Afghanistan and Haiti
These are two of the poorest countries in the world. What has been the US role? What can and should be done?
Starting in the late 70s’, Afghanistan, a nation of about 39 million, has been invaded and destroyed first by Russia and then the US; in between there was a devastating civil war from which the Taliban had emerged victorious. The Russians invaded to help spread the reach of international communism in a neighboring country; the US got involved initially to finance and support the holy warriors opposing Russia and then came back after the Taliban sheltered Al Qaeda which had just attacked the US in NYC and Washington on 9/11. The Taliban have been an incredibly destructive home-grown cancer on the nation’s development, and there are many other dangerous terrorist groups inside and on its near periphery, including ISIS and Al Qaeda. They have destroyed cultural monuments and the lives of people with different religious beliefs and practices. The US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia initially funded their precursors. Saudi Arabia funded the madrassas from which they took their lessons in fundamentalist ideology. Pakistan through its intelligence agency has continued to play a key role in harboring and fomenting and fanning the flames of the nation’s turmoil. The US was ineffectual in building a more modern economy and government in Afghanistan and left after 20 years of a steadily deteriorating security situation. We failed to heed the hard lessons of Vietnam about nation building in other people’s countries. We should have captured Bin Laden and left soon after. I do think that Trump and Biden deserve a lot more credit than they are getting for their difficult but necessary decisions to withdraw the US forces from Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is a nation of farmers and traders; it lacks access to and development of significant natural resources. It is landlocked, but it is centrally located on Central Asian trading routes and has successfully resisted invaders since the days of Alexander and the Greeks. It was the site of rivalry and conflict between the British and the Russians seeking control of Central Asia during the 19th Century — “the Great Game” as Kipling and other writers referred to it, many massacres ensued. It has had a recent history of profound and widespread corruption and heavily armed local warlords fighting with each other for dominion; the US and international aid campaigns widened the circles of and opportunities for corruption. Its farmers play a key role in opium production for global markets. It is surrounded by large and powerful neighbors – including China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and nations like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan that used to be a part of and are closely allied to Russia. Many of them would be threatened by rogue bands of terrorists harboring inside Afghanistan and fomenting rebellion on its periphery. The new government has alienated much of the developed world by its past and recent conduct, and yet it is heavily dependent (nearly half of its GDP) on them for humanitarian assistance, development, and foreign aid. The Taliban do have some friends in neighboring Pakistan and in Qatar, but as yet there has been no international recognition. Its economy is collapsing; its banking system is in tatters, and its people face starvation and destitution in the ensuing winter. It is experiencing a brain and talent drain as many of the best educated among its population are fleeing what they fear will come under Taliban rule. The Taliban has lots of armed men and a proclivity for barbaric public punishments, but no economic plan to help govern the nation and improve its people’s well-being, no educational plan to be strong in science or engineering or medicine, no plans to develop a strong health system; it does have a plan to marginalize half its population. An end to the constant fighting and death over the past 40 years would be a start in the right direction.
The Taliban are going to have to make crucial decisions as to whether to be a central gathering spot for like-minded terrorist groups, and they must make crucial decisions on the roles of women in their society – decisions which will determine whether the international donor community decides to engage with them or not. Western nations are not likely to fund them unless they change their behavior towards women and terrorism. China may be interested in using them as part of its “belt and road” vision for connecting and exporting Chinese production across Asia and into Europe. This is counterbalanced by the Chinese fear that Islamic terrorism based in Afghanistan and Pakistan will inspire armed resistance to Beijing in their own Muslim communities in Xinjiang. The UN might be the best positioned to take the lead on humanitarian and development assistance, but the Taliban are going to need to change their feudal policies on women and girls to be acceptable to the UN humanitarian assistance programs.
