By Yves Engler, Al Jazeera Opinion

Six months after the earth­quake, about 1.3 mil­lion Haitians still live in tent camps [GALLO/GETTY]

Six months ago a dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake killed more than 230,000 Haitians. About 100,000 homes were com­pletely destroyed, along­side 1,000 schools and many other buildings.

The scenes of dev­as­ta­tion filled TV screens around the world. Half a year later the pic­ture is eerily familiar.

Destroyed dur­ing the earth­quake, the pres­i­den­tial palace remains rub­ble and a sym­bol of the vast destruc­tion. Port-au-Prince is still cov­ered in debris. About 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple live in 1,200 makeshift tent camps in and around the capital.

Accord­ing to one esti­mate, less than 5 per cent of the earth­quake debris has been removed. Of course, with 20 mil­lion cubic metres of rub­ble in Port-Au-Prince alone, remov­ing the debris is a mas­sive challenge.

If 1,000 trucks were work­ing daily it would take three to five years to remove all this mate­r­ial. Yet, there are fewer than 300 trucks haul­ing debris.

Polit­i­cal roadblocks

The tech­ni­cal obsta­cles to recon­struc­tion are immense. But the polit­i­cal road­blocks are larger.

Imme­di­ately after the quake $10bn in inter­na­tional aid was pledged. As of June 30, only 10 per cent of the $2.5bn promised for 2010 had been deliv­ered. A lot of it has been held up in polit­i­cal wrangling.

The inter­na­tional com­mu­nity led by the US, France and Canada demanded that the Hait­ian par­lia­ment pass an 18-month-long state of emer­gency law that effec­tively gave up gov­ern­ment con­trol over the reconstruction.

Hold­ing up the money was a pres­sure tac­tic designed to ensure inter­na­tional con­trol of the Interim Com­mis­sion for the Recon­struc­tion of Haiti, which is autho­rised to spend bil­lions. These maneu­vers were met by protest and wide­spread hos­til­ity in Haiti, which forced the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity to back off a little.

Ini­tially, a major­ity of seats on the com­mis­sion were to rep­re­sent for­eign gov­ern­ments and inter­na­tional finan­cial insti­tu­tions. That has been reduced to half of the 26-member com­mit­tee, but the money is still to be man­aged by the World Bank and other inter­na­tional institutions.

Bill Clin­ton, the for­mer US pres­i­dent, and Jean-Max Bel­lerive, the Hait­ian prime min­is­ter, co-chair the recon­struc­tion com­mis­sion, which met for the first time on June 17.

Under­min­ing Haiti

The strong-arm tac­tics by the West­ern pow­ers to deter­mine the make-up of the com­mis­sion sig­nify a con­tin­u­a­tion of long­stand­ing pol­icy to under­mine the Hait­ian state’s cred­i­bil­ity and capacity.

For two decades Wash­ing­ton and its allies have delib­er­ately weak­ened Haiti’s gov­ern­ment. Cit­ing neo-liberal the­o­ries they demanded the pri­vati­sa­tion of a num­ber of state-owned com­pa­nies and the reduc­tion of tar­iffs on agri­cul­tural products.

This dev­as­tated domes­tic food pro­duc­tion and spurred an exo­dus from the coun­try­side to the cities, which exac­er­bated the destruc­tion and death toll of the earthquake.

Wash­ing­ton also desta­bilised gov­ern­ments that put the inter­ests of the poor over for­eign cor­po­ra­tions. On Feb­ru­ary 29, 2004, the elected gov­ern­ment of Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide was over­thrown by the US, France and Canada. This ush­ered in a ter­ri­ble wave of polit­i­cal repres­sion and the ongo­ing UN occupation.

Since that time Aris­tide has been in forced exile in South Africa and his Fanmi Lavalas party has been barred from par­tic­i­pat­ing in elec­tions. They are again being blocked from par­tic­i­pat­ing in elec­tions tak­ing place on Novem­ber 28.

All of this has cre­ated a sit­u­a­tion in which there is no insti­tu­tion in Haiti with the cred­i­bil­ity or capac­ity to under­take reconstruction.

