US False Benevolence in Haiti:
Failure of Foreign “AID”
is Structural
On May 11, 2011, at a House Congressional hearing, Rajiv Shah, Executive Director of the Agency for International Development (USAID) talked about the “progress” made in providing safe drinking water and medical care in Haiti. The hearing was an outgrowth of trips Republican Jason Chaffetz from Utah and other House members made to Haiti, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq — places where USAID has a major presence. That no infrastructure for sustainable health care, sanitation and clean drinking water has been constructed with the billions collected for the earthquake victims; that the UN imported cholera killing over 5,000 innocent Haitians, leaving 300,000 infected with a foreign disease, did not deter Rajiv Shah from reporting at the hearing that major Monsanto-style “progress” had been made in Haiti.
Shah told Chaffetz, chairman of the House subcommittee on foreign affairs, that more than a million Haitians had access to vaccines, more Haitians had safe drinking water than before the earthquake, and some crop yields have doubled.
That’s progress if Monsanto hybrid seeds destroying Haiti’s domestic seed diversity, further depleting Haiti’s soil and the colonization of Haiti’s food and seeds is truly earthquake relief?
That’s progress if buying US goods and services is aid to Haiti?
That’s progress, if for instance, the toxic USAID agribusiness’ fungicides, pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides used to “double crop yields” seeping from Mother Earth and into Haiti’s drinking water, and potentially giving Haitians cancer 10-years from now is progress?
That’s progress if USAID using foreign aid monies to pay big US pharmaceutical businesses for their vaccines products that Haitians will drink down most likely with foul cholera water on empty Clorox-hungry-stomachs is wholesome and healthy?
That’s progress if USAID using the Haiti earthquake and cholera outbreak as an corporate opportunity to solicit more monies to buy their own crony’s antibiotics, dehydration pills, aquatabs or bottled water – leaving no permanently renewable clean water infrastructure in Haiti as usual – equates to Haiti having “more ” sustainable “safe drinking water than before the earthquake?”
That’s progress if the post-earthquake UN contamination of Haiti’s water system, underground water and the Artibonite River which fertilizes Haiti’s breadbasket that feeds the people is also logical evidence of more Haitians having safe drinking water than before the earthquake?”
The USAID Director’s claim that more Haitians have safe drinking water than before the earthquake, is progress if Haiti tarp dwellers drinking untreated brackish Red Cross water in Haiti making them ill is progress. (See Ezili Dantò on: Colonization of Haiti’s food and seeds is not earthquake relief; Healthcare reform also requires food system reform; The Poverty Pimps’ Masturbating on Black Pain: Monsanto joins the pack ; Vision of Plantation Haiti – A White Pearl, Again! ; The Plantation called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Humanitarian Aid ; Tell The Truth About Haiti Forum with Ezili Dantò of HLLN ; UN responsibility for importing cholera and, Obama’s empty promises to Haiti – Change did not come (Written two years ago, December 2009, before Haiti earthquake and some TPS was granted.)
“The cholera outbreak need not have happened. Shows the failure of the international relief effort.” —Ezili Dantò – Haitian cholera epidemic preventable, October 27, 2010
In addition to the USAID progress Rajiv Shah reported has been made in providing safe drinking water and medical care in Haiti, Shah said a new industrial park will create 5,000 jobs.
Chaffetz publicly slammed the USAID Director for making wildly inaccurate claims of success in Haiti. “The totality of the U.S. response has been pathetic and disappointing,” he said.
Shah said 10 to 20 percent of the quake rubble had been removed. Chaffetz responded that earthquake relief efforts in Haiti have been “pathetic,” contradicting Shah’s Haiti “success” figures, pointing out that only 5% of the rubble had been removed according to the Inspector General report.
Ripping apart Shah’s testimony, Chaffetz said, “that’s not cleaned up. You scooted it over.” Chaffetz introduced a picture of himself in Haiti last March, standing on rubble next to a sign saying the site had been cleared “with funding from the American people.
Chaffetz said USAID’s record wasn’t much better in Iraq and Afghanistan. He pointed to a memorandum to Shah from the agency inspector general that concluded wildly inaccurate claims were made about operations in Iraq.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee told USAID director Rajiv Shah, “You would be fired” if the recovery efforts showed the same results in the United States.
“…This is blatant fraud,” Chaffetz said. (Chaffetz rips US disaster relief efforts.)
Recall folks, not too long ago, in a press conference with President-elect Michel Martelly, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, like Shah, also publicly claimed that in the 15 months since the earthquake “there‘s been progress…Twenty percent of the rubble, more than 2 million cubic meters, has been cleared” Further, Clinton, talking about “progress” in Haiti said that since the earthquake “one industrial park has been created to create 20,000 jobs.” Note Clinton said 20,000 jobs were created at the new industrial park, not that 5,000 jobs were created as Shah told Congress at the hearing. ( See, Press Release: Remarks With Haitian President-Elect Michel Martelly After Their Meeting).
The US cost Haiti approximately 850,000 agricultural jobs with Clinton/Bush “trade” policy and promises of hundreds of thousands of assembly plant jobs that never came to past, but pushed Haiti farmers off their rural lands. Yet, both Mrs. Clinton and USAID believe there‘s been progress: “One industrial park has been created to create 20,000 jobs.” (See, Rebuilding Haiti – The Sweatshop Hoax; Haiti and the Aid Racket and, Haiti and the international aid scam .)
