The following is an unofficial transcript of a radio broadcast aired on CBC's The Current, on January 20th, 2010 (audio of which is here).
The interlocutors were CBC host Anna Marian Tremonti, Jean Saint-Vil of the Canada Haiti Action Network, Ilan Kelman, from the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, and Thomas Donnelly, director of the Centre for Defense Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Last week, the AEI published a backgrounder advocating a robust role for the U.S. military, and called upon these forces "to ensure that Haiti's gangs - particularly those loyal to ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide - are suppressed." The topic for debate was "what role the United States and the international community should play in Haiti." As radio debates such as this one tend to find their way down the memory hole, it has been transcribed so as to preserve the important context provided, and, in particular, the important statements and demands made by Jean Saint-Vil. This is the (at least) the second time in the past week that Saint-Vil has voiced, in a nationally aired broadcast, the demand made to Canada's Governor-General Michaelle Jean, that she formally request from the President of France, the repayment of $40 billion dollars that they extorted from Haiti from 1825 to 1947. Both the neo-con (subdued as it may appear), and the liberal, CBC mentalities demonstrated are equally instructive, as is Saint-Vil's (and to a commendable extent, Kelman's) handling of them.
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Anna Maria Tremonti: First of all, Jean Saint-Vil, how do you feel about the U.S. military controlling the airport in Port au Prince.
JSV: Well, the U.S. was already controlling Haiti with the participation of Canada and France. What he have a situation is Haiti right now is an occupation that is disguised as a UN military humanitarian intervention. So, the first thing I would say is that its not "the U.S." It's the U.S. and Canada and France that organized to take over Haiti with a coup in 2004, so the fact that they are occupying the airport right now is to basically take responsibility, some responsibility for the mayhem that they have helped to create in the country.
AMT: But can you appreciate why right now after a massive earthquake, that decision might be made to go in as quickly and to take, to try to get that airport working?
JSV: No, because what's happening is a lot of politics are being played. You have planes bringing food...and medication that are not landing because Americans are fighting with French, are fighting...with the Chinese, everybody wants to be seen to do their PR so that they can become the leaders of the world. But it's not - the food, the medication, the water is not getting to the people, that's what counts.
AMT: What role then do you think the U.S. should be playing in Haiti?
JSV: I don't think it's for me to say what role the U.S. should be playing in Haiti; I'm more concerned with what role Canada should be playing in Haiti...
AMT: And what's that?
JSV: ...I'm a Canadian citizen. I think it is to actually make sure that our tax money is spent to empower Haitians so that Haiti can be treated like a normal country in the world so that we have the means to borrow money, like everybody else has borrowed money to build their infrastructure instead of having what we currently have which is a number of countries who are pretending to be helping Haiti. You save organizations who say they've been in Haiti for fifty years, for sixty years, therefore this gives them credibility. Well then how come Haiti is poorer today than it was sixty years ago?
AMT: Ok. Thomas Donnelly what do you think of what Jean Saint-Vil is saying?
TD: Well actually there are elements of his remarks that I would basically agree with; I do think, at the moment though, the most immediate questions ought to be practical questions about how to respond to the catastrophe of the earthquake, in terms of saving lives, not only among those who have been injured, but ensuring that there's [no] cholera or other secondary diseases that result from a lack of medical attention. In that regard the practical solution for responding to the emergency and to the disaster should be answered mostly by an analysis of practically how to accomplish the task of getting aid relief, food and water, and then shelter of course, and providing security so that those missions can be fulfilled in the current circumstances. And it seems to me when you're talking about who has the capacity to do this, the U.S. military is the best-equipped, most capable organization in this regard.
AMT: Now Thomas Donnelly, there are obvious humanitarian reasons why the U.S. is there in Haiti. What else could the U.S. stand to gain by being there right now?
TD: Well, the Caribbean is part of the Americas and Haiti is a neighbor of ours. There's a Haitian-American community of more than four hundred thousand people, so this is a region of the world very close to our shores and about which Americans ought to care, so we have a, obviously a moral obligation just as human beings but I also think we have, you know, a strategic rationale for doing this. Haiti has made a tiny amount of progress in the last couple years, and it would be tragic if that were a casualty of this catastrophe as well. So, trying to as my colleague said, turn Haiti into a normal nation a normal state is something that Americans should care about, not simply as a matter of humanity, but as a matter of good politics.
