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The U.S., Canada and France colluded to undermine Aristide’s government and destroying the economy by withholding international aid and loans to Haiti from 2000 to 2004.

By Ghali Hassan - 16 February, 2010 Countercurrents.org

As Haitians began the grim task of burying their loved ones after the January earthquake, the U.S. military used the pretext of providing “humanitarian aid” to invade and occupied a defenceless Haiti. It is clear, Western “humanitarianism” has nothing to do with humanitarian aid, but much to do with U.S. imperialist exploitation and domination.

In order to understand Haiti’s current crisis, a brief history of the colonisation of Haiti is instructive:
The Island of Kiskeya was named Hispaniola by Christopher Columbus. Early European colonisation decimated the Island’s Taino indigenous population. Today, the Island is shared by the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic, which occupies the eastern two-thirds of the Island, receives heavy rainfall, has less deforestation and more fertile soils. In contrast, Haiti (Ayiti, land of high mountains), which occupies the western one-third of the Island, is dryer, more mountainous, mostly deforested (trees were cut-down and taken to France) and has less fertile soils.

The two nations are different today because of their different colonial history. The Dominican Republic was colonised by Spain, which imported few slaves, and allowed the nation to “develop” its economy and trade with the outside world. Haiti, on the other hand, was colonised by France, which imported large number of slaves and turned the nation into a large plantation, oppressed the inhabitants and destroyed the environment. As a result of this colonial history, Spanish is spoken by the people of the Dominican Republic, where as Creole (not French) is spoken by the people of Haiti.

In 1659, France established the colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti today) and began importing slaves from Africa to work on the sugar and coffee plantations, brutally exploiting them. In 1767, Haiti was the wealthiest colonised Caribbean nation. The “Jewel of the Antilles”, as it was known, Haiti was supplying two-thirds of all of Europe’s tropical products, such as, sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton. Today, Haiti is described – rather shamefully – as the “poorest country in the Americas” with degraded environment.

In the late 18th century, half a million African slaves under Toussaint L’Overture rose up against 30,000 white European slave masters and achieved a remarkable victory by defeating Napoleon legions. On 01 January 1804, Haiti was the first black republic to declare independence and effectively becoming the first non-slave republic in the Americas. France refused to recognise Haiti, but did two decades later. The U.S. continued to enslave the people of Haiti fearing that recognition of Haiti sovereignty will encourage slave revolution in the U.S. “The freedom of the negroes, if recognised in Saint Domingue [Haiti] and legalised by France would at all times be a rallying point for freedom-seekers of the New World”, said U.S. president Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson didn’t want to see Haiti succeed as an independent nation. At the end, the U.S. and France – supported by Britain, Spain and the Netherlands – colluded to undermine the revolution and destroy Haiti’s independence.

In 1825, France recognised Haiti, but only after Haiti agreed (forced) to pay France 90 million francs in gold as “retribution for liberty”. The French abolitionist Victor Schoelcher wrote at the time that the imposition of “an indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money that which they had already paid with their blood”. The payment was a loan with high interest that Haiti had to take in order to pay its odious debt. As a result, Haiti was indebted until 1947. It is estimated that France owes Haiti the equivalent of more than $21 billion today.

The impact of the debt repayments on Haiti was devastating. “By the end of the 19th century, payments to France consumed around 80 per cent of Haiti's budget”, writes Peter Hallward, a professor of Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University. France “extorted this money from Haiti by force and [...] should give it back to us so that we can build primary schools, primary healthcare, water systems and road’, said former president of Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The debt is used as an instrument of intimidation and exploitation of the country’s natural resources, including Haiti’s native forest and oil and gas reserves.

In 1915, U.S. Marines invaded and occupied Haiti under the guise of to “protecting Haitians” from themselves. Over the next two decades, Haiti was occupied by a murderous U.S military force that reinstated slavery, destroyed the nation’s constitution and siphoned off billions of Haiti’s wealth out of the country. In fact, the U.S. took over the nation’s treasury. More than 3,000 Haitians, mostly poor peasants were killed by the U.S. Marines.

While the U.S. occupation officially ended in 1934, the U.S. did not leave Haiti. The Marines left behind the “Garde d’Haiti”, a repressive force created to terrorise Haitians. Further, U.S. love affairs with murderous dictators, corrupt despots, killers and torturers ensured Haiti’s ongoing tragedy, enslavement and submission to U.S. diktat.

