Cuba accuse USA of using chaos in Haiti to perpetrate an invasion

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Haiti: Strategy of the chaos for an invasion
19 January 2010 Haga a commentary
Jose Luis Cheers
ALAI

The earthquake that devastated Port Prince the 12 of past January offers a superb pretext to justify the nth invasion and military occupation of Haiti, already occupied from 2004, but now directly by the main promoters of that occupation, without intermediaries. Reasons, politicians and strategists, do not lack. As step, it would serve to learn lesson the main intermediary of the present occupation, Brazil, that in spite of good served in Haiti has not behaved of the same form in relation to the recent coup d'etat in Honduras.

What we have observed until the moment it seems to corroborate the thesis that a new military occupation is being prepared, nonhumanitarian. To several they indicate it elements like: frictions with the present occupants, the Mission of Paz (MINUSTAH) of the UN, especially with Brazil, that has the military command; obstruction of the humanitarian aid and promotion of a chaos situation; and a consisting of mediatic campaign the creation of a chaos image and violence, that an occupation would justify before the public opinion. As we will see down, all those components seem to be present.

There are reasons to suspect that the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Haiti is being allowed deliberately. For example the recognized descoordinación in the rescue tasks, widely spread by means. In theory, it would correspond to the UN to direct such tasks, but apparently this one has been deprived of authority by the United States, that occupied from first hour one of the key points for the coordination of the rescue tasks, the airport. Without the leadership of the UN, and with a Haitian State “bankrupt” or, in language less Orwelliano, broken of premeditaded form, is not nobody that can direct the rescue tasks efficiently. Certainly either the NGOs, that they have come receiving international bottoms to exert many of the functions that would have to correspond to the Haitian government. To the NGOs the same responsibilities cannot be demanded them that to a government, a perhaps very advisable fact at the moment.

Another element is the little haste in the shipment of aid on the part of the USA, in contrast to the rapidity demonstrated in a military mobilization. Distant China even seems to have advanced to the United States in the aid shipment. Thus, the retired general lieutenant of the American army, Russell Honoré, that participated in the rescue tasks after the Katrina hurricane in 2005, declared about the situation of Haiti after the earthquake: “fodder that already we have learned during the Katrina, we take to water and foods and we begin to evacuate to people… Fodder that we must have begun with more pressure” For example, while the Armed Forces of the USA seem enough to be mobilized with rapidity, a hospital ship of navy is being prepared with more parsimony: “it is a slow ship, something old, will take one week in arriving we have completed once it”, it clarifies a spokesman of the Pentagon. Perhaps they cannot better do nothing with the old ship, but they would have to exist other average ones to accelerate the aid. For example, the suggestion somewhat heretical of Lawrence Korb, ex- attending secretary of Defense of the USA could be followed, to take advantage of the knowledge the Cubans in the rescue tasks: “we must stop to us and think that our Cuba neighbor counts on some of the best doctors of the world… There we would have to try to transfer them in our flights “.

All that leaves us impression that, in the best one of the cases, the rescue tasks are not a priority for the government of the USA, unlike purely the military, like the shipment of “3500 the 82 soldiers of Airborne division of Fort Bragg”, whose mission “is not clear”, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Perhaps but it is clearer with this explanation of the spokesman of the Department of State of the USA Philip Crowley: “We are not appropriating to us Haiti. We are helping to stabilize the country. There we are helping in the provision of material and aid to save lives, and are going to remain long term to help to reconstruct Haiti.” And also the later words of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, assuring that the North American forces would remain today in Haiti “, tomorrow, and foreseeably in the future”.

The diplomatic frictions with other countries, especially Brazil, that is to the control of troops of the UN in Haiti, did not take in pronouncing themselves, which seems to also indicate that the “North American mission” in Haiti goes much more there of the purely humanitarian thing. Until today Brazil it had fulfilled diligently the paper that was designated to him in Haiti. Their troops dedicated themselves to control and, sometimes, to terrify the Haitian population, especially to poorest, of a form whom already they had perfected in favelas of Brazil. As she informs in an interview the journalist Kim Ives, of Haiti I freed, the presumed mission of La Paz of the UN in Haiti, led by Brazilian, “is extremely bad view [by the Haitian population]. People fed up and are tired with that is being spent million in her, observing as the boys go it giving returned throughout within gigantic tanks and aiming to them with the guns. And she is that, as you know, this is a force whose mission is the one to put under the country”.

She is possible to hope that the USA would enter conflict with Brazil if the intention of first is the one to assume a military role in Haiti. The conflict did not take in taking place. In words of the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, the 14 of January, “would be absolutely desirable that all those forces were coordinated by the commander of the MINUSTAH there” (3). But the USA did not accept this proposal. Civil servants of the government of the USA have indicated that their forces “will coordinate” their actions with the direction of the MINUSTAH, and nothing else: “We are going to act under commando of the USA in support to a mission of the UN in the name of the government and of the Haitian town”, Crowley declares.

As that “coordination” is working can be deduced of the reaction of the minister of defense of Brazil, Nelson Jobim, criticizing “the unilateral” control of the USA on the airport of Port Prince, who according to him took itself without other countries were consulted, and that would be obstructing the landing of airplanes of the FAB (Brazilian Air Force) loaded of personnel and maintenances. As it indicates the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, that situation “has caused a small diplomatic problem between Brazil and the USA. Besides obstructing the landing of the airplanes of the FAB, the Brazilians they complain which the North American control would have prevented the access of the MINUSTAH (Mission of peace of the UN in the Haiti, led by Brazilian) to the premises [the airport]”

In spite of later declarations of Hillary Clinton to Jobim, assuring that “the North American forces are going to act as essentially humanitarian, without interfering in the public security of the country”, the fact is that such “humanitarian” functions will be commanded “not by civil agencies of the government… but by the Pentagon”, through SOUTHCOM (South Commando of the United States), whose mission is the one “to lead combat operations and to promote the cooperation in security to achieve the strategic targets of the United States”, as it indicates Michel Chossudovsky, of the Global Research.

