By Nicole Lee, The Wash­ing­ton Informer Opinion/Editorial

The com­pany Hal­libur­ton is the emblem of the mil­i­tary indus­trial com­plex. Dur­ing the Iraq war, Hal­libur­ton gained a rep­u­ta­tion syn­ony­mous with crooked deal­ing. For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney’s rela­tion­ship to the com­pany as its for­mer CEO is sym­bolic of the mis­use of the gov­ern­ment funds for pri­vate gain and pub­lic destruction.

And the crit­i­cism was well earned. Dur­ing the Iraq war, Hal­libur­ton was awarded mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar con­tracts to “rebuild” the coun­try. These “no bid” con­tracts billed the Amer­i­can peo­ple for, in many cases, over­priced goods. US sol­diers and pri­vate secu­rity forces, akin to Black­wa­ter, were used to pro­tect con­voys of Hal­libur­ton goods.

Hal­libur­ton reg­u­larly employ imported labor and the labor­ers have reported poor pay and treat­ment tan­ta­mount to slav­ery. US sol­diers reported that Hal­libur­ton even pro­vided them infe­rior ser­vices. Despite their track record and uni­ver­sal bad pub­lic­ity, it appears Hal­libur­ton, Dyn­corp and other US mil­i­tary con­trac­tors are poised to grab up the lion share of US gov­ern­ment con­tracts to rebuild Haiti.

Vir­tu­ally six months after the most dev­as­tat­ing nat­ural dis­as­ter to hit the West­ern Hemi­sphere in the last two cen­turies, Haiti recon­struc­tion remains stymied. I just returned from Haiti last week after inter­view­ing rape vic­tims in the make shift tent communities.

Each morn­ing I drove through down­town Port au Prince. From what I saw, up until this point the bil­lions of dol­lars ear­marked for Haiti recon­struc­tion has amounted to a group of five guys with shov­els wear­ing USAID t-shirts shov­el­ing the rub­ble of an entire three story build­ing into a few garbage bags.

But this ridicu­lous scene will be replaced by an even scarier one. While the dust from the col­lapsed build­ings still hung in the air of Port au Prince, con­trac­tors began to sali­vate over the even­tual con­tracts to rebuild Haiti. If Iraq recon­struc­tion is any indi­ca­tor, we can expect a rebuild­ing process that has noth­ing to do with the wel­fare or inter­ests of the Haitians people.

And despite the track record, despite the evi­dence award­ing the Haiti’s recon­struc­tion com­plex to Hal­libur­ton and its cor­po­rate cronies seems to be a fait d’complet.

Since the earth­quake, Hait­ian small and medium size busi­nesses have tried to insert them­selves into the bid­ding process for recon­struc­tion con­tracts. At every turn they have been met with road­blocks and out­right hos­til­ity from US gov­ern­ment offi­cials. When a con­fer­ence was held in Port au Prince regard­ing the rebuild­ing, a few Hait­ian small busi­ness­men were invited.

When it came time to dis­cuss the actual bid­ding process, they were told that they would not be eli­gi­ble to even com­pete due to their inex­pe­ri­ence. Even the forms to be vet­ted for US gov­ern­ment con­tracts are only read­ily avail­able in English.

But isn’t a Haiti rebuilt by Haitians going to be the most sus­tain­able solu­tion? What hap­pened to all the talk of a Haiti for Haitians? First, Amer­i­cans have taken their eye off the ball. We have been dis­tracted while these con­tracts are been promised away. The Hait­ian peo­ple who have the most to gain or lose, feel that they have no con­trol over this process but know that their futures are being deter­mined with­out their involvement.

Hal­libur­ton has no place in Haiti. Just as Cheney turned to his allies to rebuild Iraq, why can’t the demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent and Con­gress turn to their allies to rebuild Haiti? Unions, green insti­tu­tions, and com­mu­nity based orga­ni­za­tions, stand ready to pro­vide trade and skill build­ing to Hait­ian busi­nesses and workers.

Why not use that exper­tise and cre­ate Haiti that takes care of Haitians FIRST and then exports to the rest of the world. We need to employ dif­fer­ent tac­tics if we want a dif­fer­ent out­come. Using Hal­libur­ton or other pri­vate mil­i­tary con­trac­tors just because they have done it before rep­re­sents poor and unin­spired lead­er­ship on our part. If we are to build back bet­ter in Haiti, it means involv­ing Haitians at all lev­els and not just return­ing to wrote.

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