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USAID and Haiti:
The friendly face of US imperialism By
Saha Kramer Sasha
Kramer is a PhD. candidate at Stanford University who has travelled to Haiti three
times this year on human rights delegations.
On the ground United States foreign assistance projects often mean desperately
needed food and employment for the poor, impossible to resist, difficult to critique.
But from the vantage point of US foreign policy objectives a very different picture
emerges and long-term and global outcomes often differ dramatically from the immediate
consequences of relief efforts.
The
United States International Development Agency (USAID) emerged as an arm of US
foreign policy following the Second World War. The Agency was developed to provide
foreign relief and development assistance in accordance with US policy objectives.
According to the USAID website the organization operates under the following mandate.
"U.S.
foreign assistance has always had the twofold purpose of furthering America's
foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets while improving
the lives of the citizens of the developing world." This
dual mandate raises the important question of whether US policy interests generally
result in improved living conditions for the majority of the world's poor? While
it may occasionally be the case that the interests of the US government and the
poverty stricken citizens around the world are aligned, more often than not, US
economic and political interests are dependent on the exploitation and manipulation
of workers and consumers in the developing world. It is this inherent contradiction
within the USAID mandate that should cause skepticism among US taxpayers concerned
with issues of social justice and self determination. The
fundamental problem with USAID's stated objectives is that it is not in the national
interests of the US government to promote self sufficiency in developing countries.
US economic interests are fed by foreign dependency on US imports and loans. Political
interests are served by maintaining an economic stranglehold on foreign governments,
and many a strategic alliance has been forged out of economic necessity. Among
USAID's operating tenets are sustainability and local capacity building, noble
goals but highly dependent on how these tenets are defined and the manner in which
they are implemented. Sustainability of what, and which local capacities are being
supported? Implementation is primarily shaped by another of USAID's governing
tenets, selectivity, the allocation of resources based on foreign policy interests.
The
recently released USAID Haiti Field Report provides an excellent case study for
investigating the role of USAID in promoting US foreign policy objectives under
the friendly guise of aid. Much of USAID's current work in Haiti is carried out
under the umbrella of the Haiti Transition Initiative (HTI), a program developed
and financed by USAID's Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) in May 2004 to
"emphasize stability-building measures in key crisis spots." The
OTI was created within USAID in 1994 "to provide fast, flexible, short-term assistance,
to take advantage of windows of opportunity to build democracy and peace" in countries
experiencing political turmoil. According to the OTI website the organization
accomplishes its objectives by specifically encouraging "a culture of risk-taking,
political orientation, and swift response among its staff and partners." The Haiti
Field Report explores how short term assistance programs, provided within a culture
of political orientation, can be used to distort international perceptions of
Haiti's complicated political terrain as the elections approach. The
United States is primarily concerned with Haiti's upcoming elections occurring
on schedule, so that a new government can be in place by February 2006. In Haiti,
as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the timeliness and appearance of legitimacy of the
electoral process are of paramount importance for the Bush Administration's PR
machine, which tends to equate elections with democracy, boasting that the United
States is benevolently promoting "democracies" around the world. USAID
describes their objectives as follows: "Haiti's future depends on elections that
are considered free and fair to ensure the legitimacy of the new government and
enhance their ability to govern effectively. The stabilization of the political
and security environment in Haiti is central to U.S. foreign policy and USAID
objectives." What
sort of democracy is the United States promoting in Haiti, where the duly elected
president was spirited away on a US military jet against his will, as the country
once again fell into the hands of the powerful elite and brutal former military?
Haiti is now governed by a cadre of unelected officials overseen by Prime Minister
Gerard Latortue, a Haitian businessman and former radio show host that lived in
Boca Raton Florida for the 15 years preceding his unconstitutional rise to office.
In direct
contradiction to actual events and the laws of the Haitian Constitution, USAID
describes Haiti's unelected Interim Government as "benefiting from the support
of democratic institutions." They further state that the "political transition"
of February 29, 2004 "created a new environment for collaboration with the Interim
Government of Haiti," indicating their willingness to work closely with an illegitimate
government accused of numerous human rights abuses over the past year in order
to promote US interests...
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