Another important element is the apparent instrumentalisation of an assumption been of chaos in Haiti, to which also it could perhaps contribute the premeditaded descoordinación in the distribution of the humanitarian aid. The objective would be the one here to create an image of chaos and violence that the invasion justifies before the public opinion, and for that it is necessary to count on the close collaboration of great means of information. Average the relatives by marriage to the North American government at least seem not to have lost time in this sense. From the first moment they have tried to dramatize the situation, for example through the diffusion of rumors of bursts of supposed shootings, that nobody in Port Prince more seems to have heard, or of the formation of new bands of delinquents. Thus, already a pair of days after the earthquake we could read, in a entitled article “Will take the bands of delinquents the control from the Haitian chaos? ”, the following ominous words: “when the dark covered the city of Port Prince, knocked down by the earthquake, inhabitants informed that they had heard shots. That hardly constituted a surprise: in Haiti, during the emergencias - natural or political - shots can at night be so omnipresent as the bark of the dogs, with armed bands appropriating itself the streets”. The fact that nobody seems to have heard those shots nor to have seen such gangs appropriating itself the streets, can indicate that the intention is the one to create a false image of chaos here that makes the more for the public opinion a possible invasion and occupation acceptable of the country.

Most of the means crush now with images of chaos and violence. But there are exceptions. , As the coordinator of the Canadian explains Action Haiti Network, Roger Anas, thus talking about to a news article of the BBC that does not show anything of that supposed violence, this “strongly resists with the warnings of sacking and violence that the Cnn fills to the waves of channels of the news such as”, and that “is being reproduced by the Secretary of Defense of the USA Robert Gates”. Investigated by means about the reason by which provisions were not being sent from the air, Gates conversation that “seems to me that launchings from the air simply are going to bring about disturbances”, that by the Gates sight consider worse than the lack of provisions.

Most macabre of all this it is that the aid could not be arriving at the victims due to a deliberate intention to bring about that same state of chaos and violence that seems not to exist until the moment. According to Roger Anas “the evidence is growing about a monstrous negligence towards the Haitian town after the catastrophic earthquake of 3 days back. As vital medical provisions, foods, chemical substances for purification of the water and vehicles are crowding in the airport of Port Prince, and that the means are informing into a massive international effort to provide emergencia aid, the inhabitants of the destroyed city wonder themselves when they will be able to see some type of aid”.

The reporter of the BBC Andy Gallaguer also declares that he walked by all the parts of the capital during Friday, 15 of January, and that “nothing else did not observe that courtesy from the Haitians that found. Everywhere he was taken by the inhabitants to see what he had happened in his neighbourhoods, their houses and their lives. And then they asked: where they are the aid” To the declaration of the North American Secretary of Defense that reasons for “security” would be preventing the distribution of aid, Gallaguer conversation that “I am not seeing anything of that”. On the situation in the airport, it informs that “there is a great amount of material in the ground and much people there. I do not know what problems she has with the delivery”. Also, according to words of a local observer, “the agents of means are looking for histories of desperate Haitians that they are acting of hysterical form. When in fact most common it is to see them act of calmed form, whereas the international community, the elite and the politicians are deranged with that subject, and no seems to have the minimum idea than it is happening”

Not only there are plans no to transport to Cuban doctors to the island, but the occupation of the airport occurred immediately after the arrival of 30 Cuban doctors to meet with near 300 who already were in the island for more of a year. And many suspect that something could have to do with the occupation of the airport. Trinidad & Tobago Express, for example, inform that “a mission of aid emergencia of the Caribbean Community [Caricom] to Haiti, including a heads of government and technical civil servants of relief, could not obtain east permission Friday to land in the airport of that devastated country, now under control of the United States.” In addition, “investigated about if the difficulties found by the mission of Caricom they could be related to information of which the North American authorities would not be anxious in facilitating the landing of ships coming from Cuba and Venezuela, prime minister Golding [of Jamaica] answered that `only I hope that is not any truth in that type of immature thought, to light of the frightful extension of the tragedy of Haití'…”.

The following testimony of the director of the Cinema Institute de Jacmel, David Belle, also contradicts radically the image of chaos and violence spread by means. “They have to Me counted that many average North American news paints Haiti like a powder magazine on the verge of exploding. They have said to me that the main news articles of great means only speak of violence and chaos. Nothing is more far from the reality… Not one time I have been witness of a single act of aggression or violence. On the contrary, we have seen neighbors helping to neighbors and stranger and friendly friendly helping. We have seen neighbors excavating in the rubbish with the naked hands to find survivors. We have seen traditional healers treating the wounded; we have seen solemn ceremonies before collective burials, and inhabitants hoping patiently, under a burning sun, with nothing else that a few properties that they had left. A mutilated city of two million beings hoping aid, medicine, food and water. The majority has not received anything. Haiti can be proud of its survivors. Their dignity and decency in front of this tragedy are in amazing themselves”.

All those elements justify the suspicion that it is in march a macabre strategy of the chaos to justify an invasion and occupation that by the sight nothing will have of humanitarian.

* Complete version of this article in [link to www.alainet.org]