INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Haiti is "fixed" |
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by Kevin Skerrett ZNet Entered into the database on Saturday, December 03rd, 2005 @ 17:32:53 MST |
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Recent Canadian policy in Haiti has been remarkably successful, having
achieved most of its objectives. This is the case in much the same way that
US policies in places such as El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s were smashing
successes – quite literally. At first glance, such an assertion would appear terribly wrong. Any serious
reading of the existing situation in Haiti (available almost exclusively outside
the mainstream media, within explicitly left-wing vehicles such as New Socialist)
indicates that when Canada, the US and France initiated the February 29 2004
coup d’état that ousted the elected government of Haiti and installed
an unelected puppet regime, they unleashed a terrifying wave of repression against
the desperately poor majority of the country (see NS issues #46,49, & 52
and extensive coverage of the coup on Znet). Along with uncounted thousands
killed, independent human rights groups report that over 700 political prisoners
have been jailed without charge, mainly leaders and supporters of (deposed)
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas party. The Canadian-trained
Haitian National Police have been repeatedly seen shooting unarmed demonstrators,
and – most recently – collaborating with machete-wielding gangs
engaged in a terror campaign targeting all those calling for a return of the
constitutional government that most Haitians elected. However, to conclude that such outcomes signify a policy failure assumes that
Canada’s agenda was actually the establishment of a peaceful, human rights
respecting democracy in Haiti. In fact, the recent episode in Haiti offers us
rich evidence for the view that Canada’s actual foreign policy agenda
is to work in tandem with the US and a few other key military allies in entrenching
and stabilizing a world economic system where safe investment outlets, cheap
labour production zones and unfettered access to natural resources and export
markets are not only established but locked-in by trade agreements which trump
national constitutions. In what follows, I advance this argument by examining three central objectives
of Canada’s Haiti policy. In concluding that these objectives were met,
I then offer a brief reflection on what lessons this “success” might
hold for those of us aiming to challenge and subvert this unconscionable agenda. Objective 1: Further debase the established concept of national sovereignty Having joined the coup brigade in Haiti, Canada needed a rationale to explain
why such a patently undemocratic assault on a poor country was in fact quite
legitimate. This rationale would need to be able to overcome the established
attachment to the concept of national sovereignty and make it revocable, under
certain circumstances (to be defined by the powerful). As eventually articulated
in the May 2005 International Policy Statement, and in various speeches to the
UN, Canada has used its Haiti intervention (along with the bombing and occupation
of Afghanistan) as positive illustrations of the doctrine now known as “Responsibility
to Protect” (R2P). For some, this concept is merely an update of the racist
“white man’s burden” – the notion that wealthy, militarily
powerful countries have an obligation to “protect” the populations
of poorer countries unable to protect (or govern) themselves. Canada’s Haiti policy also shows us how deeply-set racist perceptions
of other (non-white) countries can be effectively mobilized to advance this
concept. The established view of Haiti’s (formerly enslaved, extremely
poor, African) population – as “incapable of self-government”
– was renewed and refreshed. When Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren
lamented on the eve of the coup that Haiti had failed to create “a people
who are susceptible to self-government,” it elicited no particular notice.
