Haiti (Catch all)

[Tom Kratman]

It is really easy to be cynical about the prospects for development in the so-called "third world"--especially if you ignore the actual data on third world development over the last thirty years or so.

In most places, we've seen striking reductions in mortality, and improvements in nutrition, education, and real disposable income--largely due to local efforts, but in some cases (notably the reductions in infant and child mortality as a consequence of vaccination and education) due to critical contributions from the international community.

Even in Haiti--certainly the most difficult development challenge in the Western hemisphere, even before the recent earthquake--under-5 mortality has dropped from 143 (per thousand) in 1994 to 76 (per thousand) in 2008--almost halving the number of child deaths.

GapMinder provides a fascinating software-based way of viewing these trends over time--have a look here. Charles Kenny also had a good piece on some of the under-recognized achievements of African development in Foreign Policy Magazine last year.

And the effect of more Haitians is to be precisely what, do you think? Other than further deforestation of an already largely deforested country, said deforestation leading to top soil erosion and the killing of fish on the coast, said deforestation caused by the trees being turned into charcoal, so that the already excessive numbers of Haitians (excessive for what their third of the island can support) can cook, I mean.

Further, what improvement would you expect increased but still limited opportunities for education to do for Haiti, other than to make that fraction talented enough to qualify for the education high-tail it for a better place? Yes, they'll send remittances back, for a generation or so. But after that, the place will be the poorer for its more talented people having left, and the remittances will have stopped.

[marct]

Hi Rex,

It is really easy to be cynical about the prospects for development in the so-called "third world"--especially if you ignore the actual data on third world development over the last thirty years or so.

I'll admit, I'm enough of a particularist to dislike generalist terms like the "third world". I've actually looked at a fair bit of the development work, although mainly in Africa, but I do have some problems with the indicators.

In most places, we've seen striking reductions in mortality, and improvements in nutrition, education, and real disposable income--largely due to local efforts, but in some cases (notably the reductions in infant and child mortality as a consequence of vaccination and education) due to critical contributions from the international community.

Which is all well and good. we saw exactly the same type of drop in child mortality 100 years ago in Nigeria, but what is not generally talked about is two things. First, is the drop brought about by permanent changes in the environment (e.g. swamp draining, massive but long last infrastructure, etc.) or is it brought about by external applications (e.g. vaccines)? The source of the change is crucial since external changes cannot be assumed to be lasting, while local changes, especially environmental, can be.

The second key point is that there is a culture lag relating to perceptions of how many children are "acceptable" and "necessary", and this is where the time element in the changes leading to drops in infant mortality becomes critical. It usually takes about 60 years for cultural perceptions of the required number of children per family to change to meet the "new" environment (BTW, as a point of clarification, I'm talking about population-level here).

Once you start to get these culture level changes going, usually 30-40 years and solidified by 60-70, you have a related problem which is controlling the birth rate via non-environmental factors (e.g. birth control). That's another culture lag problem, so you end up with a fairly big population bulge.

You mentioned changes in nutrition, education and real disposable income, so let me take up some of these. Nutrition is especially important, especially in early childhood, but it requires a number of different factors in your food production / distribution cycles - i.e. a fair diversity of foods being widely available and affordable. Education may or may not be useful as an indicator, it depends on education for what and the quality of the education, and Tom's point about setting up a diasporic brain drain is well taken (consider the Canada - US relationship on this one, and when it flips).

Let's talk about real disposable income, then. What resource potentials does it actually indicate and what will it be spent on? This is critical, especially if it is combined with a culture that tends towards kinetic "answers" to political problems. Consider, by way of example, the Muslim Brotherhood - well educated, fairly decent disposable income and a tendency to use it in kinetic terms, at least for the first 40-50 years of the operation. Nutrition, education and income do not automatically equate to a peaceful nation state .

