This week in Haiti
FLIGHT 587:
Prominent Haitian Pastor Among the Victims
The Rev. Jean-Luc Phanord, 49, pastor of the Maranatha Haitian Missionary Baptist Church in La Romana, Dominican Republic, perished with 250 other passengers and 9 crew members when American Airlines Flt. 587 from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to Santo Domingo crashed in Far Rockaway minutes after take-off around 9:16 a.m. on Nov. 12.
Witnesses describe seeing an engine fall from the plane about one minute after take-off as the Airbus A-300 was steeply climbing out from JFK over Jamaica Bay. The jet then nose-dived into Belle Harbor, a quiet residential neighborhood of single family homes on the Far Rockaway Peninsula, a part of Queens on the westernmost tip of Long Island.
All 260 aboard the aircraft were killed along with up to 9 other people on the ground.
Initially, U.S. and city officials reacted to the crash as a terrorist attack, closing down all three New York metropolitan area airports as well as bridges and tunnels to the city. But now investigators have all but ruled out terrorism, although they continue to leave open the possibility that the plane was somehow "sabotaged."
Rev. Phanord was the only passenger on the flight with a Haitian passport. Most of the other passengers were Dominicans and Dominican-Americans.
"It is a huge loss for the Haitian community here," said Edwin Paraison, the Haitian Chargé d'Affaires in Santo Domingo and former Episcopalian priest who worked with Phanord in La Romana, a city about 70 miles east of Santo Domingo. The city is home to the Central Romana, once one of the DR's largest state-owned sugar mills, now privatized. It is surrounded by about 110 small ramshackle communities -- known as bateys -- populated mostly by Haitian braceros, or cane-cutters.
"He was the pastor of the most important church in the Haitian community in La Romana," Paraison said. "He had the largest Haitian congregation. His death is a tremendous blow to the community. We salute the work he did to uplift the Haitian community and to improve the image of Haitians in Dominican society."
Rev. Phanord's church draws about 850 worshippers every Sunday, some 500 of them baptized members, according to Rev. Marc Massénat, Phanord's assistant pastor. "We have about 25 other churches affiliated with us in the bateys, " Massénat explained. The Haitian Missionary Baptist Church, founded in 1922, was one of the first Protestant churches established in the predominantly Catholic Dominican Republic. The other churches affiliated with it belong to the Haitian Missionary Baptist Church Association.
Rev. Phanord had travelled to La Romana from Haiti as a Baptist missionary in 1979 and became executive minister of the Association in 1987.
The Association's churches have many projects, such as a vocational center, a computer school, an English school, medical clinics, and a food distribution center.
But the crown jewel of the network which Phanord helped to build in the Dominican Republic is the Good Samaritan Hospital in La Romana.
Since it was inaugurated in Nov. 1997, the hospital has seen about 125,000 patients, mostly from the surrounding bateys. It has a rotating staff of about 12 doctors, according to Rev. Massénat, and enjoys the services of about 20 other specialists in everything from gynecology and pediatrics to optamology. The 40-bed facility, which will complete its second floor in about 18 to 24 months, was built entirely with volunteer labor and donated funds from U.S. church supporters and a small grant from the Rotary Club. It boasts an ultrasound machine, two surgical rooms, x-ray and mammography facilities, a laboratory, a pharmacy, and a dental clinic.
Rev. Phanord wanted to train the youth of the bateys to run the hospital, said Dr. Marshall Smith, a physician from Maine who has been doing voluntary medical service in the La Romana bateys since 1993. "He picked a young girl as a candidate out of one of the bateys," Dr. Smith explained. "He found people to sponsor her training, and she completed her medical school, internship, and mandatory government work in Dec. 1997, just after we dedicated the hospital."
Bob Beck has been leading groups of volunteers to La Romana to work on building the hospital since construction began back in 1990. "Jean-Luc was a real inspiration for us," Beck said. "His role was essential when you realize that this hospital was built almost exclusively by the hands of volunteers and the dollars that came out of their pockets." Over the years, Phanord and Beck became close friends. "If it were not for Jean-Luc, I would not be the type of Christian I am today," Beck said.
Jean-Luc Phanord was born in Port-au-Prince on Oct. 30, 1952. He grew up in Marchand-Dessalines and then attended the Baptist Theological Seminary in Limbé. In addition to being a pastor, he was also an administrator, photographer, electrician, plumber, and tailor.
He is survived by his wife Elsa, and his three children: Joanne, who attends college in Florida, Jessica, and Jean Luc Junior. He has two brothers, Antoine, who lives in New York, and Ruben, who is also a pastor, in Miami, Florida.
On Nov. 13, Rev. Phanord's wife flew from Santo Domingo to New York
to claim her husband's remains. They will be flown back to the Dominican
Republic and buried in La Romana, Rev. Masséna said.
