US and its allies continue to try to limit democratisation, not help it along

You may have got the impression that Egyptians are on the road to their first democratic elections now. Unfortunately there’s no guarantee that that’s going to happen. In fact the army are still co-operating with the dictatorship to try to crush any resistance and any demands for a transition to power sharing with the opposition before elections. When the focus of most of the media shifted to Libya the Egyptian army took the opportunity to clear Tahrir Square by shooting into the air, beating protesters and tasering them (1). When Egyptian protesters raided an Interior Ministry building to get files on who had been involved in torture,  Suleiman and the army responded the next day by shooting above their heads to keep them out, while also employing the plain clothes thugs stabbing people, attacking them with machetes and iron bars and throwing bricks – the same tactics used by Mubarak in the past (2) – (4).

None of this stops the US military aid flowing or Cameron from continuing to arm the Egyptian dictatorship. The Obama administration have never once even verbally backed the protesters against the dictatorship in their demands for a transition to a National Unity government including the opposition parties.

The Egyptian SSI secret police and their Tunisian equivalent have formally been abolished by court order (5) – (6). There remains the possibility that they will turn up under a different name, just as they did in Iraq. Bush claimed that “the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever” in his speech on the capture of Saddam (7).Yet Iraqis still face US trained police commandos and “counter terrorism unit” death squads using the same methods as Saddam’s forces, including pulling out nails with pliers, rape and electrocution (8) – (10).

The democratically elected Iraqi government also initially had unarmed demonstrators shot dead by the dozen when they protested against it recently, just like the dictatorships have. The killings have not been on the same scale as in Egypt or Libya so far and shooting protesters seems to have stopped for now, but they show Iraq after “regime change” is far from fully democratic. The Iraqi government has also used the tactics of Mubarak and his successors – hiring civilian thugs or plain clothes police to attack anti-government protesters with beatings, knives and bricks (11 – (13). So Iraq as a lot further from real democracy than Blair or Bush or their blind disciples would have you believe.

In Bahrain the country’s own military and police and Saudi and UAE troops are targeting protesters and medical staff with live fire, snipers and helicopters – just the same as Gaddafi’s forces have done in Libya, but with no calls for the Emir of Bahrain or the King of Saudi to be tried by the International Criminal Court.

This underlines the fact that western governments oppose Gaddafi’s dictatorship in Libya for the same reason they opposed Saddam’s – it doesn’t give them the profits and military bases they want from it. Most of the governments who are against any kind of intervention in Libya have motives just as selfish. Italy gets over 30% of it’s energy from Libya. Russia and China are in talks with Gaddafi on replacing former British, American and French oil and arms contracts with ones for their own companies.

The Libyan rebels are in the sad position of having no-one but foreign governments and militaries to call on for assistance if they want to avoid defeat. For that reason I’m for giving them the assistance they ask for – but make no mistake, the governments calling for intervention are not doing so for democracy or to save lives – and their involvement in Libya would be a double edged sword for the majority of Libyans.

Even in Tunisia and Egypt it’s a long way from decided whether they’ll end up democracies or new dictatorships or one party states. We know that with Ben Ali’s RCD party disbanded by court order and Ben Ali’s former Prime Minister Mohammed Gannouchi having been forced to resign by further protests, the US and French governments are seeking to ensure that prominent members of the RCD are absorbed into a new “centrist” party in order to attempt to ensure some continuity with the previous system (14) – (16). So, while this brings Tunisa closer to democratisation than Egypt, as in Egypt with US backing for Mubarak’s appointed successor Suleiman, the Obama administration’s priority is not to support democratisation, but to limit it.

The best that can be said of this is that past transitions to democracy, like those in Spain and Portugal in the 1970s, show that partial transitions to democracy in which members of the previous regime retain some influence, are more likely to succeed as the previous regime have less motive to carry out a counter-coup.

 (1) = Reuters/Guardian 26 Feb 2011 ‘Protesters say Egypt military used force to disperse them’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/26/protesters-egypt-military-used-force

(2) = guardian.co.uk 07 Mar 2011 ‘Egyptians prise open secrets of Hosni Mubarak's state security headquarter’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/07/egypt-state-security-mubarak-cairo

(3) = Al Jazeera Egypt Live Blog 6 Mar 2011, http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/middle-east/egypt-live-blog-march-6

(4) = AFP 15 Mar 2011 ‘Egypt minister disbands feared security police’, http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110315/wl_afp/egyptpoliticsunrestsecurity_20110315164128 ; Protesters stormed several state security buildings early this month to retrieve files kept on the population by the powerful regime apparatus long accused of human rights abuses. In one incident, hundreds of protesters outside the state security headquarters in Cairo were attacked by armed civilians, as the army fired warning shots and used sticks to disperse the crowd, prompting Washington to voice its concern.