In 1957, Francois Duvalier (‘Papa Doc’) was elected president of Haiti and in 1964 he declared himself ‘president-for-life’. Duvalier ruled Haiti with brute force and terror. In 1971, Duvalier son, John-Claude Duvalier (‘Baby Doc’) was named ‘president-for-life’ at 19 years old and succeeded his father as president of Haiti. He plundered the national treasury and turned Haiti into a major drug trans-shipment stop. In 1983, a popular revolt against Duvalier rule began throughout Haiti. In 1986, John-Claude Duvalier fled Haiti to France on board of a U.S. C-141 Starlifter cargo plane taking with him hundreds of millions of dollars of Haiti’s reserve.

During the Duvalier murderous regime, Haiti was the ninth largest assembler of U.S. goods in the world where Haitians were paid near-starvation wages. The Duvalier despots left Haiti bankrupt, drowning in debt, “economically ravaged and bereft of functional political institutions”. Their 28-year brutal era was an era of “darkness”, and it remains a bloody era in Haiti’s history. The Duvalier despots were protected by the infamous Tonton Macoutes, the secret death squad. More than 50,000 Haitians were murdered during the Duvalier dictatorships. They were armed and backed by the U.S. and France against the people of Haiti.

The end of the Duvalier brutal regime did not end the U.S. control of Haiti. The U.S. continues its domination and control of Haiti using the United Nations (UN) as a fig-leaf to legitimise U.S. interference and in Haiti and ensuring the continuation of the repressive government.

On 16 December 1990, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a proponent of Liberation theology who was popular among the country’s poor majority, was elected President. His Fanmi Lavals Party won 67.5% of the counted popular vote. However, in September 1991, a U.S.-backed military coup d’état orchestrated by the CIA and USAID and led by General Raoul Cédras overthrew Aristide’s administration. Cédras’ Military Junta was a brutal military regime. Marc Bazin, a U.S. favourite thug and former Finance and Economy minister under Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship, who won 14.2% of the popular vote, was appointed prime minister by the Military Junta in June 1992. It was during this period (1991-1994) that a U.S.-backed political assassination campaign began leading to the murder of more than 5,000 Haitians and supporters of Aristide. Cédras remains unindicted criminal living in Panama.

In February 1993, a joint UN/OAS International Civilian Mission in Haiti (MICIVIH) was deployed to “monitor the human rights situation and to investigate violations” at the “request” of President Aristide to “resolve” the Haitian crisis. In September 1993, the United Nations Peacekeeping Operation in the Haiti (UNMIH) was established to monitor Aristide returns to rehabilitate the army and create new police force.

In 1994, President Aristide – demonised and discredited by Western media and U.S. corporate politicians – was reinstated president of Haiti by a U.S. military intervention (“Operation Restore Democracy”) after he succumbed to Bill Clinton’s demands and accepted a U.S. “blueprint for Haiti's economic development”. His return was designed to legitimise Washington’s neoliberal (“free market”) policies. After the withdrawal of U.S. military in 1996, USAID and U.S. corporations remained in charge of Haiti. In 1996, René Préval was elected president of Haiti, a rare moment in Haiti’s politics.

In July 1996 UNMIH was replaced by the UN Support Mission in Haiti (UNSMIH) with a mandate until May 1997. It was tasked with “assisting in the development and professionalization of the police”. In November 1997, UNSMIH was replaced by the UN Civilian Police Mission (MIPONUH) to March 2000. Following MIPONUH, the International Civilian Support Mission in Haiti (MICAH) was established in December 1999. Its mandate ended on 07 February 2001. While all these acronyms were authorised by the UN Security Council, they were serving U.S. imperialist interests, no Haiti’s interests.

In November 2000, Aristide was re-elected for a second five-year term by a landslide. The election of Aristide prompted the U.S. to impose economic sanctions on Haiti. The U.S., Canada and France colluded to undermine Aristide’s government and destroying the economy by withholding international aid and loans to Haiti from 2000 to 2004. Yet Haiti was required to pay interest on its debt, which left Haiti cash-strapped. More than 90 per cent of Haiti’s reserves were sent to Washington to pay for the odious debt which was linked to the Duvalier’s regime.

