Haiti ’s elite eyes profits as millions face disease and hunger

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Haiti’s elite eyes profits as millions face disease and hunger
By Bill Van Auken
16 February 2010

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” Georges Sassine, president of
Haiti’s manufacturers association, told the Washington Post.

“This is what the earthquake is today—an opportunity, a huge
opportunity,” added Reginald Boulos, described by the Post Monday as
the owner of a “small empire” of supermarkets, a hotel and a car
dealership. “I think we need to give the message that we are open for
business. This is really a land of opportunities.”

Meanwhile, “US firms have begun jockeying for a bonanza of cleanup
work,” the Miami Herald reported last week, adding that “At least two
politically connected US firms have enlisted powerful local allies in
Haiti to help compete for the high-stakes business.”

One of them, AshBritt, won a $900 million federal contract for
clean-up in post-Katrina New Orleans, thanks in large part to its
connections with powerful lobbyists, including Haley Barbour, the
Mississippi governor and former Republican Party chairman.

Now these companies are sealing deals with Haitian businessmen and
wooing the country’s politicians to win contracts that will no doubt
soak up much of the international aid that has been offered to rebuild
Haiti.

Even before the earthquake, Haiti was the poorest country in the
Western Hemisphere, as well as one of the most unequal, with 80
percent of the population living in poverty, 70 percent unemployed and
fully half somehow surviving on $1 or less a day.

Now, the catastrophe seems certain to widen the already immense gap
between wealth and poverty that is the central characteristic of
Haitian society.

Haiti’s wealthy ruling elite—together with US-based corporations—are
salivating over the prospects for increased riches and big profits off
of post-earthquake reconstruction as millions of working class and
poor people are facing the threat of starvation and infectious
epidemics that could easily push an already horrendous death toll up
by hundreds of thousands more.

Rain fell again on Port-au-Prince Sunday, creating even more hellish
conditions for the more than half a million people crowded into the
capital’s makeshift camps, most with little more than a sheet to
shield them from the elements. Across the country, there are an
estimated 1.5 million people who have been made homeless.

The most recent report from the United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warns that hundreds of
thousands of the homeless are at risk with the approach of the rainy
season. Among them are the 25,000 encamped on a golf course in
Petionville, the largest such settlement. The UN agency described the
densely populated camp as “one of the most vulnerable sites for
epidemics and flooding,” warning that “A large number of shelters are
on unstable slopes and heavy rains will cause them to slide.”

Distribution of emergency shelter materials has been agonizingly slow.
“As of 11 February, over 49,000 tarps have been distributed along with
23,000 family size tents,” OCHA reported. The Haitian government has
insisted that its most urgent need is 200,000 tents—nearly 10 times
the number distributed thus far.

Given these conditions, the prospect that many more will die is
growing. The biggest cause of death in the camps now is acute
respiratory infection, according to the report. Many who suffered
traumatic injuries in the quake are recovering in the camps, where the
lack of sanitation and shelter pose the danger that they will fall
victim to deadly infections. There is the wider threat that malaria
and dengue, which are normally widespread in Haiti during the rainy
season, will become rampant along with other infectious illnesses,
under the miserable conditions to which millions have been condemned.

While aid agencies have established a more regularized system for food
distribution, adequate supplies are still not reaching those affected.
“The food security situation, which was already precarious prior to
the earthquake, is getting worse,” said an OCHA spokeswoman

There is growing frustration among the Haitians over the continued
failure to deliver sufficient aid of any kind to the vast majority of
the people. Within the past several days this has broken out into
angry protests, aimed at Haitian government officials as well as
foreign agencies and leaders, including former US President Bill
Clinton, designated as the UN’s special envoy to the country.

Also frustrated are many of the relief workers, who continue to point
to the failure to swiftly move large amounts of supplies that have
piled up at the Port-au-Prince airport, which has been under the
control of the US military since the day after the January 12 earthquake.

An article published in the Miami Herald Monday provided a graphic
indication of this situation.

“A United Nations tally showed aid groups had distributed some 20,000
mats to Haiti earthquake survivors on a recent day—but more than 35
times as many sat in a warehouse,” the Herald reported.

“Some 32,000 tarps had been delivered by last Sunday, but 104,132 more
sat in storage while tens of thousands of quake victims strung up
sheets to create makeshift housing.”

Eric Klein, founder of the relief group CAN-DO, which is active in
Haiti, told the Herald, “There’s no excuse for medical supplies
sitting in a warehouse five minutes from a hospital where they are
doing amputations and giving people ibuprofen for the pain.”

A correspondent for the Venezuelan television network teleSur reported
that food being distributed from the airport is reaching the Haitian
population already spoiled for being kept so long in the heat.

Doctors, relief workers and officials of a number of governments have
blamed the militarization of the response to the earthquake by the US
government for delaying aid, particularly in the crucial first two
weeks after the disaster struck.

Some 22,000 US soldiers, sailors and Marines were dispatched to the
Caribbean nation, with combat-equipped troops taking control of the
airport, port facilities and presidential palace. Meanwhile, naval
warships and Coast Guard cutters set up a blockade of the country’s
coast to block the earthquake’s victims from trying to flee to the US.
Last week, the Coast Guard brought 78 Haitians intercepted on a boat
in the waters off the Bahamas backed to their ravaged homeland.

General Douglas Fraser, chief of the US Southern Command, announced on
Saturday that the Pentagon has scaled back the military presence to
13,000 troops. Many of those leaving are to be redeployed to Iraq or
Afghanistan. The general refused to say how long the remaining force
would stay in Haiti, stating only that they would be there as long as
“necessary.”

The necessity driving this military occupation is that of defending
the interests of Haiti’s wealthy ruling elite as well as those of US
corporations seeking to profit off cheap labor and devastation against
the threat that the crisis will trigger a social revolt by Haiti’s
impoverished population.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/hait-f16.shtml

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