AMT: Ilan Kelman, what do you think about the U.S. perhaps gaining political ground from its disaster response.
IK: Well, it's unfortunate, this is what happens quite frequently. We know from our decades of experience in scientific research that disasters are fundamentally a political event. That also means that any response, any recovery in that disaster is fundamentally political. And we see that we have to be very careful that whenever food, shelter is brought in, whenever some sort of military and logistics control is taken there are always political underpinnings. And I hear the concerns that Jean Saint-Vil gives, and if those concerns are not addressed then we are in danger of simply creating the vulnerabilities that ld to the earthquake disaster in the fist place.
AMT: Now Ilan, you study disaster diplomacy, what does that actually mean?
IK: What we look at is we investigate how and why disaster activities do and do not bring enemies together and that's both before disaster and after a disaster. So we look at how perhaps implementing building codes across borders or with international cooperation could prevent the sort of disaster that we saw in Haiti. Also, after an event when aid is really scrambling to get in, and people really want to assist, there are often openings to bring enemy states together or other
people in conflict together and try to build peace out of the humanitarian situation. Unfortunately, we generally find that that does not work.
AMT: And so as you watch what is unfolding in Haiti what are you thinking?
IK: Well, first I'm really appalled at the devastation; we have seen this so many times over the past decade and past decades, and its really a tragedy that we cannot yet create a situation where such an earthquake disaster does not happen. People say frequently that earthquakes do not kill, buildings do, and we know how to build buildings so that they do not kill in earthquakes, and yet we failed to do so for the long running political reasons that always lead to disasters. So my first and foremost concern is with the people who were affected, those who are bereaved, those who need water and food and shelter. And we really must, to try and rebuild a better Haiti, creating it as a state and nation on its own terms, in order to [do] better in the future. And meanwhile think about the world and realize that there are a hundred other Haiti's waiting to happen, and we must try and prevent that from occurring.
AMT: Now Jean Saint-Vil, a lot of countries are pledging money and Canadian troops will number at about 2,000 by the time everyone is in there, but the United States is still the biggest player here. Are you comfortable with the idea that Haiti's future development depends on the U.S. commitment?
JSV: Well, that's the problem. Again, I will stress, it's not the U.S. The U.S. has been working with Canada and France, and the United Nations and Brazil; they have taken over a few years ago. The point is, it's not a matter of making Haiti normal; it's a matter of treating Haiti normally. That is, if you look at the history of this nation, you know when people look at the vulnerability of the majority of the population of Haiti they talk about the dictatorship of Duvalier, etc. That's not true. The people who are impoverished in Haiti have been in that condition for five hundred years, from the time Christopher Columbus landed on that island, genocide has been the norm. And so, people would ask, how come Haiti does not have its infrastructure? I would ask anybody on the panel to tell me, in what period of time Haiti would have built that infrastructure? Would it be during the time of slavery, or would it be at a time when Haiti was the only nation in the Americas where a black person was not a slave, and therefore, it could not trade with any nation, and in 1825 the French came with fourteen warships, with help from the Americans, collected 90 million francs from Haiti - the equivalent of 40 billion dollars, money that Haiti had to cut its forests, close its rural schools. In order to pay to the French, they had to borrow money from the American banks in order to pay the French banks, and that money was reparations for the whites who said they lost property, which was my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother. So, that's...
AMT: So, do you think nothing has; your point is that nothing has changed?
JSV: No, my point is, while the world was experiencing the industrial revolution, Haiti was spending all its resources to enrich the French, so there was a gang of white supremacist states collecting ransom from Haiti, so I'm...
AMT: No, I hear that...
JSV:...what should we do now is, I ask our Governor-General, Michaelle Jean, who is a former French citizen, and her husband is French, to ask President Sarkozy to get the French to return the forty billion that was stolen at gunpoint from Haiti. That's the kind of stuff we need to talk about - billions of dollars in the hands of the Haitian state to build its infrastructure. All other talk is really politics.
