Militarization of Emergency Relieve

Excerpts from The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion?
By Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 15, 2010

The devastating earthquake is presented to World public opinion as the sole cause of the country's predicament. Haiti has been destroyed, its infrastructure demolished. Haiti's history, its colonial past has been erased.

The Haitian people have exhibited a high degree of solidarity, courage and social commitment.

Helping one another and acting with consciousness: under very difficult conditions, in the immediate wake of the disaster, citizens rescue teams were set up spontaneously.

The militarization of relief operations will weaken the organizational capabilities of Haitians to rebuild and reinstate the institutions of civilian government which have been destroyed. It will also encroach upon the efforts of the international medical teams and civilian relief organizations.

A Heritage Foundation report summarizes the substance of America's mission in Haiti: "The earthquake has both humanitarian and U.S. national security implications [requiring] a rapid response that is not only bold but decisive, mobilizing U.S. military, governmental, and civilian capabilities for both a short-term rescue and relief effort and a longer-term recovery and reform program in Haiti."

The main players in America's "humanitarian operation" are the Department of Defense, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which it has also been entrusted in channeling food aid to Haiti, which is distributed by the World Food Program.

When presidents Obama and Préval spoke on the phone, there were no reports of negotiations between the two governments regarding the entry and deployment of US troops on Haitian soil. The decision was taken and imposed unilaterally by Washington. The total lack of a functioning government in Haiti was used to legitimize, on humanitarian grounds, the sending in of a powerful military force, which has de facto taken over several governmental functions.

In 1994, the US sponsored military interventions "was not intended to restore democracy in Haiti. Quite the contrary: it was carried out to prevent a popular insurrection against the military Junta and its neoliberal cohorts."

U.S. and allied troops remained in the country until 1999. The Haitian armed forces were disbanded and the US State Department hired a mercenary company DynCorp to provide "technical advice" in restructuring the Haitian National Police (HNP).

In the months leading up to the 2004 Coup d'Etat, US Special Forces and the CIA were training a paramilitary death squad unit composed of the former Tonton Macoute of the Duvalier era. It was a well armed, trained and equipped paramilitary unit integrated by former members of Le Front pour l'avancement et le progrès d'Haiti (FRAPH), the "plain clothes" death squads, involved in mass killings of civilians and political assassinations during the CIA sponsored 1991 military coup, which led to the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was set up in the wake of the US sponsored coup d’état in February 2004 and the kidnapping and deportation of the democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide. The coup was instigated by the US with the support of France and Canada.

The unspoken mission of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) with US military installations throughout Latin America is to ensure the maintenance of subservient national regimes, namely US proxy governments, committed to the Washington Consensus and the neoliberal policy agenda. While US military personnel will at the outset be actively involved in emergency and disaster relief, this renewed US military presence in Haiti will be used to establish a foothold in the country as well pursue America's strategic and geopolitical objectives in the Caribbean basin, which are largely directed against Cuba and Venezuela.

The objective is not to work towards the rehabilitation of the national government, the presidency, the parliament, all of which has been decimated by the earthquake. Since the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship, America's design has been to gradually dismantle the Haitian State, restore colonial patterns and obstruct the functioning of a democratic government. In the present context, the objective is not only to do away with the government but also to revamp the mandate of the MINUSTAH, of which the headquarters have been destroyed.

Prior to the earthquake, there were, according to US military sources, some 60 US military personnel in Haiti. From one day to the next, an outright military surge has occurred: 10,000 troops, marines, Special Forces, intelligence operatives, etc., not to mention private mercenary forces on contract to the Pentagon.

The contingent of US forces under SOUTHCOM combined with those of MINUSTAH brings foreign military presence in Haiti to close to 20,000 in a country of 9 million people. In comparison in Afghanistan, prior to Obama's military surge, combined US and NATO forces were of the order of 70,000 for a population of 28 million. In other words, on a per capita basis there will be more troops in Haiti than in Afghanistan.

The first mission of SOUTHCOM will be to take control of what remains of the country's communications, transport and energy infrastructure. Already, the airport is under de facto US control. In all likelihood, the activities of MINUSTAH which from the outset in 2004 have served US foreign policy interests, will be coordinated with those of SOUTHCOM, namely the UN mission will be put under de facto control of the US military.

In all likelihood the humanitarian operation will be used as a pretext and justification to establish a more permanent US military presence in Haiti.

A Nation Cries Out

“I want to extend my profoundest condolences and sympathy to the entire nation of Haiti in this most difficult of times.”

By Adel – PeaceMaker
January 14, 2010

Tuesday afternoon, January 12, 2010, the worst earthquake in 200 years - 7.0 in magnitude - struck less than ten miles from the Caribbean city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The initial quake was followed by twelve aftershocks greater than magnitude 5.0. Structures of all kinds were damaged or collapsed, from homes to national landmarks. Millions are displaced, and thousands are feared dead as rescue teams from all over the world are now descending on Haiti to help.

Indeed, for a country and a people who are no strangers to hardship and suffering, this tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible. It is a tragedy that defies expression; a tragedy that compels all people to the highest levels of human compassion and solidarity.

America's Third World War

How 6 million People Were killed in CIA secret wars against third world countries.