(5) = AFP 15 Mar 2011 ‘Egypt minister disbands feared security police’, http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110315/wl_afp/egyptpoliticsunrestsecurity_20110315164128

(6) = guardian.co.uk 07 Mar 2011 ‘Tunisia dissolves secret police to meet key demand of protesters’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/07/tunisia-abolishes-secret-police-force

(7) = White House – Office of the Press Secretary 14 Dec 2003 ‘President Bush Addresses Nation on the Capture of Saddam Hussein’, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/12/20031214-3.html

(8) = New York Times Magazine 01 May 2005 ‘The Way of the Commandos’, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/magazine/01ARMY.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

(9) = Shane Bauer ‘Iraq’s new death squad’ in The Nation 6th June 2009, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090622/bauer

(10) = Amnesty International World Report 2010 (covering 2009) – Country Report Iraq,http://report2010.amnesty.org/sites/default/files/AIR2010_AZ_EN.pdf#page=123 ;(once pdf loads, scroll down to page 125 (by PDF page number) or 178 (number marked on page); ‘Iraqi security forces committed gross human rights violations including extrajudicial executions, torture...and did so largely with impunity....Torture methods reported included beatings with cables and hosepipes, suspension by the limbs for long periods...electric shocks to the genitals...breaking of limbs, removal of toenails with pliers and piercing the body with drills. Some detainees were alleged to have been raped….In May inmates of the womens’ prison in al Kadhimiya told members of the parliament’s human rights committee that they had been raped while held in prison or detained elsewhere’

(11) = AP 25 Feb 2011 ‘12 killed as Iraqis protest in 'Day of Rage'’,http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110225/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq

(12) = guardian.co.uk 04 Mar 2011 ‘Baghdad protesters converge on Liberation Square’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/04/baghdad-protesters-iraq-driving-ban ; Security forces around Iraq clashed with protesters last Friday in the country's most widespread and violent demonstrations since a wave of unrest began to spread across the Middle East. At least 14 people were killed

(13) = HRW 25 Feb 2011 ‘Iraq: Open Immediate Inquiry Into Protester Deaths’, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/02/25/iraq-open-immediate-inquiry-protester-deaths

(14) = guardian.co.uk 09 Mar 2011 ‘Tunisia dissolves ousted president's party’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/09/tunisia-dissolves-ousted-presidents-party

(15) = guardian.co.uk 27 Feb 2011 ‘Tunisian prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi resigns amid unrest’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/27/tunisian-prime-minister-ghannouchi-resigns

(16) = guardian.co.uk 27 Feb 2011 ‘Tunisians know Ben Ali was not democracy's only block’,  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/27/tunia-islamists-west-elections-role-politics ; ‘France and the US are thought to be pressing for the formation of a new centre party that will absorb leading members of the old ruling party, the RCD, and provide a good candidate for the presidency.’

Bahrain, Libya and Kuwait : Causes of the protests and foreign governments’ involvement

Bahrain and Kuwait - the supposed Shia 'fifth column' for Iran

The monarchy in Bahrain say there should be a dialogue once peace is restored, as if saying “let’s all have a nice talk together, you know, once I’m finished having more of you killed to try to frighten any of you who’re still alive by then into backing down” was the most reasonable thing in the world; and has copied Mubarak’s line of pretending to mourn for the dead, as if they had nothing whatsoever to do with ordering them killed.

The British and French government had been arming and training Bahrain's police and  military. In Bahrain those police have murdered democracy protesters, then murdered the mourners at the funeral. The UK and French governments have suspended arms sales. Don’t expect that suspension to last longer than media coverage does.

Bahrain is seen by both the Saudi monarchy and it’s allies as being too close to and too similar to Saudi Arabia to allow it’s government to be toppled &ndash (not to mention the US fifth fleet being based there); though I hope the protesters succeed in toppling it.

Bahrain also has a Sunni elite and a Shia majority – one of the causes of the protests as the Shia majority feel excluded from the best jobs. To the simple minded Pentagon planners and the Saudi monarchy, all Shia are seen as potential fifth columnists for the Iranians. (They even managed to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy in Iraq by driving the Iraqi nationalist and anti-Iranian Al Sadr and his Medhi army into the arms of the Iranians). Saudi Arabia also has a large Shia minority in provinces which contain significant amounts of it’s oil reserves.

In Kuwait demonstrations by migrant workers who have lived and worked there for years and decades, demanding citizenship and chanting “we are Kuwaiti” may also spread to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Emirates who rely almost entirely on migrant workers – including Pakistanis, Phillipinos and Palestinians.