While the U.S. government continues ranting about giving “aid” to Haiti, U.S. aid to Haiti was not destined to the people of Haiti. Most of the aid money went to undermine the democratically-elected Aristide’s government and paid for the UN/U.S. occupation. It is a familiar trend that the U.S. employs around the world to undermine and destroy democratically-elected grassroots movements. Moreover, Aristide was never popular in Washington and was despised by the U.S. corporate class.

On the night of 28 February 2004, American CIA agents and members of the former Haitian military kidnapped the democratically-elected President Aristide and his American wife and hold them against their will. They were taken out of the country to the Central African Republic, and they were later forced into exile in South Africa. As he was in the Central African Republic, Aristide said: “I declare in overthrowing me they have uprooted the trunk of the tree of peace, but it will grow back because the roots are l’Ouverturian”. There is no doubt, one day Haitians will be free again.

On 29 February 2004 a U.S.-backed military coup d’état led by Guy Philippe and Louis-Jodel Chamblain, two of Haiti’s most notorious criminals, obliterated Haiti democracy and ignited a bloody campaign to liquidate Aristide’s supporters. It was a carefully staged military-CIA operation against the Aristide’s democratically-elected government. “We're grateful to the United States!” shouted Louis-Jodel Chamblain. Around the world, U.S.-backed military coups were “consistent with the long-standing pattern and priorities of imperial foreign policy” of the U.S., writes Peter Hallward.

Guy Philippe was a former Haitian military officer, who received training at a U.S. military base in Ecuador. He joined the police as police chief of Delmas and Cap-Haitian in Port-au-Prince after the Haitian army was demobilised. He was known by the U.S. embassy as a criminal and drug trafficker. In March 2006 by the International Tribunal on Haiti found Guy Philippe and Louis-Jodel Chamblain guilty of master-minding massacres, carried out by paramilitary gunmen under their command on Haiti's Central Plateau between 2002 and 2004.
 

Chamblain, a former death-squad member and convicted assassin, was the vice-president of the CIA-created and armed Front for the Advancement and Progress in Haiti (Front Révolutionnaire Armé pour le Progrès d’Haiti, [FRAPH]).

FRAPH was a notorious death squad involved in terrorising and murdering pro-democracy Haitians during the first military coup against Aristide (1991-1994). Thousands of innocent Haitians were murdered and hundreds of thousands fled the country to the Dominican Republic and elsewhere. FRAPH leader, the former paramilitary thug, Emmanuel ‘Toto’ Constant was guilty of crimes against humanity, including participating in the Raboteau Massacre in 1994, rape and torture. In 2008, Constant was living in safe haven New York when a Brooklyn jury found him guilty of mortgage fraud and grand larceny and sentenced him to 12-37 years in prison. It was evident how much the U.S. really cares about human rights violations.

It is important to note that, while Aristide was not a saint, he was never violent. A Gallup poll in 2002 showed that Aristide by far Haiti’s most popular and trusted leader. The Airside’s government was a progressive government and worked to better the lives of Haiti’s poor majority. According to the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA): ‘Under Aristide, for the first time in the republic's tortured history, Haiti seemed to be on the verge of tearing free from the fabric of despotism and tyranny which had smothered all previous attempts at democratic expression and self-determination’ (Cited in Chomsky, N. (1993). Year 501: The Conquest Continues, Verso, p. 209). It was the end of a short-lived democracy in Haiti.

On 29 February 2004, the UN Security Council authorised the creation of the Multinational Interim Force (MIF) to provide “security”. On 09 March 2004, the U.S. installed a puppet government and Gérard Latortue, an expatriate and a supporter of the military coup was appointed as Haiti’s prime minister to serve U.S. imperialist interests.

On 30 April 2004, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was established, and Haiti was re-occupied by some 7,500 Brazilian troops on behalf of the U.S. Like its predecessors, MINUSTAH which began its mission in June 2004 has been marred by scandals of killings, rape, and other violence [against Haitians] by its troops almost since it began, according to a report by the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the University of Miami.

In short, the history of Haiti’s’ struggle against Western imperialism is long. The last few hundred years have seen the people of Haiti colonised, enslaved, exploited, oppressed, massacred, liberated themselves, invaded, occupied and terrorised. Today, Haiti remains very poor, lacks adequate healthcare services, education and vital infrastructure. And unlike its small neighbours (e.g., Cuba, Jamaica and Dominican Republic), Haiti is unprepared and lacks the capacity to deal with natural disasters.