When I think about their neighborhood, I’d be far more concerned about the potential for nuclear war between India and Pakistan. The Afghans are not likely to ally with Iran because of the Sunni/Shia religious divides. I’m not sure that a fundamentalist Islamic state rejecting modern science and adopting feudal attitudes towards women and girls, music and art represents a future that many people would wish to aspire to. They are not about to put these policies out for a vote by the Afghan people. On second thought their conservative religious fundamentalism might find a very comfortable fit with some Texas politicians like Greg Abbot and Ken Paxton.
Unlike Afghanistan, Haiti is in our own backyard – an island nation with high mountain ranges in the Caribbean, close to Puerto Rico, Cuba and Florida. It was once a very wealthy French colony, producing sugar cane on the backs of unspeakable suffering and exploitation of African slaves. It was a part of the Triangular Trade that brought slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean to grow sugar cae, sugar cane was then shipped to New England distilleries where it was turned into rum and exported to Europe which then sent European manufactured goods to West Africa. Its people fought a bloody revolution to oust the French slave owners shortly after the American and French revolutions and form a democracy; they defeated Napoleon’s forces. The slave owners moved on to Cuba and the Southern US where they continued to raise sugar cane using African slaves, and in the US they played an important role in isolating their native country and defending and expanding slavery in the US. The US and France ostracized the new government, boycotted it, and embargoed it; the French even collected reparations for their lost colony. The US did not recognize the government of Haiti until 1862 after the start of the Civil War. https://origins.osu.edu/article/pact-devil-united-states-and-fate-modern-haiti/page/0/1 The US invaded multiple times to install governments friendly to us or to oust governments perceived as inimical to our business and security interests. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/haiti-us-occupation-hundred-year-anniversary We occupied and ruled Haiti for 20 years beginning in 1915. https://haitisolidarity.net/in-the-news/the-first-us-occupation-of-haiti-1915-1934/ We helped install the bloody Duvalier dictatorships, and later we helped to restore and then oust the democratically elected Aristide government. https://time.com/5682135/haiti-military-anniversary/
Haiti’s President was recently assassinated by Colombian mercenaries masquerading as the US DEA; there is little in the way of an effective central government and instead armed gangs control the cities and countryside. The drug trade uses Haiti as a way station in shipping their products from Colombia and South America to North America. There is a very real danger that it could dissolve into a lawless narco state. On top of tyranny, torture, killings and epic misgovernment, the people of Haiti have been beset with quakes, hurricanes and floods, killing many. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_in_Haiti When the great quake of 2010 destroyed much of the nation’s capital, Port au Prince, many hundreds of thousands of Haitians left in a huge exodus and some went to South America for work while others came to the United States for work. As the governments of Brazil and Chile began to harass and deport them in the latter part of this past decade, some began to trek north to the US. https://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/haitian-migration-through-americas-decade-making There are an estimated 2 million American citizens and legal residents who are of Haitian descent – a large part of the Haitian diaspora. It is not that surprising that thousands of hard working Haitians are fleeing the political violence and extreme poverty to seek a better life elsewhere, nor is it surprising that they would end up seeking entry to the US since many have relatives and community members building successful lives here.
The 11 million people of Haiti need a clean, strong government, free of corruption and committed to improving the economic prospects for the Haitian people; they need UN, US and French development assistance. It is a very poor nation of subsistence farmers, living on lands that are badly eroded and prone to flooding, The educated, urban elite control the government, but the government controls very little, and it keeps changing hands due to coups and political intrigue; it is widely considered rife with corruption fueled by the drug trade. Education is minimal, and life expectancy is short. The Catholic church is frequently the only source of education and assistance to the people living in rural communities. The United Nations has played major roles over the past twenty years in helping Haiti through the floods, earthquakes, political instability, and outbreaks of deadly diseases like cholera, but it is also accused of spreading cholera, raping Haitian women, and killing Haitian protesters.