Tom touched on the slave country problem, and it really is at the root of a lot of the cultural problems Haiti is facing. I'm not (quite) as pessimistic as Tom about there being a solution, but it isn't going to be easy at all, and would require some pretty massive socio-cultural engineering. Let's just take the familiarism that Tom raises which, BTW, is the only same response in that type of situation. How do you expand people's moral "inner curcle" to include people who are in the country, but not of your or an allied bloodline?

Historically, this has only been done via some form of cross-cutting (across bloodlines) allegiance system. Examples include secret societies, religions, "class consciousness" (although that tends to degenerate into alliance groups of bloodlines), fictive kinship systems and external enemies ("we either hang together or hang separately).

The latter, an external enemy, won't work in Haiti because it is what actually established a large part of the current culture in the first place (fear of invasion and re-enslavement, extensive militarization early on, invasion of the DR, etc.). Secret societies and fictive kinship systems are already a part of Haitian society and have a rather checkered past (tonton macoute anyone?); at any rate, they have tended to be too localized to effectively cross bloodlines unlike the lodge systems in west Africa, the north-west coast of BC or the Masons et alii.

This leaves us with religions (iffy) and class consciousness (quite fragmented and highly diverse). And, as a note, the type of class consciousness that operated to stabilize many of the western European countries was a fairly broad one with significant size in the population (look at the development of the middle class figures for western Europe in the 17th - 19th centuries), and most of them were formed around a pseudo-feudalist model which would have problems in Haiti.

One system that might work is some form of a cantonment system (think Switzerland in the mid-16th to mid-17th century with shades relating to France in the late 19th century) with cross-cuts for certain industries, religious groups and ideological groups. That, however, would require that the "national government", and pardon me while I laugh my guts out, agree to decentralize a large amount of its power and shift its electoral system. It would also require that development work be conducted at the canton level which for some groups would be fine, while others wouldn't get the necessary ROI to support their "deserving", lavish life style .

As I said, I can see some potential, but not much.

Cheers,

Marc

[challengervert]

A very good article on the cholera situation in Haiti. Very difficult to say that the Nepalese are responsible for this. We are bracing for the Haitian election on 28 November and this problem will only be compunded by potential political violence that may take place. We have already had numerous instances of Haitians throwing stones at the Doctors without Borders personnel trying to help the cholera victims.


http://goatpath.wordpress.com/2010/1...n-mass-graves/

[SWJ Blog]

United States-Haitian Relations from 1791 to 1810: How Slavery And Commerce Shaped American Foreign Policy

Entry Excerpt:

United States-Haitian Relations from 1791 to 1810: How Slavery And Commerce Shaped American Foreign Policy
by Philip K. Abbott

Download the Full Article:

In 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution, Saint-Dominque (Haiti) was arguably the most valuable colony on earth. It was “an integral part of the economic life of the [agricultural] age, the greatest colony in the world, the pride of France, and the envy of every other imperialist nation.” Producing more sugar than all the British Caribbean islands combined, Haiti supplied over forty percent of the world’s sugar. For the United States, colonial Haiti was the second largest foreign trading partner, superseded only by Great Britain. As John Adams wrote in 1783, “[Haiti] is a part of the American system of commerce, they can neither do without us, nor we without them.” As a national commercial interest, trade with Haiti was especially important for New England merchants, where the French colony purchased sixty three percent of the dried fish and eighty percent of the pickled fish exported from the United States. It not only provided a dynamic outlet for American goods to keep the sugar plantations running, but many producers as well as shippers in America grew dependent on the island market.

Download the Full Article:

Colonel Philip K. Abbott, U.S. Army, is currently the Chief, Americas Division on the Joint Staff, J5 Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate. He received a B.A. from Norwich University, an M.A. from Kansas University, and an M.S. from the National Defense University. He served in various Command & Staff positions in the United States and Europe and worked extensively throughout Latin America as a Foreign Area Officer.