[AMT plays clip of Haitian-Canadian filmmaker who says maybe the 'international community' can help solve in Haiti the problems they couldn't solve in Iraq or Afghanistan; Haitians have to find a solution with the aid and support of the internationals]
AMT: Jean Saint-Vil, he's making the point that Haiti can't do it alone right now.
JSV: Anna-Maria, if I take money from my right hand and transfer it to my left hand, my neighbor is not rich. This is what the world has been doing. When Canada gives money to CIDA, it does not enrich Haiti. When people are collecting millions of dollars in overhead...the Haitian Red Cross does not have a website, do you realize that, after all these disasters?
AMT: Ok, Thomas Donnelly, what do you think of what he's saying?
TD: Well, again, I don't want to argue or certainly try to defend French policy, for example in Haiti, or probably even American policy...
JSV: Canadian policy as well.
AMT: ...We're looking at massive U.S...
TD: Fine...or Brazilian policy for that matter, but...
AMT: Let me just, let me just...
TD: I'm going to answer the question...
AMT: Ok, I'm just going to clarify, we know the other countries are there, we know the U.S. is the biggest player in the field, and so maybe you can give us a U.S. perspective.
TD: The question is, if what he says magically came to pass, would that solve the problem? I mean it's not as though Haitians don't have political squabbles one with another.
JSV: So do we.
TD: I'm not saying that's abnormal or anything, I'm just saying that it is a fact. The question is whether the Haitian leadership, that part of the Haitian leadership that has survived, can come together in a way where whatever opportunities may appear on the horizon do actually turn out to be the moment where Haiti's development could take a significant step forward. I think that's possible, but there also ought to be reasonable doubts about that. And certainly if there is a rift between the major players for example, or between the sovereign states in the United Nations, or the large non-governmental organizations; if the aid organizations get in a cat fight with one another, the opportunity to try to make up for past mistakes will slip away not for the first time. So, it seems to me that there is a huge opportunity both moral and practical, and political and developmental, to use this catastrophe for everybody to move forward but there's also a lot of structural or political questions out there as to whether that's going to happen and it'll be an incremental step by step process, but by the same token we have to look forward from a reasonable assessment of what the current circumstances are. And as we understand actually that the scope of the disaster almost defies immediate imagination, there are parts of Haiti that people really haven't been to, and to which many Haitians are now fleeing just to get out of Port au Prince, again, we've got actually some time ahead of ourselves before we understand what the scope of the problem is.
AMT: Ok, Ilan Kelman; again the U.S. is not alone in Haiti. Canada, France Brazil, the UN are on the ground helping with relief efforts. How do you see this so-called opportunity to help?
IK: We must have reconstruction in Haiti, not just reconstruction from the earthquake, but reconstruction from the history that Jean Saint-Vil has eloquently described to us. That means it's reconstruction of the Haitians, by the Haitians and for the Haitians, but they do not have the resources that they need that because the resources were taken from them. So the international community has to be there to facilitate the transfer of resources to Haiti in such a way that Haiti can reconstruct for itself.
AMT: There's talk now that Jean Bertrand Aristide has made statements saying he's like to go home in all of this. Thomas Donnelly, what do you think of that?
TD: I think that would be a very bad idea. It's very difficult to see how he could be a constructive actor in this, and it could only, I would expect, I think it's reasonable to anticipate, be a disruptive factor among HAitians. He would also likely be a disruptive factor amongst the international community, so it seems to me that a rapid return by Mr. Aristide can only complicate and obscure the prospects for reconstruction.
AMT: Jean Saint-Vil?
JSV: Perhaps the people who are afraid of Aristide coming back are not Haitian, and perhaps we should ask the Haitians what they think. I am a Haitian, I grew up in Haiti, I was there. Every time African people choose their own leaders, whether it is Patrice Lumumba in the Congo or Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, the white supremacist forces think they know better because their brains are more advanced, they remove that leader, they impose a puppet, and then when things go wrong they say you have bad leaders. Jean Bertrand Aristide coming back to Haiti is the normal thing that should happen. People [are] saying that there's no leadership right now to calm down the population. Well they had that leadership, and people who've been ill-informed - we've been telling four Canadian government's that they made a mistake; you cannot impose leadership on a people, and Jean Bertrand Aristide, actually, to even suggest that he should not come back is to say that you are supporting exile, are supporting coup d'etat, you are supporting kidnapping of head of state. I mean, how would you guys feel if a bunch of black leaders met and went to England and kidnapped the Queen of England and dumped her in Alaska? How would you feel about that?
