Haiti, May 2004, A 6 year old boy with the swollen belly and limbs of Kwashiorkor- a disease of profound malnutrition.

6/20/04: Haiti: After the Coup

The Medical Situation Worsens

On February 29 President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forcefully removed from the Presidency for a second-time, and taken against his will to the Central African Republic. The well-armed opposition had waged a successful campaign over the previous month, moving from town to town defeating or scattering the local police forces. Aristide had demobilized the army, so there was no serious resistance to the "rebels" who had been armed and trained in the Dominican Republic. Old faces re-emerged in charge of the armed opposition: Guy Phillipe, an ex-police chief with a history of violence against pro-democracy advocates, and Louis-Jodel Chamblain, one of the founders of FRAPH, a paramilitary group notorious for human rights abuses during the last coup in the early 1990's. Chamblain was convicted in absentia of the murder of a well known pro-democracy activist.

Over the next two months, armed gangs roamed the streets with lists of Aristide supporters: homes were burned, people were beaten and murdered. A thousand bodies, mainly Aristide supporters, were found in the streets of Port-au-Prince, Cap-Hatien and in small towns. Many prominent members of Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas, are still in hiding.

As of May 2004, the violence in the streets has subsided considerably but living conditions have deteriorated for most Haitians. The following are particularly acute problems:

· Most government services have stopped. Trash continues to pile up on the sidewalks of Port-au-Prince; potable water and electricity, in those areas of the country where it was available, is now tenuous,

· Food is scarcer and more expensive than before the coup. There are more frequent reports of extreme malnutrition in children, kwashiorkor and marasmus, presenting in local clinics.

· While police are in evidence in Port-au-Prince, there are neither police nor a judicial system in other areas of Haiti. Violent crimes and theft are rampant.

· Prices on all essential goods have risen beyond the buying power of most Haitians. The price of rice has doubled. U.S. backed Prime Minister Gerard Latortue has suggested that Haitians change their eating habits from rice to corn.

An inevitable coup. It has been obvious to those close to events in Haiti that the United States and France played an important role in the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Haiti, and these efforts began before Aristide took office in 2000. Faced with the inevitability of a Lavalas (Aristide's party) landslide, Haitian policy makers in Washington, influenced by the Haitian business elite, developed a strategy that was certain to remove Aristide from office. That the strategy imposed enormous pain on the Haitian people seemed of little importance. The strategy was to essentially bankrupt Haiti, and had a number of components.

· American aid to the Aristide Government (@500 million dollars) was frozen. While United States Aid to International Development (USAID) supported the International Republican Institute, an organization involved in "party building", i.e. opposition party building, in Haiti. But little humanitarian aid reached the Haitian people. More sinister, large numbers of U.S. weapons found their way to the Haitian armed opposition in the Dominican Republic,

· The IntraAmerican Development Bank (IDB) approved 146 million dollars in loans to Haiti for health infrastructure development, water and sanitation, education and rural raod building. The loans were blocked by the U.S. executive director at the IDB.

· The Haitian Government owes over a billion dollars in debt to foreign governments. Haiti was forced to pay 55 million dollars in debt service to the U.S. despite the fact that much of the debt was acquired during the period when the U.S. supported the Duvaliers military regime which terrorized the Haitian people. This would qualify as "odious debt" and under international law need not be paid.

· One international funding agency, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and malaria awarded 17 million dollars to private and United Nations entities to support an innovative AIDS program in Haiti. The 2 billion dollar U.S. commitment to the Global Fund was reduced to 200,000 dollars in the President's 2005 budget.

It is unclear whether President Aristide had the ability or the moral character to lead Haiti out of the quagmire. It is evident, however, that the Aristide presidency had no chance survive.

(For additional information on the crisis in Haiti readers may consult the following informative websites: www.the globalfund.org; www.unicef.org; www.pih.org[Partners in Health]; www.haitireborn.org).

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