The NGO republic

Haitians not NGOs must be equipped to rebuild their coun­try [GALLO/GETTY]

Pres­i­dent Rene Preval’s gov­ern­ment has lost the sup­port of the country’s poor major­ity because of its sub­servience to Wash­ing­ton and the local elite. Preval recently defended the move to ban Fanmi Lavalas, which is still the most pop­u­lar party in the country.

The 10,000-member UN “peace­keep­ing” force is widely dis­liked. In the two years after the 2004 coup, UN troops reg­u­larly pro­vided sup­port for the Hait­ian police’s vio­lent assaults on poor com­mu­ni­ties and peace­ful demon­stra­tions demand­ing the return of the elected government.

UN forces also par­tic­i­pated directly in a vio­lent polit­i­cal paci­fi­ca­tion cam­paign, launch­ing repeated anti-“gang” assaults on poor neigh­bour­hoods in Port-au-Prince.

The two most hor­rific raids took place on Jan­u­ary 6, 2005, and Decem­ber 22, 2006, which together left some 35 inno­cent civil­ians dead and dozens wounded in the densely pop­u­lated slum of Cité Soleil — a bas­tion of sup­port for Aristide.

In April 2008, UN troops once again demon­strated that their pri­mary pur­pose in the coun­try was to defend the mas­sive eco­nomic divide in the coun­try. Dur­ing riots over the ris­ing cost of food they put down protests by killing a hand­ful of demonstrators.

Foreign-funded Non-Governmental Organ­i­sa­tions (NGOs) are widely dis­cred­ited for con­tribut­ing to a two-decade long process that has under­mined Hait­ian gov­ern­men­tal capac­ity. Some­times dubbed the “repub­lic of NGOs”, in Haiti these organ­i­sa­tions have a great deal of influ­ence and are pro­moted as agents of relief.

In some cir­cum­stances, they are. But, how would we like it if all our schools and social ser­vices were run by pri­vate for­eign charities?

In Port-au-Prince there is graf­fiti stat­ing “Down with NGOs”.

Two weeks ago Hait­ian jour­nal­ist Wad­ner Pierre com­plained that “NGOs con­tinue to humil­i­ate and dis­crim­i­nate [against] the poor and respected Hait­ian cit­i­zens by assum­ing they are all dan­ger­ous, vio­lent, or sav­age peo­ple, and they do not know any­thing, even how to put a tent up while ignor­ing the strength and courage of these people”.

Over the past two months there have been a series of major demon­stra­tions in Port-au-Prince and else­where. Demon­stra­tors have called for Aristide’s return and an end to the exclu­sion of his Fanmi Lavalas party.

Of course pro­test­ers are also angry about the slow pace of recon­struc­tion and the six-year-old for­eign occupation.

How to help

So, what should be the response of peo­ple who want to help?

Firstly, any seri­ous recon­struc­tion must build the Hait­ian government’s capac­ity to pro­vide hous­ing, edu­ca­tion, health­care and other social services.

Aid must be directed away from neo-liberal adjust­ment, sweat­shop exploita­tion and non-governmental char­ity, and towards invest­ment in Haiti’s gov­ern­ment and pub­lic institutions.

Sec­ondly, mas­sive invest­ment must be made in Haiti’s coun­try­side, where farm­ing has been effec­tively destroyed. Haitians are poverty stricken partly because for­eign aid poli­cies favour sweat­shop labour over agriculture.

For exam­ple, the US dumps rice on the Hait­ian mar­ket. Thirty years ago, Haiti pro­duced 90 per cent of its own rice; today it is less than 10 per cent.

Thirdly, Fanmi Lavalas should be allowed to par­tic­i­pate in elec­tions and Aris­tide to return from exile.

Only when Haitians are allowed to run their own affairs will real recon­struc­tion begin.

Yves Engler is the co-author of Canada in Haiti: Wag­ing War on the Poor Major­ity. His most recent book is Canada and Israel: Build­ing Apartheid. Click here for more information.

The views expressed in this arti­cle are the author’s own and do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect Al Jazeera’s edi­to­r­ial policy.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/07/201071283334294195.html