Libya and the US, France and UK - Why Bahrainis being shot leaves western governments “concerned” while Libyans being shot makes them “horrified”

Britain and France were also arming and training the forces of Gadaffi's regime in Libya - plus providing SAS training for the Libyan military , since he took the hint at Saddam’s overthrow and renounced WMDs and terrorism – and much more importantly started giving US and British oil firms contracts again. Despite the synthetic outrage over the release of Megrahi (who was almost certainly innocent of any involvement in the Lockerbie bombing and fitted up in a jury-less show trial) American oil firms were back in Libya in 2004, five years before BP.

The reconciliation between Libya and the US and it’s allies is far from perfect though, partly because the US government continues the dodgy claims about Megrahi, but even more because Gadaffi has been demanding that his government keep a higher share of oil profits  – and even suggesting the possibility of nationalisation (which was enough to get the CIA and MI6 to overthrow Mossadeq in Iran when he did the same in 1953).

That may be why British foreign secretary William Hague called the Libyan military shooting protesters dead by the dozen “horrifying”, while similar murders on a similar scale by Mubarak’s police and those of Bahrain’s monarchy only made him and Hillary Clinton “deeply concerned” rather than horrified.

The fact that the British government approved sales of sniper rifles to Libya and that many of the dead protesters there are being killed by Libyan military snipers may also have something to do with it

UPDATE: Sky news has reported that only a small number of sniper rifles were approved for export to Libya by the British government and that these were in storage, for display purposes only and had the firing pins removed.

The problem with nation building in Afghanistan

NATO governments have tried to persuade themselves and us that their “mission” in Afghanistan is a benevolent project of “Nation Building” in which they prevent terrorists having a safe base and provide Afghans with “security” and protection against a new Taliban government. Neo-conservatives have also compared the invasions and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq to the overthrow of the Nazis and of the militaristic regime in Japan, both of which were replaced with democracies.

The trouble is that the post World-War Two occupations of Japan and Germany were not nation building at all, because Japan and Germany had both been single states for decades with people who all saw themselves as German (for decades) and Japanese (for centuries). So the nations involved had actually been built long before World War Two even began, in some very bloody wars. There is no existing nation which most Afghans identify with as the group they primarily belong to.

Most Afghans do not see themselves as Afghan first, nor even Pashtun, Hazara, or Tajik. They identify with their own tribe in it’s own valley. This may well not be a sign of backwardness either, but a sign that the central government has never done much for people outside the main cities other than make war on them to try to get them to submit – and send police and soldiers many of whom abuse their power by stealing and worse.

US intelligence analysts say that the main enemy in Afghanistan is not the Taliban. The majority of people NATO forces are fighting are not motivated by religious fundamentalism, but are just local Afghans resisting the invasion of their territory by troops from elsewhere according to  these intelligence reports (1).

Recently leaked NATO documents include a revealing interview by NATO officers of a former Taliban fighter, who told them they he had been timber merchants who had first joined the Taliban after being held without trial or explanation by NATO forces. He also said a senior Taliban commander first joined after NATO destroyed his house (2).

Matthew Hoh, a former US marine who served in Iraq as a Captain and also worked as a civilian contractor for the Pentagon in Iraq and in the US embassy in Afghanistan during the current war there, says he initially believed it wasn’t Jihadim but nationalism that motivated most of those fighting the US in Afghanistan. He says he later realised it wasn’t nationalism, but what he calls “valley-ism”. He found that in most of Afghanistan people see themselves as part of the people living in the valley they live in, not any larger group or country. So the problem went beyond sending foreigners into Afghanistan or Hazara or Tajik Afghan troops into Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. Any armed force not from the same valley is seen as an outside invasion which must be resisted according to tribal codes, just as Iraqis resisted invasion of Iraq as their country and just as Americans would resist any invasion of their country by foreign forces (3) – (4).

Other driving forces behind people joining those fighting NATO and Afghan government forces include killings of civilians by those forces. For instance a report by the US National Bureau of Economic Research found a strong link between civilian casualties caused by NATO forces in Afghanistan and the number of insurgent attacks on NATO forces in the areas where the casualties had been caused in the six weeks after them (5) – (6).

 (For more on civilian deaths caused by NATO forces (including US led Afghan militias and death squads on the El Salvador model) and by the Taliban in Afghanistan click here)

This shows that in Afghanistan as in other countries in the past actual nation building is not just a process of democratisation or rebuilding economy, state and society, like that in Germany, Japan or even Iraq. It has not been everyone coming together as equals as in Rosseau’s imagined “social contract”.