Inquiring minds wanna know, is this official denial of accountability their incompetence, blatant fraud or, no, no, that’s not it. It’s most likely the corrupt, incompetent Haiti government and peoples making these US foreign aid officials lie like this. No doubt about it. For, as USAID Director Shah told Congress at the hearing- “We would have had more success with rubble removal and housing if we had more specific support from our partners and the government of Haiti. We’re not in charge of Haiti. We’re in a bilateral partnership with Government of Haiti.” ( Republicans say aid efforts in Haiti are a failure .)
Of course USAID must speak of “bilateral partnership” with Government of Haiti. It wouldn’t serve USAID’s poverty pimping corporatocracy’s purposes, to show the post-earthquake US/World Bank unilateral control of Haiti and Haiti reconstruction through the Interim Haiti Reconstruction (IHRC) protectorate, nor the billions in donor country funds (37% of $5.3billion) collected and still in Clinton/UN/NGO/World Bank coffers. (We won’t mention the US/international controls on Haiti through visa denials, job incentives, economic and other military-industrial-complex embargoes. (See, for instance, Haiti officials reverse some legislative races challenged by foreign observers .)
Here’s the out-of-view, but ever-present distant shadow in this “aid” and promoting “progress in Haiti” scam. If Haiti is corrupt, its corruption is less than 1 cent per dollar of aid. For less than 1 cent of every dollar of US donor aid goes to the Haiti government. If there’s corruption it is NOT with the government or people of Haiti, but USAID and its NGO subcontractors who divvy up more than 99% of “aid to Haiti.” Americans are not taught the truth about foreign aid to Haiti. In fact, 93 percent of USAID aid funds to Haiti go straight back to the U.S. to purchase US goods and services. Additionally, in the area of agriculture, for instance, the Bumper’s Amendment, prevents U.S. government aid from being spent on agricultural programs overseas that could benefit crops that might compete with U.S. exports on the global market. Moreover,
“Statistics indicate the existence of a burgeoning disaster economy where $98.40 of every $100 awarded in reconstruction contracts by the US government is consequently recycled back to the US from the local economy through the salaries of international aid workers/contractors. Reports show that jobs are often outsourced to foreign workers despite unemployment rates of 85%.” (Haiti: The Structural Difficulties of “Building Back Better.)
American “aid” to Haiti is a scam used for corporations and consultant firms, connected to those in power at USAID, to buy their own company’s goods and services at high, uncompetitive prices and then dump it into Haiti whether it’s a Haiti priority or not. ”The United States makes sure that 80 cents in every aid dollar is returned to the home country.” It’s called “Tied Aid. And once the corporate state has used monies, earmarked “for Haiti relief” to purchase its own goods and services, it doesn’t matter whether those goods – collected food, water and medicine – actually reach suffering Haitians or that the services make a difference to help quake or storm victims. That’s why, unlike when the US plutocrats want to bring the Duvalierist overseers back to power, they’ll take away visas to put on pressure if they don’t like an election result. But when the Haiti Oligarchy callously or capriciously ups its gas or food prices, or lets donated food, water, medicine and relief supplies rot at their privatized ports, you don’t see their visas being taken by US policymakers in order to help actually save Haiti lives. Oh no. That’s when the US Embassy drones and USAID will say stuff like “we’re not in charge of Haiti. We’re in a bilateral partnership with Government of Haiti,” “we can’t meddle” in Haiti affairs.
In fact, if most of the paid-for-with-tied-aid relief goods actually reached the poorest of the poor in Haiti and the NGO services significantly lifted Haitians out of poverty, suffering, curable diseases and misery, there would be no need for tied aid and these NGOs and USAID would be out of the real business of increasing corporate market share profits for US corporate oligarchs and plutocrats.
Haiti crisis, disaster, imposed coup d’etats, deaths, chaos and misery are an asset to this industry. Stories abound about tons of collected food, water and medicine allowed to rot at privatized Haiti ports and USAID/NGO warehouses. It’s all blamed, of course, on Haiti corruption or inability to absorb US benevolence and gracious philanthropy. (See, UN Navy bring to Haiti, one year too late, 1million dollars worth of expired goods ; and Food Donation Rot in New York while Haitian Storm Victims Starve and Die and Rot Update)
What is called “US aid to Haiti” is mostly corporate welfare to wealthy US corporations and the tiny Haiti oligarchy that act as their neocolonial subcontractors who get the trickled down. That’s why US aid is a failure and doesn’t help Haiti earthquake victims. Poverty pimping, false charity, harmful food aid , unfair trade, false benevolence and strings-attached “Tied Aid,” is what’s pathetic. Foreign pillaging of Haiti resources and riches with the exclusion of the Haitian people and no economic justice/sharing of profits with poor Haitians to raise the majority’s standard of living is what’s pathetic.
If US “aid” to Haiti were successful, the charitable industry and self-styled “saviors” of Haiti, would not have a gig. Failure is an asset, structurally built into their color-coded distribution policies and disaster capitalism “aid” system. The sooner decent Americans understand this, the quicker these poverty pimps will be booted from their vulture perch and U.S. disaster relief efforts to Katrina and Haiti victims will be more effective. (See, the Bumper’s Amendment ; Mark Weisbrot’s “Haiti and the international aid scam : Haiti is often decried for corruption but look at how reconstruction contracting works: it may be legal but it’s still graft” and, HLLN on oversight needed on USAID.)
