Dye mon, gen mon: Patterns of Organized Violence in Post-Earthquake Haiti (original) (raw)

. It is inaccurate to say that the twelve thousand strong peacekeeping force has a monopoly on violence in the country, or that its reach is boundless, but MINUSTAH is the richest and most powerful armed group operating in Haiti today. For both good and ill, MINUSTAH has had a profound impact on national patterns of violence and will continue to have an impact until the mission ends. Finally, there are the politicians. The politicians, above all other groups, will shape Haiti's patterns of violence in the coming years. The trends are already materializing; Haiti has a new president who won a flawed election and will now have to navigate a national political system whose very structure manufactures violence. Also, American political leaders have engaged Haiti in both positive and devastating ways over the last two centuries. U.S. foreign policy (along with the foreign policy of other industrial powers) has the potential to turn the country inside out, and this reality must be reckoned with. Some important forms of violence, organized or not, that manifest in Haitian society will be omitted. Sexual assaults in the internally displaced persons' (IDP) camps will only be dealt with obliquely. The plight of child servants, restaveks, will not be discussed; nor will the problem of domestic violence. The countryside, which is far safer than the city in contemporary Haiti, will rarely be mentioned. These elements of Haiti's post-earthquake composition are indeed worthy of analysis, but this paper has a political orientation that doesn't allow for their inclusion. A more difficult exclusion to justify is that of Haiti's National Police (HNP) and the country's inefficient courts. The HNP, long known for its corruption and low capability, is showing signs of improvement in post-earthquake Haiti with more and better trained police officers being added to their ranks. The courts, whose problems cannot be corrected by simply adding more personnel, continue to lag behind. Both of these institutions have the vested power