In every country it has been a process in which one group forces others to submit to them by force in bloody and oppressive campaigns of war and massacre, as English Kings, Queens and soldiers did in Scotland, Wales and Ireland over centuries to form the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain’ and French kings did in the Albigensian Crusade in southern France and in campaigns of subjugation in Flanders, Brittany, Aquitaine, Brabant, Burgundy; as well as against the Hugenot Protestant rebels.

The same happened in Germany, which was only unified by a series of wars and getting small principalities so indebted to Prussia that it could buy them over under Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck in the 19^th century.

In Japan there were centuries of bloody warfare over who would be ‘Shogun’ of the whole of Japan (after the previous inhabitants, the ‘Ainu’ had been largely wiped out).

The same happened in the US as European colonists attacked and massacred Indian tribes across America – and then Northern forces did much the same to Southerners in the American Civil War (which, despite being dressed up as being about “liberation” for black slaves in the South was accompanied by lynchings of black people in Northern cities when it was announced black soldiers would be recruited, segregation of military units by race and continuing lynchings and ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws in North and South long after the war was over.

After this process is over then the state indoctrinates generations of children from birth to think of themselves as all “British” or “American” or “Iraqi” and to think of their country as uniquely tolerant, progressive, benevolent and good. This indoctrination is generally quite successful.

I am not arguing that other nationalisms which call for separation from the then established state are necessarily more progressive or less brutal – the wars in the former Yugoslavia showed that every nationalism involved was harmful.

I am pointing out that actual nation building in every country in history has not been a benevolent process in which the majority were peacefully persuaded to become part of the state, but one of oppression and force in which those with more power and wealth imposed their will on others to gain even more power and wealth. There have often been some in the countries being absorbed by force who were in favour of the union – but usually just as many opposed to it and whose acquiescence was only gained by being attacked, fought, having many of their civilians massacred and their lands and property taken.

It would be nice to think that the war in Afghanistan was a unique case, but it’s not. The Karzai government and its police and military are as corrupt and brutal as all the other factions in Afghanistan.

Helping impose a strong central government’s authority across Afghanistan, if continued, will continue to be a process of creating new enemies by invading the territories of local tribes with forces from other tribes, other identity groups (Hazaras, Tajiks and others invading lands populated by Pashtuns) and foreigners invading Afghanistan and killing people who resist the invasion. It will continue to involve accidental killings and deliberate massacre of civilians, jail without trial on mere suspicion and torture, creating new enemies or “insurgents” in a process that could go on for decades.

We can try and persuade ourselves this is a benevolent process on the grounds that our government and military are surely basically good (when in fact they’re no better or worse than most others) ; and on the grounds that we are giving them the unity and peace we have (forgetting that centuries of war, oppression and massacre actually created unity by force – with the apparently “natural” unity which came after it only being achieved by a subtle life-long process of indoctrination over generations).

By invading the lands of Afghan tribes and killing them if they try to resist the invasion we are not promoting democracy, but it’s opposite. Once a relationship between government and people based on the people obeying or being killed is established it will take decades or centuries to reverse and democratise.

Democracy as a system of government only survives as long as people believe in it. That means it can only be promoted by persuasion and example. As soon as you try to force people to obey a central government who don’t recognise it as being their government at all – and do so by killing any who resist – you de-legitimise democracy and make it seem like hypocrisy. This will not make Afghans more moderate in their religion or nationalism any more than September 11^th made most Americans more moderate in their views on foreign policy. In both cases it makes the majority more extreme, because  they are suffering extreme pain, mourning, anger and the desire for revenge.

If Afghans in the outlying regions of Afghanistan are to be persuaded to accept the authority of a central government then they should be persuaded by that government aiding them with infrastructure projects – clean water supplies, electricity, healthcare, education etc. Sending troops in instead not only won’t work, it’s backfired spectacularly.

Militarising aid and reconstruction projects has similarly back-fired according to many charities operating in Afghanistan, resulting in the Taliban and other insurgents seeing them as part of the occupying forces rather than as people bringing assistance with no strings attached. Despite much propaganda by certain governments most aid agencies said they had no problem in operating in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

It can’t be denied that most Afghans do not want the Taliban back in power in Kabul – and that Pakistan’s military and military intelligence have continued backing the Taliban so they can exclude Indian influence from Afghanistan and have “strategic depth” for guerrilla campaigns if India invades Pakistan.

That is unlikely to change once NATO forces leave Afghanistan. Pakistan’s military will try to get a Taliban government back in Kabul, as they did using military aid and tacit support from the US government in the 90s, also aided by Saudi money.

Our governments could however end all military aid and arms sales to Pakistan so that it can’t continue to pass these on to Taliban forces in Afghanistan, reducing Pakistan’s ability to fund the Taliban and forcing the Taliban to negotiate a coalition government deal with other Afghan factions – and they could increase funding for civilian infrastructure and aid projects in Afghanistan as a viable way for the Afghan central government to gain the support of people across Afghanistan. That could achieve what no “nation building” war ever will at a fraction of the cost in money and lives.