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[SWJ Blog]

Gangs, Netwar, and "Communiter Counterinsurgency" in Haiti

Entry Excerpt:

Gangs, Netwar, and "Communiter Counterinsurgency" in Haiti by David C. Becker, NDU's Prism. Here's the abstract:

Haiti, the epitome of a fragile state, has been receiving international assistance via repeated UN missions and U.S. interventions for more than 20 years. Criminal gangs exploited the country’s sovereignty gap by wresting control over territory from the state and acquiring legitimacy among certain poor populations. The gangs can be understood as a network of “violence entrepreneurs” operating within a complex environment, a system of systems within the slums. While not as sophisticated as major international criminal organizations, between 2006 and 2007 the politically connected criminal gangs constituted a major challenge for the state and the UN peacekeeping mission, as well as a threat to national stability. The U.S. Government funded an innovative and integrated effort, the Haiti Stabilization Initiative (HSI), to counter the threat by investing in an analogous but countervailing approach reinforcing “social entrepreneurs” and their networks. This supplanted undesirable feedback loop effects with ones that enhance and consolidate stability. Risky participatory and community-led stabilization interventions marginalized and undermined gangs on their home turf. Using development tools for stabilization purposes, HSI stabilization goals were political rather than “needs-based” in nature. While the flexible and comprehensive approach generated important gains, there were also lessons learned and recognition of the initiative’s limitations.

Read the full article: Gangs, Netwar, and "Communiter Counterinsurgency" in Haiti.



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[SWJ Blog]

A Lesson On UN Peacekeeping – From Haiti

Entry Excerpt:



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[SWJ Blog]

A Lesson On UN Peacekeeping – From Haiti

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[davidbfpo]

I have merged five threads and changed the thread's title. Three large threads were closed and are here.

All prompted by the next post

[davidbfpo]

A long article reviewing Haiti and the UN's intervention, with "Uncle Sam" standing close by. It is behind a free registration wall though.

It opens with:

After 13 years and more than $7 billion, the “touristas”—as the United Nations soldiers that currently occupy Haiti are commonly referred to—will finally be heading home. Well, sort of. While thousands of troops are expected to depart in October, the U.N. has authorized a new, smaller mission composed of police that will focus on justice and strengthening the rule of law. But the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, known by its French acronym, MINUSTAH, is not just thousands of foreign soldiers “keeping the peace.” It is the latest and most visible manifestation of the international community’s habit of intervening in Haiti, a habit that is unlikely to change.

The author, Jake Johnston, maintains a CEPR blog on Haiti:http://cepr.net/blogs/haiti-relief-a...ruction-watch/

[AdamG]

The U.S. embassy in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince told American citizens to remain inside until further notice Sunday as the city continues to be gripped by violent protests.

"Do not travel to the airport unless you confirmed your flight is departing,” the State Department cautioned. "Flights are canceled today [Sunday] and the airport has limited food and water available.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/07...-escalate.html


Demonstrations in Haiti began after the announcement that there would be an increase of 38 percent to 51 percent for gasoline, diesel and kerosene.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Volunteer groups from several U.S. states were stranded in Haiti Sunday after violent protests over fuel prices canceled flights and made roads unsafe. Church groups in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Alabama are among those that haven't been able to leave, according to newspaper and television reports.

http://abc7chicago.com/politics/hait...roups/3728875/

[AdamG]

Foiled by a traffic stop.

Five Americans and several other men were arrested after police discovered they were carrying a number of automatic rifles and pistols in Port-au-Prince. The men are being held at this Haitian National Police compound.

The men were driving a Toyota Prado and Ford pickup that have since been traced to people close to President Moise — who faces calls to resign over accusations of corruption and mismanagement.

News of the arrests came as antigovernment street protests have been relatively quiet. That's in contrast to last week, when deadly violence prompted the State Department to issue a "do not travel" advisory and order all nonemergency U.S. personnel and their family members to leave Haiti.

As NPR reported last week, anticorruption protests grew very intense as fury grew over a court report that alleges Haiti's government diverted or misused billions of dollars in development money from Venezuela's Petrocaribe fund. The accusations include Moise and a company he headed before he took office in 2017. At least seven people have died in the unrest.

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/20/69620...s-many-questio