In one of the chapters of Collapse, Jared Diamond portrays the ecological and human disasters that have destroyed the well-being of Haitians and emphasizes the need for environmental land reform combined with political reforms to put the nation back on track. His left-wing critics point to the successes of Marxist governments in Kerala India and in Cuba in combining environmental, human capital, and political progress, success stories not mentioned or acknowledged by Diamond who instead focused on the progress in the next door Dominican Republic. http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/ecology/JaredDiamond3.htm Timothy Schwartz points to the US role in developing and propelling the economy of the Dominican Republic as a counterpoint and antidote to Cuba, to the past US roles in deforesting the entire island of Hispaniola, and to the deeply engrained resistance of the Haitian people to foreign domination and white racism. https://timothyschwartzhaiti.com/an-open-critique-of-jared-diamonds-collapse-haiti-and-dr/
My own family left Haiti and moved to New Orleans in the 1790s (we think). We were French speaking Haitian immigrants at a time before New Orleans had become a part of the US (the Louisiana Purchase). We believe that we were a people of mixed ancestry that was involved in cabinet making and music. Our ancestors fought with the US against the British in the War of 1812. Our great, great grandfather left New Orleans in the 1840’s and moved to Cincinnati in advance of the Civil War. His sons fought with the Ohio Calvary in the Civil War against the Southern slave owners. We never in my memory identified with our Haitian heritage and in fact obliterated it, preferring instead to emphasize a French and then a WASP identity. I have no idea why my forebears left Haiti, possibly like the recent Haitian refugees to flee political violence and seek a safer life, and there is much myth and family speculation as why they left New Orleans as conditions worsened in advance of the Civil War.
When I was a very young lawyer in Boston, I occasionally represented Haitian immigrants living in Mattapan because I could speak French and translate and explain their documents, At the time I did not make any connection to my own obscured heritage. Haitians have since that time created a thriving immigrant community in Mattapan, to the south of Roxbury and Dorchester; I now wish that I had become more involved and learned more about Haiti at the time.
As a much, much older lawyer now, I was appalled by the Border Patrol’s round up of Haitians seeking asylum and refuge at the US border and their summary expulsion on planes back to Port au Prince without even the basics of a due process hearing and opportunity to present their immigration claims for asylum or family reunification. Would we have shown the same lack of humanity towards a white English speaking people fleeing multiple disasters and catastrophes in their homeland?
Most (about 90%) Haitian immigrants living in the US were admitted as part of family reunification; very few have been admitted as refugees or asylum seekers. About 55,000 of the estimated 1.2 million Haitian immigrants living in the US have Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/haitian-immigrants-united-states-2018 The Trump Administration sought to end their TPS immigration status protections and deport them to Haiti; the Biden Administration revoked the Trump policies; this may have spread the rumors among Haitians living in South America that the US would accept them helping to fuel their trek north. Most Haitian Americans live in Florida or in the greater New York area, and many work in the service sector. They send remittances valued at $3.3 billion back to their families still living in Haiti; remittances from the Haitian diaspora account for 38% of Haiti’s GDP.
We should be trying in conjunction with the UN, Canada and other Western Hemisphere nations to build better economic and educational opportunities in Haiti; it’s a very beautiful country with an extensive coastline and high mountains and an interesting culture and rich history. Other Caribbean nations have improved their economies quite remarkably over the past 60 years.
We should be proud that so many people in both Haiti and Afghanistan want to immigrate to the US and determined to defend our democratic values at home from wanna be autocrats, misogynists, and those espousing religious intolerance and racial hatreds. We should be welcoming to the Afghans who were our allies over the past twenty years of conflict as we were in the past to the Cubans, Vietnamese, Laotians and Khmer seeking refuge and asylum. Likewise we should give Haitians every opportunity to make their cases for asylum or family reunification, it’s the sort of thing that a big-hearted nation enriched through the work of generations of immigrants does to others facing the same challenges as our forbears fleeing oppression and poverty for the opportunity of a better life.
Lucien Wulsin