(1) = Boston Globe 09 October 2009 ‘Taliban not main Afghan enemy - Few militants driven by religion, reports say’,http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2009/10/09/most_insurgents_in_afghanistan_not_religiously_motivated_military_reports_say/

(2) = Times 28 Jul 2010 ‘‘He said they were scared of the Taleban leaders’ http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/afghanistan/article2662453.ece?lightbox=false

(3) = Washington Post 27 Oct 2009 ‘U.S. official resigns over Afghan war’,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603394.html

(4) = Matthew Hoh’s resignation letter,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/ssi/wpc/ResignationLetter.pdf?sid=ST2009102603447

(5) = NBER Working Paper No. 16152 Issued in July 2010 , Luke N. Condra, Joseph H. Felter, Radha K. Iyengar, Jacob N. Shapiro (2010) ‘The Effect of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq’,http://www.nber.org/papers/w16152

(6) = BBC News 24 July 2010 ‘US military curbs 'reduce' Afghan attacks in some areas’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10746832

Haitians need the countries aiding them now to stop starving them through unfair trade and coups in future

A 15-year-old girl shot dead by Haitian police after the earthquake for stealing paintings ; Photograph: Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

The earthquake in Haiti called the world’s attention to a country whose people have been suffering for centuries – but much of their current suffering started before the earthquake and is caused not by a lack of outside intervention but by too much of it, with the wrong motives. Of course Haitians need all the emergency aid they can get, but the causes of their suffering – including the lack of earthquake proof buildings like those found in California – have a lot to do with the French and US governments and firms profiting from reducing most of them to poverty and starvation – and not just in the past.

Haitians – dying as slaves of France and America then and now

In the 18th century they were slaves whose lives were treated as worthless by owners whose fear of rebellion led to incredible cruelty. Their rebellion was crushed first by the French. Haiti then had to pay an ‘indemnity’ for the costs to the French of crushing the rebels and reduce taxes on French imports and exports. By the early 20th century American forces arrived and occupied the country, taking control of its finances and getting a puppet leader to grant the US the ‘right’ to ‘develop’ Haiti’s ‘natural resources’.

The US has became the dominant foreign power in Haiti, though the French government still believes that Haiti is in it’s ‘sphere of influence’. ‘Papa Doc’ Francois Duvalier went from saving thousands of lives as a doctor to having thousands killed as a US-backed dictator. Under Carter’s Presidency in the US the ‘Baby Doc’ Jean Charles Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti briefly felt the need to restrain itself from murdering too many of its critics and opponents in case it lost some foreign aid, but on the night of Reagan’s election Duvalier’s ‘tonton macoutes’ (hired thugs with machetes and guns) poured into the streets of the Haitian capital Port Au Prince shouting ‘The Cowboys are in power – human rights are over’. Once Reagan took office in January 1980 the killing began again in earnest (1).

While there is a great deal of controversy over the past Presidency of Jean Bertrand Aristide, a former Catholic priest in Port Au Prince, there is no doubt about one thing – US policy under both Republican and Democratic Presidents and congresses has been to demand ‘free trade’ in Haiti – privatisation, cuts in public services and access to Haiti for US based firms. In 1980 Haiti produced enough food to feed it’s own population. Pressure from the US and European governments through the IMF got import tariffs on rice imports to Haiti slashed. While demanding Haiti end all subsidies and protection for Haitian farmers the US government increased subsidies to American farmers.

So while in the past Haiti produced 80% of the rice eaten there, now it imports 80%. Under IMF conditions on loans run up under US backed dictatorships in the past Haiti also began exporting cash crops to the US while having to import Us-subsidised American rice, putting its own farmers out of business. The wages paid in Haitian factories, mostly by American based multinationals, had fallen to 20% of their 1981 levels by 2000, partly due to the US trained military targeting trade unionists and governments banning trade unions (see the Oxfam website and Professor Peter Hallward’s book ‘Damming the Flood’ on this) (2), (3).

This has had everything to do with benefitting investors from the US, France and their allies and little or nothing to do with helping the majority of Haitians, who, reduced to an income of under 50 pence a day, couldn’t afford food and were buying ‘mud cakes’ made of mud mixed with salt to fill their own and their children’s stomachs as they starved by July 2008 (4). This was before the hugely exaggerated ‘credit crisis’ or the earthquake.

