OPINION:ONE CAN only marvel at the outpouring of sympathy for Haiti. The country's tragic history is one reason we find the catastrophe so compelling. The sheer scale of the destruction reminds us of the capriciousness of nature, the fragility of all civilisation. Two hundred thousand lives lost, , a capital city destroyed in seconds, many thousands of survivors in agony, their limbs snapped like twigs. From the vantage of our own good fortune, we contemplate, in the words of TS Eliot, some "infinitely suffering thing", writes LARA MARLOWE
The Haitian earthquake poses the big questions of the human condition. Life and death. Hope and despair. The good of doctors and rescue workers, versus the evil of thugs who raid orphanages in Port-au-Prince. Why? is the most obvious question; neither God’s will nor science seem adequate responses. Albert Camus’s belief in the absurd comes closest to it, but also fails to satisfy our need for answers.
My flight from Santo Domingo the other morning was filled with volunteer relief workers and journalists, heading back to the land of hot showers and cooked meals. The stewardess called a round of applause for the aid workers. Problem solved. We can go home now. Our short attention span is the biggest threat to Haiti’s recovery.
I’ll bet my bottom dollar that the poorest country in the Western hemisphere will remain so, that in a year or two or three, most of the two million Haitians whose lives have been shattered by the quake will still be poor, jobless and homeless. Urgent appeals have gone out for proper tents. But the rainy season will start in March. Even if tents arrive in the meantime, they’ll be washed down the hillside or mired in mud. We should have the foresight to start building houses on a massive scale, now.
A year after Israel killed 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza, the enclave is still under siege and little of the $4.5 billion (€3.2 billion) pledged to rebuild has materialised. A year and a half after the August 2008 war, Russia still occupies part of Georgia, and refugees cannot go home. I could give many more examples, but you get the idea. The lack of messy political issues comparable to the Arab-Israeli conflict or Russian irredentism made it easy for the world to agree on Haiti. Let’s hope that consensus continues.
The needs of our own countries militate against a sustained effort for Haiti. A young woman with the face of a black madonna, Francina Renard, followed me to the rope that separates US soldiers from Haitians at a camp for the displaced. “Can you give me a job?” she pleaded shyly. During the 10 days I spent in Port-au-Prince, I lost track of the number of Haitians who asked me for employment – not money, employment.
But how will the US government create jobs in Haiti, with 17 million jobless at home? Is America going to build shelter for one million Haitians, when 600,000 Americans are homeless?
Fortunately, Concern, Goal, Trócaire, MSF and the Red Cross will be there to nag our conscience. Their heroism in Haiti has been impressive. I distinguish between those with a commando attitude – who don’t let security worries prevent them rushing to help those in need – and the bureaucrats who waited in compounds for assessments, instructions and escorts. One often finds both attitudes within the same agency. It’s a question of character, and leadership.
Reconstruction will be complicated by the fabled corruption of the Haitian government, and the need to respect Haitian sovereignty, but neither must be allowed to prevent help reaching people.
John O’Shea, the head of Goal, tells how his agency redirected its post-tsunami efforts from Indonesia to Sri Lanka because of the unhelpful attitude of the Indonesian military. Aid agencies owe it to donors to impose conditionality and accountability, says O’Shea.
We should beware of the colour-blindness that affects our scorn for corruption. The biggest thieves in Baghdad after the 2003 US invasion were US contractors, who made off with hundreds of millions of dollars. Dealing with “our sons of bitches” (as Teddy Roosevelt called US-backed despots) does not preclude corruption either. Remember the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos, Saddam Hussein (before we turned against him), Hamid Karzai’s administration in Afghanistan . . .
Endowing Haiti with effective, democratic government may be the greatest challenge. On the night of the earthquake, what was left of President René Préval’s government got on motorcycles and rode up the hill to the US ambassador’s residence. But the Obama administration and international donors would rather deal with a strong government than a helpless client state.
“The only institutions that function throughout the Caribbean and Latin America are the Catholic Church and the gangs,” notes Patrick Moynihan, an Irish-American who runs a school in Port-au-Prince.
I rode around Port-au-Prince in a “tap-tap”, a Toyota pick-up with benches in the back for passengers. As we headed down the hill one morning, coasting without power to save petrol, a middle-aged man dressed like a clerk or office worker jumped in. Jean-Claude, the tap-tap driver, explained that we weren’t taking passengers, and asked him to leave. The man clutched his document file to his chest and refused to budge.
There was no public transport, he said, and he had somewhere to be going. The determination of the man in the tap-tap gave me hope for Haiti. So did the calm, dignity and resilience of the earthquake survivors.
Haiti is a state founded on two genocides – the native indigenous Indians, exterminated by the Spanish, followed by the slow deaths of up to one million African slaves at the hands of the French. In the 19th century, France demanded reparations from the world’s first black republic. Fearful that the example of rebellion would spread to slaves on its own territory, the US imposed a crippling trade embargo on the former “pearl of the Antilles”.
In Haiti, the evil done by men – including the island’s home-grown tyrants – has lived on. It will take tremendous determination, commensurate with the effort of the past two weeks, to prove that the chains of history can be broken.
Lara Marlowe is Washington Correspondent