HAITI: THE SQUEEZING OF THE HUNGRY

Over two years ago, the Haitian parliament agreed to take out four loans from the Inter-American Development Bank for vital projects: health, drinking water, roads and education. Haiti desperately needed this money, totalling about $146 million.

In what is undoubtedly the cruelest case of chutzpah ever, Haiti still hasn't received a penny because of an embargo by the Bush administration, but the bank is demanding repayment of the undelivered loans.

Haiti's water system has collapsed. The Center for Ecology and Hydrology in Great Britain ranks it the worst in the world, at the very bottom of the 147 countries it studied. Water-borne diseases, like typhoid, are a major killer. Hospitals and clinics have fallen apart since staff have fled the country and there is no public support. Life expectancy is about 50 years and is falling, especially because diseases linked to malnutrition have become more and more common.

Even in the capital of Port-au-Prince, roads are terrible. Potholes 4 to 6 feet deep are common, especially where there's no pavement. Education is a shambles; over 50 percent of the people are illiterate.

Haiti's economy shrank by 2 percent in 2001, according to the World Bank, but Haiti still had not gotten a cent of the loans.

In March of 2001, the IADB demanded it fork over $5 million in back payments. It also wanted a 0.5-percent commission on a loan Haiti still had not received, or $185,239.75, as well as $2,2311,422 commissions on loans Haiti had received over the past decade.

Barbara Lee, an African American member of Congress from Oakland, Calif., explained on May 23 why Haiti had not gotten the IADB loans as
well as major loans from other international financial institutions. The U.S. government disagreed with the results of the 2000 elections in Haiti. "The Bush administration decided to exercise political pressure on a member state by putting an embargo on loans that the bank had a contractual obligation to deliver," Lee charged.

After Haiti got a little support from the Organization of American States, and seeing no other way to prevent a full-scale economic collapse, Haiti paid $32 million in arrears to the IADB this July 10, leaving just $3 million in its reserves. (AP, July 10). No objections about missing arrears were ever raised when Haiti was under the rule of the Duvaliers, a father-and-son combination of kleptocrooks favored by Washington, or the military dictatorships that followed them. Some of the arrears just paid appear to be from those times.

The IADB insisted that this payment was needed to start the complicated process toward disbursing the loans.

Haiti was a rich colony of France until it won its war for independence in 1804. King Charles X of France demanded it pay for diplomatic recognition in 1825. Haiti didn't finish paying off that debt until the mid 1990s. Over the years, it has also paid the IADB far more than it has received.

The imperialists of any century, of any country, will try to squeeze every drop of profit from even one of the poorest countries in the
world.