Aristide came to prominence as a critic of the Duvalier dictatorships – and continued to criticise the military government of General Namphy which replaced the younger Duvalier. On September 11th 1988 tontons macoute burst into his church at San Jean Bosco during a sermon in which he as usual denounced the dictatorship for its repression, its corruption and for doing nothing for the poor majority. The attackers shot and hacked the congregation and set fire to the church, killing dozens. This echoed the US-backed military and death squads in El Salvador and their assassination of Bishop Oscar Romero in March 1980 and the murder of many of his supporters before and after his death. Aristide, unlike Romero, survived the attempt on his life – and several attempts before and after it. Both Aristide and Romero were outspoken on behalf of the poor. The Haitian military, like the Salvadoran, was (and is) US-trained.

Aristide – Liberator or corrupted by power?

However Aristide refused to call for reconciliation with his enemies. Instead he told his supporters that they were weak alone, but strong together, that together they were Lavalas (the flood). He is accused by his critics of encouraging violence against his political enemies with public speeches that included lines like "do not forget to give them what they deserve" and "a machete is a useful tool in many situations". However Aristide feared his enemies were preparing to kill him and his supporters. Pre-empting this may have been morally wrong or unwise or paranoid, but he had every reason to feel paranoid. If Aristide is not a saint it’s hard to know how any of us would have reacted when people close to us had been killed and we feared for both our own lives and those of our families and allies. Haitian politics is very different to American or European politics in which the losers know losing doesn’t mean possible death for them, their families and those who supported them. His defenders also say he only approved of violence in self-defence against the tonton macoutes and the army – and that his movement is primarily non-violent as it could never hope to beat the automatic weapons of his enemies.

The US government was critical of the Namphy regime over the San Jean Bosco massacre and cut aid to it as a result. In 1990 Aristide was elected President and began to carry out major reforms to benefit the poorest, including increasing the minimum wage

The French government was greatly displeased by Aristide's government taking it to court, demanding that it repay the $21 billion he estimated France owed Haiti between the 'indemnity' (which was only paid off by Haiti in 1947) and its use of Haitians as slave labour.

He was soon overthrown in a military coup in 1991 in which the US-trained military massacred hundreds of people (and thousands over the next three years), but restored to office by an American invasion of Haiti in 1994 under President Clinton, towards the end of his first term. However there were plenty of conditions placed by the Clinton administration on his restoration apart from reconciliation with his enemies. They included adopting IMF imposed ‘economic reforms’ – the usual privatisations, cuts in public services and welfare payments and access to Haiti for foreign firms, along with a cut in the minimum wage - and Aristide not standing in the next Presidential election, meaning he would actually have been in office for less than two of the five years of his term.

On being restored to office (but barely to power) Aristide began policies to benefit the poor majority again and filled his government with community organisers and charity workers, angering both the traditional Haitian elite and US firms, who benefited from low wages ; as well as career politicians who had expected lucrative ministerial posts in his government.

Aristide also dismantled the US-trained Haitian military, given the long history of most of it in backing dictators and overthrowing elected governments (not least his own in 1991). The Clinton and Bush administrations now moved to backing right-wing paramilitary groups, the FRAPH and FADH, as a means of maintaining their influence by force in Haiti. Many politicians denied a place in Aristide's government were funded with US aid to set up 'civil society' groups to try to discredit Aristide

Aristide and his OPL (party of the Lavalas or ‘flood’) subsequently split, with Aristide forming the ‘Fanmi Lavals’ (family of the flood) while many politicians denied a place in Aristide's government formed a separate OPL (with the L now standing for ‘Lutte’ or ‘struggle’ rather than Lavalas).

Aristide was forced stand down in the next election by the Clinton administration and US congress making US aid conditional on this action. His ally Rene Preval took over for a term, before Aristide was re-elected with a big majority as President in the 2000 Haitian Presidential elections, which, despite much US and French government propaganda, were declared largely free and fair by international observers.

The version of events given from here on continues to vary according to the views of the writer , with some casting Aristide as the hero, resisting American backed villains; others (like Michael Diebert in his book ‘Notes on the Last Testament’) casting him as the villain – a paranoid, ruthless or power crazed man who had lost his way and become corrupt.

What is certain is that in 2004 the Bush administration and the French government backed another military coup against Aristide and he was flown into exile in the Central African Republic, whose French backed dictatorship banned him from criticising the US or French governments or their role in the coup in the media (5), (6).