His racism was echoed more recently by Liberal MP Beth Phinney, who asked during
a June 14 Foreign Affairs committee hearing: “How can you change the will
of the people [of Haiti] to want to be able to govern themselves?” Such
repugnant views require total ignorance of Haitian history, during which the
population liberated itself from slavery, occupation and dictatorship, and then
managed to democratically elect a president (three times!) that the US government
overtly opposed. If the people of Haiti have proven one thing in their tragic
history, it is their burning desire – and their capacity – to “govern
themselves.” But of course, this is the threat that the coup in Haiti ended, and that the
R2P doctrine is designed to counter. And, with the concept now “field-tested,”
it is ready to serve usefully in the future should the need to violate another
country’s sovereignty (or support the violations carried out by an “ally”)
arise again. Objective 2: Disguise Imperial Domination as “Development” Unfortunately, fond recollections of some of the original redistributive ideals
attached to international development programs have blinded some progressives
to the true function of “development” and development agencies within
the current international system. As a result, we have the social democratic
NDP and many well-intentioned progressives following the lead of Bono, Bob Geldof,
and the recent “Live 8” showbiz against world poverty concerts calling
more or less blindly for “more aid.” Progressive critics of the
Liberals point to their failure to reach the hallowed development aid target
of 0.7% of GDP – and often just stop there. Canada’s relationship with Haiti is a stark indicator of the simplicity
of these calls. When the Canadian government hosted a secret meeting in early
2003 in order to (it was later revealed in L’Actualité magazine)
plot the overthrow of Haiti’s elected government, they invited representatives
of the US and France, and brought along senior staff from Canada’s international
development agency – CIDA. A careful examination of CIDA’s recent
programming in Haiti reveals that in politically sensitive areas (human rights,
women’s rights, media, etc.), the Haitian NGOs and agencies that CIDA
was funding were without exception active players within the elite minority
political opposition to Haiti’s government. While CIDA continued to boast publicly that it was providing substantial assistance
to Haiti, the reality was that in the several years leading up to the coup,
it was quietly supporting the US-led embargo on aid to the highly dependent
Haitian government, in an effort to destabilize it through financial strangulation.
A look at recent international aid flows to Haiti – coming primarily from
Canada, the US and France – clarifies the severity of this murderous embargo. External aid to Haiti Source: World Bank, International Cooperation Framework (ICF),
July 2004 With the election of George W. Bush in the US in 2000, US aid to Haiti’s
government actually stopped altogether, leaving the nearly bankrupt Haitian
government defenceless and incapacitated. It is telling that the thousands of
Haitians who surely died or suffered badly as a result of these “aid sanctions”
have never even been counted – “unworthy victims” of an aid
policy turned policy sledgehammer. What must be realized is that this result was intentional. It was the design
and intended consequence of a program in which CIDA and its American equivalent
USAID participated directly. The question of why this destabilization was carried
out continues to be debated, but many have argued persuasively that while President
Aristide accepted some of the dictates of Canadian and American neoliberal conditionality,
he also resisted some, such as the demand for wholesale privatization of state
enterprises. (On this, it is worth recalling that in a recent interview with
journalist Naomi Klein, Aristide summarized the reason for his overthrow in
three words: “Privatization, privatization, privatization.”) Of course, none of this has ever been reported in any detail in the Canadian
media, and in fact, Prime Minister Martin was able to point to Haiti as his
main foreign policy “success story” during the June 2004 federal
leadership debates (to no response from NDP leader Jack Layton or anyone else
for that matter). In this sense, the con – disguising an utterly cynical
and self-interested imperial game as a humanitarian intervention led by CIDA
– has worked quite well. It has shown that “international aid”
can do more than just feed and dig wells: it can provoke (and legitimize) regime
change. Objective 3: Establish Canada’s reputation as trusted election
monitor Following the coup, it was recognized that the installed puppet government
would not enjoy the full legitimacy that would be required to truly move Haiti
onto the “correct” neoliberal path. What was therefore required
was what Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman have referred to as a “demonstration”
election – a tightly constrained and controlled voting exercise that projects
the imagery of liberal-democratic institutions, but whose actual function is