The
So-Called Evidence Is a Farce
by Stan Goff
(Last of three parts)
As we go to press this week, the so-called Northern Alliance in Afghanistan
has just captured the capital, Kabul. Some may be tempted to think that
the war is now almost over. But in this final installment, Stan Goff explains
that Washington was never really pursuing its professed goal of flushing
out a handful of terrorists living in caves. It's real aim is to establish
a military foothold in Afghanistan to guard its oil interests in an unstable
region, whose complexities it does not even begin to understand.
What the U.S. is responding to is not Sept. 11, but the beginning of a permanent and precipitous decline in worldwide oil production, the beginning of a deep and protracted worldwide recession, and the unraveling of the empire.
This brings me to a point about what all this means for Americans' security, which they are perfectly justified to worry about. The actions being prepared by this administration will not only not enhance our security; it will significantly degrade it. Military action against many groups across the globe, which is what the administration is telling us quite openly they are planning to do, will put a lot of backs against the wall. That can't be very secure.
The concept of war being touted here is a violation of the principles of war on several counts and will inevitably lead to military catastrophes, if you're inclined to view this from a position of moral and political neutrality.
And the people who are now in possession of half the world's remaining oil reserves are subject to destabilization for which we can't even pretend to predict the consequences -- but loss of access to critical energy supplies is certainly within the realm of possibility. Worst of all, we will be destabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear power in an active conflict with its neighbor, and we will be provoking Russia, another nuclear power. The security stakes don't get any higher, and Americans can ill afford to ignore nukes.
The current operation in Afghanistan is the U.S. military's dumbest operation yet. I was sent to Somalia in 1993 as part of the ill-fated Task Force to capture Mohammed Farah Aidid. That Task Force had all the gadgets imaginable, perhaps at that time the most technically sophisticated Special Ops force ever assembled. That's why the United States was stunned when that Task Force went home with its dead and wounded, its tail firmly between its legs, defeated by a near-feudal warlord.
There's been all kinds of nonsense written about why and how that happened, not the least of which is the perennial claim that politicians kept soldiers from exerting the necessary force to get the job done. This is just military rationalization. Military success is not a function of force alone, geography and weather alone, technology alone, intelligence alone, or political context alone -- but a combination of all these and a host of other largely uncontrollable variables.
There is no shortage of idiots in the military, as there are in any bureaucracy, who have a powerful vested interest in mystifying military matters for the public, so the public remains inclined to "leave it to the experts," ignore their perfidy and corruption, and accept their bullshit excuses for their failures. These nitwits actually believe they can "win," whatever that might mean right now, in Afghanistan and other places. But Afghanistan has some very important similarities with Somalia which the short memories and limited intelligence of this Administration have led them to miss, apparently.
Here's the reality in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is a backward, tribalistic entity, coherent only in its politico-geographic definition. It was turned into some semblance of a nation by socialists once, who aligned with the Soviet Union and had just begun the process of breaking down the deep ignorance and patriarchal savagery that characterized many of the societies within its borders. That's an assessment, not a judgment. Being backward does not excuse "civilized" governments, like the U.S., using them for bombing practice.
As part of a Cold War strategy, the U.S. -- beginning with the Carter Administration -- began a covert program of destabilization in Afghanistan by arming and training a whole bevy of wanna-be tribal warlords to attack the godless communists. In fact, the Taliban can trace its origins as a military-political force back to this scheme. They are "Made in the USA."
President Jimmy Carter's hatchet man, Zbigniew Brzezinski, developed this destabilization plan to force the Soviets to come to the aid of the socialist government there, whereupon the Soviets fell into the same military trap the U.S. later encountered in Somalia. (Brzezinski, by the way, is today working as a consultant with... Amoco, who along with BP, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, and Unocal, are all stomping around in the Caspian region.)
There is no one, singular, cogent military force to focus against. There are a host of factions -- well-armed thanks to the U.S. -- who change alliances like you and I change underwear, in a country that is divided by some very forbidding mountains, and a total lack of infrastructure. In other words, there is no clear enemy, therefore there can be no clear, decisive objectives. A military task force cannot conquer a nation that doesn't actually exist.
The introduction of two dozen Stinger missiles here, or 500 assault rifles there, or (as in Somalia) 200 RPG's [rocket propelled grenades], can almost instantly shift the entire balance of power between numerous, unpredictable factions who are constantly jockeying for position. Combat can be engaged by as much technology as you like. It becomes moot, however, because low-tech variables can still have such a profound and completely unpredictable influence on the actual overall situation.
This is what happened in Somalia, regardless of the lame excuses of various military pundits.
The Taliban is reputed to have around 10,000 or so "Afghani-Arabs." But 38% of Afghanistan is Pushtun, who are further divided between two sub-ethnicities, the Ghilzai and the Durrani. Twenty-five percent are Tajiks, with loyalties divided between Afghanistan and neighboring Tajikistan. The Hazara constitute 19%. The Uzbeks are 6%, and the rest is a hodge-podge of Aimaks, Turkmens, and Balochs. Most are Muslims, but there is a Sunni majority that is hostile to the Shiite minority -- mostly Hazaras, who are far more sympathetic to the Iranians than to most other Afghanis. Half the country speaks Dari-Farsi, 35% speak Pushtu, 11% speak Turkic dialects, and there are around 30 minor languages. Geography and loyalties divide these populations up like a shifting jigsaw puzzle. And Afghanistan's most important export commodity is heroin.
