A Year After Quake, Haiti Still in Shambles
Newsmax, January 2011
Tim Collie

One year after the earthquake that savaged Haiti, more than a million people remain homeless, living in tents or under tarps in 1300 fetid camps, most with no electricity, running water, latrines, or managers to coordinate aid, according to many international observers.

In a Caribbean setting less than 600 miles from the glitz of Miami, Haiti's perpetually Third-World infrastructure was set back decades in just seconds when the Jan. 12, 2010 quake hit, killing more than 230,000 and injuring 300,000. Not even an unprecedented outpouring of aid from the United States and elsewhere has made a dent in the devastation. LITTLE of the $10 billion in donations pledged for reconstruction has hit the streets, experts note. Meanwhile, a place already infamous for violence, corruption, and political disarray continues to plummet toward chaos. The international relief effort not only hasn't reduced suffering but may also have introduced the first cholera epidemic in the Western Hemisphere in five decades. "The SYSTEM as it is GUARANTEES its failure," Laura Zenotti, a Virginia Tech University political scientist who has studied Haitian relief efforts, tells The Wall Street Journal.

Other nations have been slow to deliver promised aid. Less that 38 percent of the money pledged for 2010-11 has been delivered. Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, and the Caribbean Development Bank have yet to give ANY of the money they promised, according to former President Bill Clinton's U.N. Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton warned a recent U. N. conference that, if the effort to rebuild is "slow or insufficient, if it is marked by conflict, lack of coordination, or lack of transparency, then the challenges that have plagued Haiti for years could erupt with regional and global consequences."

Haitian elections at the end of November dissolved into chaos with ballot boxes torn to pieces and allegations of rampant fraud. Preliminary results in early December were just a precursor to even more tumultuous runoffs for president and for nearly all senatorial and parliamentary races, observers noted.

Meanwhile, Haiti's crippled society and NEARLY NONEXISTENT GOVERNMENT have left the rebuilding of the country largely in the hands of international charities or  non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Haiti now has more aid groups per capita than any other nation, perhaps as many as 10,000, according to the World Bank. The groups are saving lives, but insiders concede that they have created a republic of dependency that has stymied the growth of Haiti's public sector. If international relief organizations run hospitals, schools, and most recently, tent cities, there is little incentive for the country's government to pick up the load.

Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, an NGO that is effectively the country's largest healthcare provider, believes some of the relief should go directly to the Haitian state. "NGOs have flourished in number and size as the public sector has withered in Haiti," Farmer says.

But others say that waiting for the government to improve will cost lives. Things would be worse if it weren't for NGOs, says Samuel Worthington, president of InterAction, an umbrella group that represents major U. S. aid groups. "What NGOs can say is that there are a lot more kids in school, a lot less mothers dying, thanks to their efforts," he says, by adding that he expects his groups will be in Haiti for another 50 years at least.

Port-au-Prince, a city of 3 million, was already in a state of decay when the quake struck. Shantytowns housed tens of thousands living along the steep slopes and deep valleys of Haiti's mountainous capital city. Port-au-Prince's labyrinth of narrow streets has made it nearly impossible to fully clear massive amounts of rubble.

Roads from Haiti's more developed eastern neighbor, the Dominican Republic, are poorly paved and dangerous, thwarting relief efforts. And Haiti LACKS formal property ownership RECORDS, making rebuilding difficult with thousands of squatters and refugees from the deforested, infertile countryside.

Given those obstacles, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York concedes that even RECORD private-relief efforts - U.S. CATHOLICS DONATED $82.6 million for Haiti-haven't produced impressive results. "In addition to food provided to nearly 900,000 people in the early months of the response, the [church] continues to provide monthly food rations to more than 100,000 children in over 370 schools, orphanages, and child-care centers, many of them run by Catholic parishes." Dolan says, adding, "The rebuilding has been tragically slow."

To make matters worse, frustrated Haitians are clashing violently with U. N. workers over accusations that the peacekeepers brought the deadly cholera bacteria to the island nation. The disease has killed 1,000 Haitians in rural areas and experts fear it will run rampant if it reaches the squalid survivor camps in Port-au-Prince.

[Emphasis added].
Whereas nature does not discriminate when it goes on a rampage, man-made terror shrewdly selects its targets. A case in point is the campaign of terror currently being systematically waged by Al-Qaeda in Iraq against that country's Christian minority, a rapidly dwindling minority. As recently as on the last two days of 2010 hand-grenades were being lobbed at the homes of Baghdad's Christians, this on the heels of the maiming and massacre of Chaldean Catholics in Baghdad's Catholic Cathedral on All Saints Eve, with a number of subsequent murders carried out by thugs breaking brazenly into Christian homes. And still fresh in our minds as we go to press, are the deaths - more than two dozen with nearly a hundred injured - from the bomb attack on Egypt's Coptic Christians in Alexandria as they emerged from Mass on New Year's Day. Guerilla warfare against Christian minorities would seem to be on the way to becoming almost the norm in the Muslim world today.

And may I share with you yet another report from the very same issue of Newsmax.