to legitimize the “elected” government. A key function within such
elections is the “observation/monitoring” process, which Chomsky
and Herman describe in Manufacturing Consent as follows: “Official observers are dispatched to the election scene to assure its
public-relations success. Nominally, their role is to see that the election
is ‘fair.’ Their real function, however, is to provide the appearance
of fairness by focusing on the government’s agenda and by channeling press
attention to a reliable source. They testify to fairness on the basis of long
lines, smiling faces, no beatings in their presence, and the assurances and
enthusiasm of U.S. and client-state officials.” Such elections were recently organized in both occupied Afghanistan (October,
2004) and occupied Iraq (January, 2005). What is interesting to recall is that
in Iraq, Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer, Jean-Pierre Kingsley (head
of Elections Canada) played a leading role in precisely this process. Barely
six weeks prior to the January 30, 2005 vote, Kingsley was called upon to form
an expert “assessment mission” to evaluate the quality of the planned
election. To no one’s surprise, this mission dutifully issued the needed
blessing on the day of the election itself (surely drafted in advance, and released
prior to any possible detailed reporting as to the vote’s fairness). Remarkably,
the definitive conclusion brought forward was widely cited in the pro-war corporate
media, despite having been reached by an “assessment” team physically
located in Jordan! When a similar blessing was needed for a post-coup occupation election in Haiti
in late 2005, the relevant powers turned once again (in June 2005) to Jean-Pierre
Kingsley to head up an almost identical group of “election experts,”
this time not even offering to “assess” (as in Iraq) but merely
to “monitor.” Kingsley was an especially good choice for advancing
the Canadian and American agendas in Haiti. He is a Board member of a “pro-democracy”
NGO called the International Foundation of Election Systems (IFES), which has
been very active in Haiti in recent years. In fact, as a detailed report from
the University of Miami Law School has shown, IFES was centrally involved in
the organization of Haiti’s small, elite-led political opposition, and
was an active supporter of the forces that brought about the coup. (It is hardly
surprising to find that IFES receives funding from such renowned democracy-lovers
as Exxon-Mobil, Citibank and Motorola). In order to reach the foregone conclusion that a “free and fair”
election was held in Haiti that “meets recognized standards,” it
will be necessary that the assessment team minimize or ignore the significance
of certain key aspects of Haiti’s political climate, such as: hundreds
of political prisoners including prominent leaders of one party in particular
(Lavalas); state terror exercised through police squads who target victims on
a political, as well as class/race basis; the arrest or even police execution
(Abdias Jean) of journalists willing to report on police atrocities; politically
selective exclusions of vast sectors of the electorate through insufficient
registration and polling station access; the judicial exoneration and release
of convicted paramilitary killers such as Louis-Jodel Chamblain; reasonable
and legitimate boycotts of both registration and voting by parties who are targets
of state terror, etc. We should anticipate that yet another sham occupation election will be carried
out, buttressed by the foregone conclusions of the Kingsley/Elections Canada
led monitoring mission, and Haiti will be placed neatly in the Afghanistan/Iraq
category – embarking on a “bold new era of democratic life.”
Paul Martin and the Government of Canada will take much credit for having “democratized”
the unruly masses of Haiti – and a new pro-US, pro-Canadian government
will be installed, ready to embrace the economic policy agenda designed for
it in Washington and Ottawa. The profits available to Canadian companies engaged
in Haiti’s “reconstruction,” or taking advantage of its re-disciplined
labour market, are already flowing, with more to come. Lessons for the Left in Canada One of the obvious lessons from the foregoing is simple: “Don’t
believe the hype.” But the fact is that far too many “progressives,”
including some involved in the anti-war movement and within otherwise quite
progressive NGOs, have swallowed the government and the corporate media messaging
about Haiti. In part, this is because certain trusted groups – such as
CIDA-funded NGOs like Development and Peace, Rights and Democracy and Alternatives
– supported the coup. Trust in such groups needs to be reassessed. Further, much more work is needed to undermine and expose the carefully constructed
and maintained mythology of Canada as peacekeeper and democracy-builder. If
anything, our Haiti policy illustrates that neoliberal and neo-colonial rot
has infected and transformed even some of the government programs and NGOs about
which we may have thought better. In some cases, they now serve as key cogs
in the machinery of Canadian imperialism, no less vital than Foreign Affairs
and its corporate partners. |