The estimated death toll from the January earthquake remains at over 230,000, with many more wounded and some two million left homeless. Around three million Haitians – more than a third of the country's population – have been affected by the earthquake. Some 500,000 people will be moved to camps outside the capital of Port-au-Prince.

The UN estimates that at least two million Haitians need immediate food assistance and shelter. The UN says it will need enough food to feed some two million people for at least fifteen days. Distribution of food aid has been limited. The World Food Program (WFP) had reached about 200,000 in Port-au-Prince and 113,000 in other areas. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are still in need of food and shelters. Displaced Haitians living in tent cities around the capital Port-au-Prince say they have nothing to eat. Media reports revealed dire shortages of food and medical supplies amidst fears the conditions will encourage the outbreaks of preventable diseases. Meanwhile Brazilian forces with the UN mission to Haiti (MINUSTAH) fired tear gas at desperate Haitians crowding a relief centre with scarce food aid.

Bill Quigley of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, who was in Haiti recently, said: “You can walk down many of the streets of Port-au-Prince and see absolutely no evidence that the world community has helped Haiti. Twenty three days after the earthquake jolted Haiti and killed over 200,000 people; as many as a million people have still not received any international food assistance. Over a million people are displaced. About 10,000 families are in tents, the rest are living under sheets, blankets and tarps [...] Haiti and the United Nations estimate 250,000 children under the age of 7 are living in temporary housing. Most need vaccinations”.

The U.S. response to the earthquake disaster has been another case of American hypocrisy. Few hours after the earthquake struck Haiti, the right-wing think-tank, the American Heritage Foundation declared: “Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S. In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the image of the United States in the region”. In other words, the earthquake disaster is an opportunity for the U.S. ruling elites to reshape Haiti in the way they want to see Haiti, as an impoverished nation with labour costs still lower than those in Bangladesh. James Robbins, a special envoy to Haiti under President Bill Clinton, declared that, “breaking up or at least reorganizing the government-controlled telephone monopoly. The same goes with the Education Ministry, the electric company, the Health Ministry and the courts”.

It is important to remember that Haiti remains an American plantation and a giant sweatshop. Haitians have been exploited to the point of starvation to produce product for U.S. market. As the reporter John Pilger writes: “When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing, binding machines at the Port-au-Prince Superior Baseball Plant. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pyjamas, for next to nothing. The US controls Haiti's sugar, bauxite and sisal. Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, [destroying domestic rice farming], driving people into the cities and towns and jerry-built housing. Year after year, Haiti was invaded by U.S. marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their specialty from the Philippines to Afghanistan”. American ruling elites think they own Haiti. They see Haiti as part of U.S. “sphere of influence” and must remain oppressed and poor.

The U.S. government response to the earthquake disaster was to send in the U.S. Marines, the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and other military forces to occupy the country for the fourth time since 1915, using the so-called “security” as pretext to justify an outright illegal invasion of defenceless and traumatised nation. The military occupation of Haiti is an illegal military occupation and cannot be justified by natural disaster and security. It is an assault on the nation’s national sovereignty. Moreover, the full-scale U.S. naval blockade is designed to prevent Haitian refugees from reaching U.S. shores. It makes the U.S. argument of “providing aid” to Haiti rings hallow.

The media response to the disaster in Haiti is normal and consistent with Western media role in perpetuating Western propaganda. In the case of Haiti, the media overlooked the man-made disasters and the struggle of the people of Haiti against ongoing Western interference in their nation’s affairs. Instead, Haitians are portrayed by the media only from the side they did not cause, and as if they are responsible for the situation they are in today. Demonising Haitians and painting “Haiti as a tinderbox ready to explode” is an outright racism and part of Western imperialism. The Western cliché of “we are good-hearted and they [Haitians] are looters and criminals” is devoid of moral responsibility and truthfulness. As always, the Zionist-controlled BBC takes the credit. “Anything will do as a weapon: a hacksaw, a stick, and of course all the machetes and guns that you cannot see. Patience is running out and all the ingredients for unrest now exit: a whole city of destitute hoping for help, and at the same time you have a substantial criminal element and a history of violence. None of this bodes well for Haiti. If the anarchy spreads, the US troops may soon find themselves patrolling the streets in what will look like a full-scale military operation”, wrote the BBC most bigoted and warmongering journalist, Matt Frei (BBC News, 19 January 2010). Frei is a chronic liar and lacks moral principles to expose his own country (Britain) criminal role in perpetuating and aiding violence around the world.

