Haiti earthquake aftermath

International wrestling for pawns

The magnitude seven earthquake in Haiti created a humanitarian disaster of immense complexity. It has been followed by a massive response, which riveted several nations worldwide. But what is really happening on backstage is Haiti becoming a stage for power wrestling. Rivalry between Brazil and US foreign policies are bubbling. China and Taiwan continue to use the Caribbean country in their churning game. Washington put his foot down and seems it will maintain its long-term opposition to Haiti's autonomy. Now these same countries claim they are together to rebuild it


By LUAN GALANI (luan.galani@wavemagazine.net)
from Curitiba, BRAZIL


With the most devastating earthquake of Haiti's history, Port-au-Prince razed to the ground and the humanitarian collapse that its population still endures, talks about rebuilding Haiti have never been so splenetic.

In general, when it comes to nation-building, it is a complex process that does not limit itself to raise the concrete that came down. That is not a chore only for civil engineers. That refers deeply to institutional reorganization. In the last decades, countries and organizations' aid has been vital. However, it is no rare when there are cross purposes - conflict between what external actors want and what the rebuilding nation wants.

- Haiti is the new stage for exhibition of interests and wrestling of the international system in a moment of redefinition of hierarchies - points out José Sombra Saraiva, professor of International Relations from University of Brasília.

Countries that came to earthquake victims assistance are not handling to protect the well-being of Haitians, especially women, children, and other vulnerable groups, as reported by Human Rights Watch while visiting 15 camps. The majority of settlements sheltering victims have zero security. These settlements hold up to 35,000 people each, and no one has formal responsibility for what happens inside or around them. Two women told of gang rapes but they had nowhere to report the assaults. In these cases, the 10,000 American soldiers did not show up.

US long-term interest

When it comes to US foreign policy in places such as Haiti, it is often difficult to believe that Washington would care about these countries and try to control their governments. "As any good chess player knows, pawns matter. The loss of a couple of pawns at the beginning of the game can often make a difference between a win or a loss", Mark Weisbrot said to 'The Guardian'.

Governments which see eye to eye on amplifying US power are beloved. Those who have other goals, are not US, together with Canada and France, had conspired openly for four years to overthrow Jean-Bertrand Aristide - Haiti's elected government. "They had cut off almost all international aid in order to destroy the economy and make the country ungovernable", accuses Weisbrot.

As the New York Times reported, while the US State department was telling Aristide that he had to reach an agreement with the political opposition (funded with millions of US taxpayers' dollars), the International Republican Institute was telling the opposition not to settle. US policy over the years also helped destroying Haitian agriculture, for example, by forcing the import of US rice and wiping out thousands of Haitian rice farmers.

Aristide, the country's first democratically elected president, was overthrown after just seven months in 1991, by military officers and death squads later discovered to be funded by the CIA. Emmanuel Constant, the leader of the most notorious death squad there - which killed thousands of Aristide's supporters after the coup - told CBS News that he, too, was funded by the CIA.

Now Aristide wants to return to his country, something that the majority of Haitians have demanded since the putsch he suffered. But the US and its fellows do not want it. Thus, René Préval government, which is completely beholden to Washington, has arbitrarily decided that Aristide's party will not be allowed to compete in the next elections.

Bald Eagle X Greenish Jaguar

Now US and Brazil rivalry is bubbling. The Brazilian General Floriano Peixoto, who is in charge of the UN's mission in Haiti (Minustah) affirms that a huge food distribution is being done to mark position in the Caribbean country. While there are 1,266 Brazilian soldiers in the country, the US have ten thousand - what suscitates suspicious, like with the three new American bases in Colombian Amazon Forest. But even with outnumbered troops, the greenish Jaguar was successful at pacifying Haiti. "We succeeded in overwhelming violent neighbourhoods where no other armies had managed to", Brazilian Colonel José Speck told to WAVE magazine.

The US has taken control of the airport and has denied several Brazilian army airplanes of landing. In addition, the worldwide renowned humanitarian aid group Médecins Sans Frontieres complained about one plane transporting its moveable hospital unity that was obliged by American military to change the route, passing firstly through Dominican Republic. It took 24 crucial hours.

Many specialists think it was done on purpose by the fact that the US deeply resent the changes in Brazilian foreign policy, as it became more independent with regard to the Middle East, Iran, and elsewhere. Brazil supports Manuel Zelaya in Honduras and the US not; Brazil supports Iran and the US not; and so on.

At the time of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil, foreign policy was drawn for Brazil to be the main Latin American representative. With Lula, it completely changed. It is clear that Brazil wants to hold the position of major representative of the undeveloped part of the world, what was even clearer in Lula's speech during COP-15.

However, different from what it looks at first sight, Brazil is not the naďve well intentioned actor in this play. Brazil surely does it as a big player it is in the international scenery, shielding human rights. But Brazil also wants to be a permanent member in the UN Security Council, and Haiti is the perfect tool for that to happen.

Churning relation with the red dragon

China, which is a veto-wielding permanent member in the UN Security Council, put impediments for the prolongation of the UN's mission since its creation in April 2004. The motive is that Haiti is one out of 26 countries that recognize and maintain diplomatic and commercial relations with Taiwan, considered by China a rebel province.

For 50 years, Taipei - Taiwan capital - invests heavily in Haiti, sending annually US$ 50 millions, applied into infrastructure and job creation. In exchange, Taipei requests total recognition and support in multilateral organisms and in the international community. But now China has also sent aid and soon it may request a different position from Haiti in diplomatic affairs.

First independent colony in America

When it was still called Santo Domingo, the most profitable French colony of the Caribbean was also the world's largest sugar producer in the 18th century. At that time, Haiti was already an earthquake victim. As the North-American historian James McClellan noted, there were about a hundred earthquakes between 1700 and 1793.

The island hosted one of the most brutal and violent slave systems in the Americas and about 90% of its population were slaves, as says the historian Keila Grinberg, professor at Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro. Not in vain, the country was the stage of the largest slave uprising of all times. That initiated in 1971 with the expulsion of the elite and culminated in its independence in 1804.

After that, Haiti was ruled by the slave descendants. But American countries with slavery labour could not stand diplomatic and commercial relations with a country governed by slave descendants. In Brazil, the upper-class lost its sleep because of that.

The US attitude to Haiti was masterly summarized by senator Thomas Hart Benton in 1825, as it is in this book. "We trade with them (Haiti), but no diplomatic relation was established between us. We are not going to take in as guest mulatto consuls, nor black embassadors. And why? Because the eleven estates peace can not be broken with the exhibition of fruits of a well-succeeded black insurrection". It is not a surprise, as Eduardo Galeano wrote in "The sins of Haiti" that the US recognized Haiti's independence only 58 years later. And that France had charged a heavy indemnity to do the same in 1825.

Where there is no peace, there are battles for it. Be it through arms, politics or diplomacy. But in Haiti, instead of fully helping, these three factors of the geopolitical game sometimes get mutually in the way of one another.



(Published: 10.03.2010.)