Haiti needs its own national army

By Jean H Charles



President Joseph Michel Martelly of Haiti has revealed in camera to several foreign embassies accredited in the country the blueprint of the new national army that he plans to restore to the territory. The reaction has been viscerally negative abroad yet applauded with both hands in the country.

Haiti needs its own national army.

Akin to the United States that was founded through the battlefield by its own army under the commandment of its first president, General George Washington, Haiti was also founded by its own indigenous army under the command of Jean Jacques Dessalines.

Its army is an organic structure of the country; its absence is felt negatively by all its composites. In case of disaster (they are coming often now!), the population is vulnerable without immediate help unless it comes from the Dominican Republic or the United States. (Which one is preferable?)

The porous borders of the country are open invitations for drug dealers, bandits of all quarters to come in, and open business to the detriment of the social fabric of society.

The arguments against the reinstallation of the army are spurious at best, disingenuous at worst.

Haiti needs no army because 35 other countries in the world are conducting their business without one. A cursory look at those countries will reveal immediately that they are in large part principalities with no fewer than 100,000 people: the Vatican, Vanuatu, Monaco, etc., yet Haiti has 10 million people.

Haiti has no money -- it should spend its asset on other priorities. Security is foremost the backbone for the accumulation and the preservation of wealth for any nation or for that matter any person.

Haiti has a history of a repressive military force that does not respect its limits and boundaries; it has often been involved in the politics of the nation. It is true the army was a tool of repression used by the dictatorship of the Duvaliers, yet the same army was seen as a liberator when it sided with the people to force the departure of Jean Claude Duvalier on February 7, 1986.

Haiti has MINUSTHA a multi nation force invited by and extended into the entire country by the Haitian government. I may have sent the first salvo denouncing the presence of the international force as the biggest international fraud against the nation in my column. Now the chickens are coming home to roost! It is decried by the entire population for being ineffective, an elephant in your bedroom, and a carrier of epidemics such as cholera and involved in sordid practices such as multiple violations of young men and women.

It was Ernest Renan, the father of the concept of nation building, who instructed the founding fathers past and present that no country can have the pretention of becoming a nation if:

1) it does not have the full control of its borders and its territory,
2) while protecting its citizens in their locality and
3) rooting them with sane institutions and adequate infrastructure in
4) insuring that no one is left behind.

Haiti as the first free black country in the world does have the pretention of becoming one day a nation hospitable to all its citizens in full control of its borders equal to and in collegiality with its neighbors.

President Joseph Michel Martelly, elected on a wide plebiscite for change, will have to dice out the New York Times, the Miami Herald, the Times and other foreign papers that have all decried the concept of Haiti building its own army. The blueprint for the new one is a modest force of 3,500 soldiers, with a budget of only $94 million, with some of the funds going to pay back disbanded officers sent home two decade ago without compensation and to institute a universal civic duty force made for and targeted to the youths of Haiti.

This force is a nickel and dime expenditure in comparison to MINUSTHA, with a purse of $700 million per year, with dubious result in security and in stabilization.

The country will seek to inherit the full military base installation of MINUSTHA, not as a war trophy but as a compensation for harm done: 5,000 people perished in the cholera epidemic; the country will have to deal for a long time in the future with the consequences of that scourge.

President Martelly or his Minister of Foreign Affairs will have bread on the ground in dealing with each one of the foreign contingent of the MINUSTHA family to negotiate the passing to the new Haitian army the the trucks, the armaments, the cars, and all other war and civilian materiel brought into the country.

The new Haitian army shall be an army for the people and with the people. In addition to its security duties, it shall be a force for the renewal of the environment, an incubator for the transfer of technology, ferment for civic bonding and nation building and a model citizen army, with some of its men and women sent abroad through the United Nations to help other nations in difficulty.

The Haiti that claimed its independence against all foreign odds two centuries ago needs its own national army to defend its territory, its resources (the Japanese fishing fleet is plying the territorial waters of Haiti with impunity) and its people against all foreign might now!