AMT: So, as you watch this unfold, because this is becoming a debate, this is happening, this is in the wings. Jean Saint-Vil what should happen, he should come home is what you're saying?
JSV: Of course he should come home. I mean Haitians, I've been listening to Haitian radio all the time; the first person I was able to talk to on the internet is a guy with whom we have political disagreements, and I was just so happy to hear his voice, he was so happy to hear my voice. I hear people talking about their, you know, and I hear all these soldiers going to Haiti and I'm asking them who are they going to fight? There's no army in Haiti, you know? So people are looking for ways to rebuild, to reconcile, and that's exactly what the United Nations have not been doing for the past five years. Instead of investing in healing, and what we've been begging with the Canadian government to do, that's not what they've been doing. Instead, they've used class and race prejudice to assume that everybody who lives in the poor neighborhoods is out to get the rich, and they've been systematically killing people in Cite Soleil and Belair where the leadership resides to help do exactly what you see happening right now. Right now you know what's happening inside the Aristide Foundation for Democracy? You have the Cuban doctors who turned the place into a hospital so that people can find healthcare. When the UN nations, the armies went to Haiti, what they did, they took a university and transformed it into an army barrack. That's what's wrong with the stuff that we're talking about; it's not how much money, it's what the money is used for.
AMT: Ok, we're almost out of time. Jean Saint-Vil, then, what do you want to see in terms of the rebuilding of Haiti. Do you want to see more aid going in, do you want to see all those people leave...
JSV: Not aid...
AMT: ...What do you want?
JSV: We want Haiti to have access to loans in a fair manner, just like every nation has access to loans. In terms of fairness, we are asking the governor-general of Canada to do what is her duty. She is not a puppet, she's not a doll. She should ask the French government to return the forty billion dollars that they stole from Haiti, so that Haiti can use that money to invest in its infrastructure. All other lip service is, you know photo opportunities, we're tired of all of that.
AMT: Ok, Ilan Kelman what do you think of that because there are a lot of people talking about sending in more aid, as opposed to loans, as opposed to...Go ahead.
IK: What we need now is a long term plan starting from day one to build Haiti on Haiti's terms. There may be aid components, there may be loan components, but there has to be the leadership there that has been taken out of Haiti to be the support there for the governance that Haiti wants to see for themselves. And in order not to see another absolute catastrophe as we witnessed in the earthquake, and as we've witnessed over the past centuries with what the outside powers have done to Haiti, the time has come to reconstruct the society and to reconstruct the infrastructure in order to ensure that Haiti is an equal and viable state and nation with all the other ones of the hemisphere and of the world. That means ensuring the resources are there to give Haiti what it needs on its own terms.
AMT: Thomas Donnelly, is what Jean Saint-Vil is saying Haiti needs going to happen politically?
TD: Oh I think it's highly unlikely, not least because its not altogether clear to me that every Haitian would want to follow the path that he lays out. There would certainly be political controversy amongst Haitians about the course that he recommends. I would offer that the real standard is to try to find a way to get a genuinely legitimate government established in Port au Prince and by that I mean one that reflects the will of the Haitian people, but also meets the test that any government legitimacy would require - transparency in its actions, no corruption, and so on and so forth. And I think that this offers an opportunity to, you know, sweep away the political rubble along with the physical rubble. And I also think that Haiti's neighbors in North America have both a moral obligation and if they have political wisdom, they will take a role in supporting such a path forward for Haiti, not least including the United States. So again, I think we should set a higher bar given the sufferings of the Haitian people, not only in the last weeks, but for centuries previously, that we should set the highest bar we can imagine and if we intend to have Haiti become a full fledged member of our community, you know...
AMT: We have to leave it there. Gentlemen, thank you.