“There are no security issues”, said Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health who works in the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince. He told Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow on 20 January 2010, “I don’t know if you guys were out late last night, but you can hear a pin drop in this city. It’s a peaceful place. There is no war. There is no crisis except the suffering that’s ongoing [...] But the first [thing] that listeners need to understand is that there is no insecurity here. There has not been, and I expect there will not be. This question of security and the rumours of security and the racism behind the idea of security has been our major block to getting aid in. The U.S. military has promised us for several days to bring in machinery, but they’ve been listening to this idea that things are insecure, and so we don’t have supplies”.

Natural disasters have become one of the major pretexts for U.S. military invasion and for U.S. capitalist corporations to move in to profit from the disasters in what is described as “Disaster Capitalism”. In other words, disasters provide the opportunity to impose Western neoliberal policies and spread poverty. It is important to remember that in 2008, Myanmar (Burma) – devastated by Cyclone Nargis – refused to accept Western military infringe on its sovereignty disguised as “humanitarian aid”. The Myanmar regime rightly accused Washington and its Western allies of using the disaster as a pretext to seize the geostratigicaly important and resources-rich nation. The “humanitarianism” pretext failed because Myanmar was not a defenceless nation and therefore did not qualify for Western “humanitarian” invasion. In 2003, Iraq did qualify, and was deliberately destroyed in the most barbaric fashion by the Anglo-American fascist forces.

The U.S. military occupation of Haiti’s main airport (Toussaint L’Overture Airport) in Port-au-Prince hampered serious humanitarian traffic and needlessly caused the death of thousands of people trapped beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince and Léogane. Only few search and rescue teams from Cuba, Iceland, Venezuela and China were able to move swiftly to provide aid to the people of Haiti and entered Haiti before the occupation of the airport and the U.S. decision to re-route relief flights to the Dominican Republic. Indeed, more than 400 Cuban doctors and healthcare professional are working in 227 of Haiti’s 337 communes, offering free health services to the Haitian people. Assistance from these and other small nations remains underreported in Western media.

A large number of rescue organizations and charities accuse the U.S. military of denying them landing rights to provide necessary medicines, food and water to the millions of Haitians stricken, injured and homeless. Haiti’s capital “looks more like the Green Zone in Baghdad than a centre for aid distribution”, reported Al-Jazeera on 17 January 2010 from Port-au-Prince. “These weapons they bring, they are instruments of death. We don’t want them. We don’t need them. We are a traumatized people. What we want from the international community is technical help. Action, not words”, unidentified Haitian citizen told Al-Jazeera.
The Geneva-based charity Médecins Sans Frontières criticised U.S. takeover of Haiti’s main airport, saying hundreds of lives were being put at risk as planes carrying vital medical supplies were being turned away by American air traffic controllers. The Spanish aid group, Intervención, Ayuda y Emergencias, in Port-au-prince denounced the U.S. militarisation of the earthquake. The UN World Food Programme (UNWFP) plane carrying food, medicine and water for three days was blocked from landing because the U.S. military gave priority to flights ferrying U.S. troops and equipment and evacuating Americans living in Haiti.
The label “humanitarian” was used even when the U.S. and British governments were murdering innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Haiti earthquake is another example of a disaster as an opportunity for Western governments to claim the moral high ground. The corporate media concentration on rescued individuals by Western-based charities and NGOs is nothing more than PR designed to mislead the public at home.

To accept Western “humanitarian aid” as valid is to be deluded to the point of mental incapacity. Western aid in time of disaster has become a propaganda instrument. While most Western governments and corporate media are using the Haiti earthquake disaster to claim the moral high ground, they are supporting Israel’s murderous regime besieging and terrorising 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. In addition, during the Israeli criminal attack on Gaza last year when more than 1,400 innocent Palestinians (a third of them children) were viciously and brutally murdered by Israeli forces, most Western governments not only turned a blind eye, they applauded Israel’s “right to defend itself” against defenceless population. The Zionist propaganda organ, the BBC, refused to air an appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee to aid the Palestinians because it will offend Israel.

