US troops deployed as
popular anger mounts
By Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site, January 16, 2010
Port-au-Prince residents creating street barricades
with the bodies of the dead to protest the lack of assistance. Thousands upon
thousands of corpses line streets and are piled up outside hospitals and
morgues.
...
There are increasing reports of anger among the
earthquake’s survivors over the delay in aid. Gunfire has also been reported,
along with looting by young men armed with machetes. International officials
warn that the longer the situation continues, the greater the chances it will
turn into mass revolt.
“Unfortunately, they’re slowly getting more angry and
impatient,” said David Wimhurst, spokesman for the Brazilian-led United Nations
peacekeeping mission. “I fear we’re all aware that the situation is getting more
tense as the poorest people who need so much are waiting for deliveries. I think
tempers might be frayed.”
Kim Boldue, the acting chief of the UN Mission, said
that “the risk of having social unrest very soon” made it imperative that relief
supplies begin arriving.
The real attitude of US imperialism toward the Haitian
people found expression in an article posted by Time magazine and
entitled, “Will Criminal Gangs Take Control in Haiti’s Chaos?” The article
declared, “As Haitian and international officials try to coordinate an effective
response to what is probably the worst disaster to ever hit the western
hemisphere’s poorest country, they’ll need to be mindful of the human rats that
come out of the capital’s woodwork at times like these.”
The article went on to warn that “criminal bands from
poor neighborhoods like Cité Soleil and La Saline are almost certain to try to
exploit the security void.” It quoted Roberto Perito, described as an expert on
Haitian gangs at the Institute of Peace, a government-funded agency with close
ties to US intelligence and the Pentagon, saying that the supposed threat is
“surely why the US military deployment is adding a security component.”
Time added: “The US military has had its share
of experience with Port-au-Prince’s gangs,” noting that they are often
“political in nature,” coalescing, as Perito put it, “around charismatic and
ruthless Robin Hood figures.”
There is every likelihood that the US military
deployment will be turned against the people of Haiti in the suppression of mass
unrest. Having occupied the country for 20 years in the first part of the 20th
century and intervened twice more in 1994 and 2004, the US military is once
again assuming control in what senior commanders say will be a long-term
operation.
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