I’ll leave it up to others to read for themselves and decide which version they believe and whether Aristide was corrupted by power or fear or simply had his character assassinated by the US and French governments when they realised he wasn’t meeting their demands (though my own view is that a great deal of character assassination and propaganda against Aristide is involved). The important point to make is that no US government has ever criticised a government much for being undemocratic or ruthless or dictatorial unless that government was either hostile to the US or else restricting profits for American investors and firms by running it’s country for the benefit of the majority of the population, rather than for foreign investors in alliance with a small indigenous elite collaborating with them. The Saudi monarchy has never yet held a free election or many fair trials. President Uribe of Colombia and his government have had plenty of dissidents and trade unionists murdered using right-wing paramilitaries that work hand in glove with the US funded military. President Mubarak of Egypt has banned the main opposition party, rigs elections and has opposition activists –whether Muslim, conservative or liberal – attacked by thugs. Yet they will never get the criticism that Chavez in Venezuela (repeatedly democratically elected) , Castro (an unelected dictator but with a broadly socialist economic policy until recently) or Aristide do. So if the US government is hostile to Aristide it’s more likely that that’s because he tried to run Haiti for the benefit of the majority of Haitians.

That may be why the US government had international aid coming from the Inter-American Development Bank and various other sources to Haiti blocked as long as Aristide was in power ( as pointed out by Professor Paul Farmer, who also runs a medical charity in Haiti and works for it there) (7).

The other point is that as a result Haitians have quietly starved to death in huge numbers so American and French investors can profit.

Invading Haiti to keep out the damn immigrants and control Haiti’s trade policy– 1994 and 2009

On the few occasions when the US government sends aid it also has mixed motives. In 1994 as today a key aim was to prevent refugees reaching Florida and upsetting the next election.

The Irish Independent newspaper reported in January that “As well as providing emergency supplies and medical aid, the USS Carl Vinson, along with a ring of other navy and coast guard vessels, will act as a deterrent to Haitians who might be driven to make the 681-mile sea crossing to Miami..."The goal is to interdict them at sea and repatriate them," said the US Coast Guard Commander Christopher O'Neil.’(8)

Haitian orphans are welcome. Haitian refugees and immigrants are sent home to suffer (other than CIA and US military intelligence ‘assets’ responsible for many political killings, many of whom retire to Florida).

Another aim has always been to use Haiti as a source of cheap labour for American multinationals – and more importantly to prevent Aristide’s example being followed by other countries.

Shooting the poor

So after the earthquake when Haitian police handed looters over to mobs to be burned alive there was little comment from the Obama administration or President Sarkozy; nor when Haitian policem shot a 15 year old girl dead for stealing paintings to try to get money to buy food - and that was no isolated incident (8) - (10).

How impoverishing Haitians caused earthquake deaths due to shoddy buildings

Another fact that’s given less prominence than it deserves is that according to seismologists the earthquake that hit Haiti wasn’t especially big in historical terms and only killed so many people because so many of Haiti’s buildings are not designed to resist earthquakes despite the capital of the country lying on a fault line. A larger earthquake – 7.0 on the Richter scale – in Los Angeles in 1994 killed less than 70 people because the buildings there were designed to withstand earthquakes. All the money taken in interest payments in debt, all the money never paid due to low minimum wages and reduced benefits, ensured that even among Haitians who realised the risk couldn’t afford to build earthquake resistant houses and buildings (11), (12).

They don’t owe us, We Owe them

Naomi Klein, the author of 'The Shock Doctrine' quotes Haitian economist Camille Chalmers.

'Debt cancellation is a good start, he told al-Jazeera English, but: "It's time to go much further. We have to talk about reparations and restitution for the devastating consequences of debt." In this telling, the whole idea that Haiti is a debtor needs to be abandoned. Haiti, he argues, is a creditor – and it is we, in the west, who are deeply in arrears.'

For decades one of the poorest countries in the world has been paying money to foreign debtors and much of it has been debt run up under dictatorships backed or tolerated by the US government, which in terms of international law is ‘odious debt’ which should be written off by the creditors – even more so when they had the power to end those dictatorships and chose not to.

The media coverage of Haiti since the earthquake has helped the campaign to cancel this debt and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK has come out in favour of cancelling it – but unless the campaign continues beyond the media coverage, those successes may be reversed.

Unless things change from now on – unless the US and French and every other government are pressured by the people of their own countries to stop imposing economic policies that cause huge numbers of deaths through poverty on Haitians – and to stop seeking to rule Haiti by arming and funding the Haitian military, whose only war has been on it’s own people (which is why Aristide disbanded it in his first term in office – and why the US later helped to re-establish it). Of course Haiti needs investment – but on it’s people’s terms, not the terms of foreign governments, firms or those collaborators among the tiny wealthy Haitian elite (though some wealthy Haitians have taken the side of the majority).

Otherwise Haitians will keep dying like flies and watching their children die, just as they did before the earthquake, during it and since it; dying quickly - in political killings, in police shootings of desperate teenagers turning to petty theft to try to get enough to eat, in future earthquakes under the rubble of cheap buildings ; or dying slowly and quietly– of illness or of hunger , while eating mud cakes mixed with salt to try to fill their aching, empty stomachs. This is not because developed world governments haven’t done enough – but because they have done far too much to repress and exploit benefits for the profit of firms based in their own countries – and to prevent the “threat” posed by liberation theology like Aristide’s spreading.