Even Israel – an exclusionary Zionist colony which has for long persecuting and dispossessing the Palestinian people and claims self-righteousness – is quick to use the Haiti’s disaster to enhance its fabricated image and cover-up its war crimes against the Palestinians. While Israel continues on daily basis to dispossess, starve and murder Palestinians in cold blood, the Zionist media are busy glorifying Israel and promoting Israel’s manufactured image. How can Israel claim morality while Palestinians are denied access to food and drinking water? Israel has no concerns for human life. It is using the Haiti’s disaster as a PR operation. The “Haiti’s disaster is good for the Jews”, read the headline in the Hebrew daily Maariv. The ongoing persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people prove Israel lacks moral principles. As it has been doing for the last six decades, Israel is exploiting the suffering of people for its own benefit. For example, Israel often invokes the Nazi holocaust to justify its racist and murderous policies by turning past Jewish suffering into an extortion racket. The Israeli Ha’aretz newspaper and YNet media reported that Israeli leaders are preparing to use today (Wednesday, 27/01/2010) – “the holocaust remembrance day” – to discredit the Goldstone Report. If Israel is concern for human lives and morality, Israel should open the Gaza Concentration Camp and allows the Palestinians to breathe the air of freedom.

Finally, the appointment of former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to head the fundraising “efforts” in Haiti is an insult to human morality. Both, Clinton and Bush played their parts in Haiti’s man-made disasters. How can they be trusted to help black Haitians? Both war criminals were responsible for the premeditated murder of more than 2 million innocent Iraqi men, women and children. Clinton, in particular was responsible for the death of more than 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, callously justified by his administration as “a price that was worth it”. In addition, Clinton and Bush were responsible for the wanton destruction of the nations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. Their appointment to help earthquake-stricken Haiti is mind-baffling.

The January earthquake is just the latest of natural disasters compounded and worsened by man-made disasters to devastate Haiti. While the people of Haiti showed resilience, courage and capacity to survive, ongoing Western interference in Haiti’s affairs undermines Haiti’s ability to recover from the earthquake disaster.

The situation in Haiti today is the result of centuries of imperialist domination, isolation, occupation and economic strangulation by the U.S. and France. “Haiti is a net product of the colonial, capitalist and imperialist system imposed on the world. Haiti's slavery and subsequent poverty were imposed from abroad”, writes former Cuban President, Fidel Castro. In 2008, Haiti’s total foreign debt was $1.4 billion, or 40% of its GNP. In 2009, Haiti debt service payments to its creditors amounted to $50.9 million. These payments are hindering Haiti’s ability to build adequate education system, healthcare services and vital infrastructure. This odious debt is the primary factor in Haiti’s ongoing poverty.

“It is uncontested that poverty is the main cause of the horrific death toll: the product of teeming shacks and the absence of health and public infrastructure. But Haiti's poverty is treated as some baffling quirk of history or culture, when in reality it is the direct consequence of a uniquely brutal relationship with the outside world — notably the US, France and Britain — stretching back centuries”, writes Seumas Milne (Guardian.co.uk, 20 January, 2010).

Thirty years ago, Haiti was self-sufficient in stable rice and exported surplus rice and sugar. Today, Haiti is not only importing all of its rice and sugar, but unable to feed its people. The U.S. uses Haiti as a dumping ground for cheap U.S. subsidised agricultural products which has destroyed Haiti agriculture and forced its farmers into destitute. According to a 2008 study by UNWFP, about 75% of Haiti’s population (4.5 million people) lives on less than $2 per day, and 56% live on less than $1 per day. In other words, the majority of the Haitian people (80%) live in abject poverty.

“The collapse of the Haitian nation resides at the feet of France and America, especially. These two nations betrayed, failed, and destroyed the dream that was Haiti; crushed to dust in an effort to destroy the flower of freedom and the seed of justice […] The sudden quake has come in the aftermath of summers of hate. In many ways the quake has been less destructive than the hate”, writes Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, principal of the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies.

In time of desperation, Haiti needs all the aid it can get. The first action must start with the abolition of Haiti’s billion-dollar odious debt. Haiti is in need of grants to build its healthcare services, its education and its civilian infrastructure.

The capability of the people of Haiti to surmount the aftermath of natural disasters and build their nation can only be strengthened by the withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign military forces from Haiti. Support to the people of Haiti must include opposing Western governments' use of humanitarian aid in natural disasters as pretext to enforce U.S. imperialist exploitation and domination.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.

The UN estimates that at least two million Haitians need immediate food assistance

and shelter. The UN says it will need

enough food to feed some two million people for at least fifteen days.

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