John Stockwell, ran a CIA intelligence-gathering post in Vietnam, was the task-force commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976, and was awarded the Medal of Merit before he resigned. He spent 13 years in the agency, and was the highest level CIA officer to testify to the Congress about his actions. He estimates that over 6 million people have died in CIA covert operations. Stockwell's book In Search of Enemies, published by W.W. Norton 1978, is an international best-seller.

When the United States doesn't like a government, they send the CIA in, with its resources and activists, to tear apart the social and economic fabric of a country, as a technique for putting pressure on the government, hoping that they can make the government come to the US's terms, or the government will collapse altogether and they can engineer a coup d’état, and have the thing wind up with their own choice of people in power.

The United States CIA is responsible for doing these things, on a massive scale, to people of the world today. They are running more and more covert operations, destabilizing almost a third of the countries in the world today; all of this is being done in our name as Americans.

“The people of the world genuinely want peace. Someday the leadership of the world are going to have to give in and give it to them” ~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower

From Conquest to Bloodbath

“First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them…"

By Adel – PeaceMaker

January 8, 2010

When the additional troops President Obama sent (21,000 troops in March and 30,000 more in December) to Afghanistan, the USA would end up with one achievement, and that is more civilian casualties.

On December 29th, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released figures indicating that Afghan civilian deaths had risen by 10% in the first ten months of 2009, from 1,838 during the same period a year earlier to 2,038.

On the same day the UNAMA report was made public, a U.S. air assault killed four Afghans in the northern province of Baghlan. A father and his three sons were among the casualties. The raid also wounded eight other innocent civilians.

The following day a NATO missile strike killed five to seven Afghan civilians in Helmand province, including three children. Later a spokesman for the governor of the province confirmed that seven innocent civilians had been killed and wounded.

Far more atrocious news broke the same day, December 30th, according to the next day's edition of The Times of London, "American-led troops were accused...of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead" in Kunar province near the Pakistani border. The victims were innocent children between the ages of 11 and 17.

A statement was later issued on the official website of the Afghan president that said in part: "That a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead."

In a telephone interview, the slain students' headmaster (of the local school), described the details of President Obama's and top U.S. and NATO military commander Stanley McChrystal's new special operations-led counterinsurgency approach as it was applied to his pupils:

“Seven students were in one room," said Rahman Jan Ehsas. “A student and one guest were in another room, a guest room, and a farmer was asleep with his wife in a third building."

“First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them. Abdul Khaliq (the farmer) heard shooting and came outside. When they saw him they shot him as well. He was outside. That’s why his wife wasn’t killed.”

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) attempted to evade responsibility for the murders by claiming "the raid was a joint operation and it was still under investigation," which was quickly exposed when Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimy said, "Afghan troops had not taken part."

These raids which result in carnage follow a pattern that has become sadly familiar in Afghanistan over recent years. As is often the case, international forces insisted militants were killed, but the victims end up being civilians.

With the increase of U.S. and other NATO nations' troops to over 150,000 in the near future, the killing of Afghan civilians will grow exponentially.

On the other side of the border, Washington's and NATO's proclaimed Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af-Pak) war is no less murderous.

The Dawn Media Group, reported that Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal areas between January 1st and December 31st, 2009.

For each so-called-terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90% of those killed in missile strikes were civilians – On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12% every week and almost two people every day.

The U.S. launched deadly drone missile attacks in Pakistan's North Waziristan on both ends of the New Year. On December 31st "Five people were killed and at least two more injured" and on January 1st  "A US pilotless aircraft fired a missile into Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal district" and "the attack destroyed a car and killed three people."

In the second case a regional security official was quoted by Reuters as stating "The bodies were burned beyond recognition. We are trying to determine their identity."

On January 3rd five more people were killed in the same part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by American drone attacks. However much the U.S., NATO and the Western media attempt to sanitize these killings, the Pakistani government figure - that over 99 percent of the victims are civilians - is a damning indictment of what can only be characterized as wanton war crimes.

Over eight years of bombing villages, conducting deadly raids against civilian, and extending the war into Pakistan have produced nothing but death and destruction. Afghan and Pakistani civilian’s deaths have climbed equally. They will rise even more in 2010 as the war, in its 10th year, is broadened further and intensified.

Exploit and Lie

Exploit: to make the most use of people (e.g., to profit)
Lie: to give the wrong perception (e.g., to promote)

By Adel – PeaceMaker

January 07, 2010

Corporations with an interest in producing genetic modification (GM) in crops, such as Cargill, Monsanto and Archers Daniels Midland, sponsor the United Nations World Food Program, while the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is paying for US GM corporations to run research programs in Africa with local research institutes. For these reasons, Sudan’s vast plantation lands and agriculture potential are further hidden motivations driving the "Save Darfur!" campaign and its propaganda machinery.

Famine becomes commodities. From Darfur we get photographs of the dead victims of starvation, but anyone can ride out the relief infrastructure and take pictures of starving, sick and dying Africans. Victims and refugees flock to relief centers, "presenting to visiting reporters a concentration of misery that is indeed shocking".

If food is a resource and the resource is funneled to manipulate the starving populations of internally displaced people, then food—and the "humanitarian" aid and infrastructure which delivers it—is being used as a weapon of war. It happened in Somalia, it is happening in Ethiopia, it is happening in Darfur.