by sea or air.

Thousands are wounded, sick from dampness or homeless. They face post-flood 
disease and hunger due to the crops washed away or polluted by water 
brimming with sewage and the bloated carcasses of drowned livestock and 
humans.

The cruelest irony of this escalating tragedy is that Haiti is militarily 
occupied by the United Nation's Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH). The 
mission costs over $600 million a year to pay 9,000 soldiers from countries 
like Brazil, Jordan, China, and Sri Lanka to drive around in armored 
vehicles pointing their guns at starving Haitians in an attempt to project 
an image of strength and authority.

In September 2004, four years ago, when the mission was only six months old, 
some 2000 people were killed when Gonaives was flooded following the passage 
of Tropical Storm Jeanne. Since that time, the MINUSTAH has spent over $2 
billion repressing and intimidating Haitians rather than building dykes, 
canals, sturdy housing, and roads, or reforesting and terracing mountains, 
measures that could have averted, or at least mitigated, the catastrophe we 
now see unfolding.

Indeed, in his May 2006 inauguration address, President Rene Preval called 
on the U.N. "to turn its tanks into bulldozers." U.N. officials scoffed at 
the proposal: "MINUSTAH is not a development agency," sniffed Edmond Mulet, 
then MINUSTAH's head, in response. Today's MINUSTAH chief, Hedi Annabi, 
described Haiti this week as "hell on earth."

The comparisons with neighboring Cuba are stark. All the storms intensified 
and struck that island with even more force - 150 mile an hour winds, in the 
case of Gustav, leveling over 100,000 homes - like "a nuclear bomb," said 
Fidel Castro. But only one person was killed.

Over 10 more storms are predicted for this hurricane season. As the case of 
Cuba proves, a nation, however poor, must control its own destiny and be 
able to marshal its own resources, pursue its own development policies, and 
make its own storm preparations. This sovereignty is the only defense 
against the hurricanes now ravaging Haiti.

The first free nation of Latin America is today a military protectorate, 
virtually recolonized. The U.N. generals and administrators that oversee 
Haitian affairs as proxies for Washington, Paris and Ottawa, will never have 
Haiti's best interests or popular will at heart. These imperialists ignore 
and, if they become too troublesome, overthrow Haiti's elected leaders. As a 
result, MINUSTAH is now scrambling to respond clumsily and inadequately to a 
crisis for which it is largely responsible through its resource-diverting, 
development-suppressing and democracy-repressing existence.