The so-called Northern Alliance is composed of people just as reactionary as the Taliban. Let's reflect for a moment on the "Northern Alliance."
First of all, the Pakistanis, who until the Bush people started threatening them and acting like psychotics in the wake of the attacks, were supporting the Taliban. Pakistan is extremely hostile to most of the groups that constitute the so-called Northern Alliance.
When U.S. strikes started, the Northern Alliance was emboldened to shoot a few Katyusha rockets at some suspected Taliban positions in the mountains north of the capital, Kabul. This is being interpreted by US pundits to mean there are some definable groups standing in the wings to stabilize things, post-Taliban. Ha!
This is an "alliance" primarily of Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks, who have themselves engaged one another in a number of bloodthirsty conflicts. What holds them together now is mutual hatred of the Taliban.
So what happens when they, with American/NATO assistance, defeat the Taliban? (which can certainly happen). Will they then decide to stay together and let bygones be bygones? Not likely. And what of the dominant plurality of Pushtuns of the south?
Well, Bush and crew have an idea. They're going to get the doddering King Mohammed Zahir Shah (yes, I said "king"), a Durrani Pushtun, to lead the whole bunch in a chorus of Cumbaya. How Bush et al have avoided the little issue of the king's avowed commitment to a "Greater Pushtun Nation" might only be explained by denial. And prior to the Northern Alliance's combined resistance to the Taliban, they had set aside their blood feuds to do what? Well, fight against Pushtun nationalism, of course.
Follow along. I know it's convoluted, but it's very important. This is the war we'll pay for with our money and some of our young people's lives. Afghanis are already paying for it with theirs.
The Pakistanis are having none of this, meanwhile, and as the first explosions in the Afghani night signified yet another raid on the US Treasury for the war industry, the recalcitrant Pakistanis, ever more preoccupied with the possibility of civil war in Pakistan, still couldn't agree with their new US allies on who should run Afghanistan.
There will be some deals struck, I expect, with whomever is to try their hand at being US quislings, and certainly the main deal has to be control over that lucrative and singular export commodity, heroin. This should surprise no one familiar with the US foreign policy establishment, in particular the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is attracted to dope like a lunar moth is attracted to a naked light bulb. So is the U.S. banking industry, but that's a different article.
Drug money is unmarred by those embarrassing paper trails, and it gives our resident spooks plenty of cash for bribes, contracting out to criminal syndicates, and weapons purchases.
But will all this stabilize Afghanistan enough for the oil consortiums to build their precious pipeline? Only if we secure it through a permanent troop presence, supplied and supported by static installations, which can then be attacked at will by guerrillas who are right now being convinced that the U.S. wants nothing less than the destruction of Islam. Remember Vietnam, anyone? Some people will call these installations "mission creep." Others use the word "quagmire."
I won't even begin to speculate now on what new conflicts the evolving situation will bring forward between other players, including the Iranians and the Russians.
Just as Herr Hitler thought he could do the same dumb shit Napoleon tried and failed at, this Administration thinks it can do the same dumb shit as the Soviets, and before them the the Brits, the Greeks, the Persians, the Arabs, the Mongols... everyone has had a crack at this area called, deceptively because it is many places, Afghanistan... and get away with it.
On the domestic front, I think there is a tremendous threat to the security of anyone who is critical of the government or their corporate financiers, and we already know that the real threats are against populations that can easily be scapegoated as the domestic crisis deepens.
There is a very real threat right now of creeping fascism in this country, and that phenomenon requires its domestic enemies. Historically those enemies have included leftists, trade unionists, and racially and nationally oppressed sectors. This whole "state of emergency" mentality is already being used to quiet the public discourses of anti-racism, of feminism, of environmentalism, and of both socialism and anarchism. And while there is token resistance by officials to anti-Muslim xenophobia, the stereotypical images have saturated the media, and the government is already beginning to openly re-instate racial profiling. It is only a short step from there to go after other groups. We have long been prepared by the ideologies of overt and covert racism, and racism as both institution and corresponding psychology in the United States is nearly intractable.
It's for all these reasons that I say emphatically that we cannot accept anything from this administration; not their policies nor their bullshit stories. What they are doing is very, very dangerous, and the time to fight back against them, openly, is right now, before they can consolidate their power and their agenda. Once they have done that, our job becomes much more difficult.
The Left needs to understand its critical role here. We must be the credible, hard-working, and non-sectarian partners in a broader peace-movement. We have to study, synthesize, and describe our current historical conjuncture. And we have to prepare leadership for the decisive conflict that will emerge to first defeat fascism, and then take political power.
Rosa Luxemburg's words are truer than ever right now. We are not faced with a choice between socialism and capitalism, but socialism or barbarism.
And what we can least afford are denial and timidity.
*~