Johan Hari points to one success :

‘The IMF announced a $100m loan, stapled on to an earlier loan, which requires Haiti to raise electricity prices, and freeze wages for the public-sector workers who are needed to rebuild the country...For the first time, the IMF was stopped from shafting a poor country – by a rebellion here in the rich world. Hours after the quake, a Facebook group called "No Shock Doctrine For Haiti" had tens of thousands of members, and orchestrated a petition to the IMF of over 150,000 signatures demanding the loan become a no-strings grant. After Naomi Klein's mega-selling exposé, there was a vigilant public who wanted to see that the money they were donating to charity was not going to be cancelled out by the IMF. ... The IMF backed down. It publicly renounced its conditions – and even said it would work to cancel Haiti's entire debt.’ (13)

That’s a real victory, but the pressure needs to be maintained. So far according to the UN donor governments have only delivered 6% of the aid they promised to feed Haitians even through the current emergency created by the earthquake. (14)

Sources :

(1) = Michael Deibert (2005) ‘Notes from the Last Testament’, Seven Stories Press, London & NY , 2005, Chapter 4, pages 80 – 81 of paperback edition (A Reuters correspondent in Haiti from 2001 till 2003, Deibert is highly critical of Aristide, seeing him as having been behind many political killings and having become a dictator)

(2) =Peter Hallward (2007) ‘Damming the Flood – Haiti, Aristide and the politics of containment’, Verso, London and New York, 2007 (Professor Hallward makes a convincing and well-sourced case that many of the claims about Aristide’s ‘dictatorship’ are a well orchestrated propaganda campaign aimed at legitimising US and French government backed military coups in alliance with some of the wealthiest businesspeople in Haiti and elements of the military and police trained in the US)

(3) = Oxfam – Hard Times in Haiti slide show - http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/issues/food_crisis/haiti_slideshow.html

(4) = Guardian 29 Jul 2008 ‘Haiti: Mud cakes become staple diet as cost of food soars beyond a family's reach’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/29/food.internationalaidanddevelopment

(5) = Paul Farmer (2004) ‘Who removed Aristide?’ in London Review of Books Vol. 26, No. 8, 15 Apr 2004, pages 28-31,
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n08/paul-farmer/who-removed-aristide

(6) = Democracy Now 17 Mar 2004 ‘Exclusive: Aristide Talks With Democracy Now! About the Leaders of the Coup and U.S. Funding of the Opposition in Haiti’,
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/17/exclusive_aristide_talks_with_democracy_now

(7) = Paul Farmer (2004) ‘What happened in Haiti? Where Past is Present’ in Noam Chomsky, Paul Farmer, Amy Goodman et al (2004) ‘ Getting Haiti Right this Time : The US and the Coup’, Common Courage, Monroe, Maine, US, 2004, Chapter 2 , (Professor Farmer, who also works for a medical charity he works for in Haiti comes to similar conclusions to Hallward’s)

(8) = Independent (Ireland) 20 Jan 2010 ‘US ships set up blockade to prevent a mass exodus -
Fleeing Haitians warned they will be sent back’, http://www.independent.ie/world-news/americas/us-ships-set-up-blockade-to-prevent-a-mass-exodus-2022667.html

(9) = guardian.co.uk 20 Jan 2010 ‘Haiti looting horror: Girl shot dead by police for taking paintings’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/20/haiti-earthquake-teenager-shot-police and guardian.co.uk 17 Jan 2010 ‘Retribution swift and brutal for Haiti's looters’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/17/retribution-lynching-haiti-looters

(10) = ABC News 18 Jan 2010 ‘Police shoot at looters in struggle for survival’, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/18/2794297.htm

(11) = ‘Haiti’s Killer Quake : Why It Happened’, 02 Feb 2010, 9pm GMT on Channel 4 (UK)
– watch at http://www.channel4.com/programmes/haitis-killer-quake-why-it-happened/4od#3030763 or at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--mWQmIh_cQ

(12) = Newsweek 21 Jan 2010 ‘Why the Palace Fell - Lessons learned from the destruction of Haiti's presidential home’,
http://www.newsweek.com/id/231846

(13) = Independent 05 Feb 2010 ‘Johann Hari: There's real hope from Haiti and it's not what you expect’, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-theres-real-hope-from-haiti-and-its-not-what-you-expect-1889958.html

(14) = UNoCHA IRIN News 09 Feb 2010 ‘HAITI: Funding gap for nutrition’, http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88049