October 3, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Haiti and the entrenched business of the NGOs

By Jean H Charles


“There are plenty of reasons why countries have made mistakes. Often their decisions are driven by a particular interest group or a coalition of them whose short-term gains stand at odds with the nation’s long-term interest. Some interest groups have captured countries and dragged them down, some have been resisted,” said: Alan Beattie in False Economy. Yet, history is not determined by fate or national culture, it is determined by people and by leadership.

The unhappy story of Haiti after its glorious outburst from a slave entity to a free nation is the story of one damned thing after another, as would say Arnold Toynbee. There was first the complete destruction of the very profitable sugar industry of the island to force the French colonists to leave and then there was the constant repositioning of the entrenched interests to stiffen the national economy to the point of completely killing indigenous capitalization.

The last group of entrenched interests compromising the future development of the country is the positioning of the NGOs as a passage oblige for the national recovery.

Haiti before and much more after the earthquake of January 12, 2010, has been invaded by an army of NGOs from all corners of the world, in addition to its own enterprising ones. The Haitian government does not know the actual numbers of non-governmental organizations working in the country. It is estimated at 8,000, more than any other country in the world except maybe India with a population of more than a billion people.

The tiny town of Leogane has more than 800 NGOs trying to find a mission. They have profited from the loose regulation and coordination from the governmental authorities to propagate and operate at will, sometimes in contradiction with each other and the long term vision of the needs of the nation.

Some countries have been impoverished by unbridled capitalism; other nations have seen their country’s productive force stagnated by Marxist policies. Haiti will prove to the rest of the world that resting on the NGOs to create wealth in the country has produced just the contrary.

The biggest culprit is the MINUSTHA of the United Nations, a mammoth operation designed not with the interest of the nation in mind but with its own needs as priority. There is something at odd with a standing army with all the military gear ready to fight against a nation that refuses to fight.

The blinded vehicles of the MINUSTHA, making their way in the crowded streets of Port au Prince at crucial peak traffic time, with their cannons pointed at the mothers with their children in hand, trying to navigate the cars and the crowd to reach the school doors, provides a spectacle comical and cynical.

There was first the very arrogant Edmond Mulet in charge of the operation, replaced now by the very humble and collegial Mariano Fernandez Amunategui, who will either run a charm operation for the MINUSTHA to remain longer in the country or facilitate its demilitarization to transmute into a facilitating force for infrastructure development in Haiti.

UNICEF for its part has bloated the previous Haitian administration with thousands of brand new vehicles that feed the greed, the corruption and the venality of the high executive echelon without proper safeguard that these assets will be used for the good of the nation.

CIRH (Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti) -- the Clinton instrument to facilitate the reconstruction of the country after the earthquake -- has disbursed in the last year the amount of $4 billion without minimal visible impact for the displaced population.

The myriad of NGOs circulating in rental vehicles enrich only the car rental companies, and those who can lease their villas, their warehouses and, according to the witty and whimsical Haitian people, their wives and their daughters.

The previous Haitian government has refused to create a strong NGO coordination under the umbrella of a sub-cabinet minister. Other countries such as Indonesia or even reclusive Burma have recovered faster from cataclysm by channeling the efforts of the NGOs through a guided governmental apparatus.

I met recently a discreet diplomatic delegation from Rwanda visiting Haiti to advise the new government on its policies with the NGOs. Rwanda before the genocide was run almost entirely by the NGOs. The new president, who received high accolade from the concert of nations in his handling of the national economy and the national reconciliation process, has taken effective measures to diminish the influence of the NGOs in the country.

Is it a signal that Haiti will finally take its fate in its own hands in creating the conditions to build a nation free of exclusion, enhanced with sane institutions and adequate infrastructure for the benefit of the population that will enrich itself and enrich the country free of the bloated NGO apparatus that represents an interest group as malignant and entrenched as the old government was for the Haitian reconstruction.

August 1, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International