The U.S. and European powers, along with the international lending institutions they employ, organized an “International Donors Conference” this week ostensibly to raise financial capital for Haiti’s development. But by its close, it was clear that the conference was really just a giant and expensive theater production to raise political capital for the skeptically-regarded regime of de facto prime minister Gérard Latortue, which Washington installed following the Feb. 29th coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The conference, which took place from July 19-20 at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC, raised $1.085 billion in pledges for Haitian development, an apparent success.

But closer examination reveals that almost all of the money came from the very governments and institutions which organized the conference.

Although the event was attended by hundreds of delegates from over 20 countries and 30 intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), it was three of the four conference hosts which provided the lion’s share of the aid: the World Bank with $150 million, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) with $260 million and the European Commission with $325 million, for a total of $735 million. (The United Nations was the fourth host.)

The two nations most responsible for installing and backing the Latortue de facto regime then kicked in another $254 million: the U.S. with $230 million and France with $34 million.

So 92% of the money “raised” – some $999 million – was from the very sectors which broadsided, boycotted, and undercut the democratically elected government of Haiti to install a coup government.

On the eve of the conference, its organizers set their pledge goal at $924 million, saying that Haiti needed $1.365 billion until September 2006 for its “interim cooperation framework” (ICF) and had financing for about $440 million. But setting the bar below what they already knew would be coming in from conference organizers makes the remarks of Caroline Anstey, the World Bank’s director for the Caribbean, appear rather disingenuous. “I am delighted to say we raised more than expected,” she said, “which reflects a great vote of confidence in the interim government and signals a bright future for Haiti.”

Canada, Washington’s faithful second in Haiti, pledged $135 million, which brings the pledge total to $1.134 billion, $49 million more than the announced $1.085 billion.

“The pledged amount is the high water mark, and in reality, it’s only going to go down from here,” said John Ruthrauff, a policy analysis with Oxfam America, who attended the conference. “In most situations, the full pledges are not fulfilled. Furthermore, Haiti has to apply for this money to the donors,” which often duplicate, delay, modify, or cancel projects. “It’s not like tomorrow the donors sit down and write checks out. So even though there is $1 billion pledged, if they get $500 million in the next two years, they’ll be doing very well,” he said.

Furthermore, over one-third of the money pledged – some $410 million from the World Bank and IDB – is not grants but loans, which will plunge the country deeper into a debt. “Haiti already owes $1.2 billion, and their trade income is only about $250 million a year,” Ruthrauff said. “So the loans are simply going to dig a deeper hole, and I don’t believe they will be able to pay it off.”

A demonstration of about 25 protestors outside the conference delivered this message to delegates as they arrived between 8 and 9 a.m. on July 20.“We said we don’t want to see donors invest in the ‘interim cooperative framework’ that has been put forward by the Latortue regime,” explained Melinda Miles, a co-coordinator of the Haiti Reborn project at the Quixote Center, which called the action with the 50 Years is Enough Network, the Jubilee USA Network, EPICA, and the Haiti Action Committee. “We consider this government to be a de facto coup regime and not a legitimate government that has the capacity to sign any kind of lasting agreement for the Haitian people. We’re deeply concerned that the U.S., the UN and this entire group of donors seem to ignore the grave human rights violations and violence being perpetrated in Haiti, the majority of the victims of this violence being the supporters of the former Lavalas government.”

The protestors also called for debt cancellation as an alternative plan for Haiti’s development and denounced Latortue’s plans to push forward privatization of Haiti’s remaining state industries, including the phone company, electricity authority, water utility, and airport. “We think it’s very hypocritical for the donor community, which withheld money and blocked money to the democratically elected government, to be jumping at the first opportunity to give money to a de facto regime just because it is willing to move forward with privatization,” Miles said. “Privatization should never happen under any regime that is not democratic.”

Most fundamentally, the conference aimed at projecting an image that there is broad international support for Latortue’s government, which remains unrecognized by its Caribbean neighbors, the Organization of African Unity, Venezuela, and other countries. “The conference tried to put a political stamp of approval on the interim government,” said the attending representative of one prominent NGO in Washington, who requested anonymity. “There was no opportunity for discussion of the political situation. There was this facade projected that the interim government is the best thing that has happened to Haiti and that the people of Haiti are rejoicing and welcoming the interim government and that the plan that they have is what will turn Haiti around. There was absolutely no discussion about the regime change and how it was carried out. It was not spoken of from the lectern.”

Most of the donors present were willing to “play the game,” according to this source. But at one point, Bernard Gousse, Haiti’s de facto Justice Minister, took issue with a conference document which identified women as a “vulnerable group” subject to domestic violence and rape, saying they were not.

“That comment got a silent collective gasp from the crowd and a woman from the United Nations stood up and challenged that,” the NGO representative said.

Participating in the conference were not only Latortue’s lieutenants, but putschists like Rosny Desroches, head of the Civil Society Initiative and lackey of André Apaid, the assembly industrialist leader of the Group of 184.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell also addressed the conference, saying that “I have had much to do with events in Haiti” by negotiating Aristide’s return in 1994. “Unfortunately, in the years subsequent to 1994, we didn’t see the kind of progress that we had hoped for,” he said. “We saw a great deal of investment from the international community not used for proper purposes.” Through this conference’s planning, the U.S. and its minions wants to now make sure the Haitian government it set in place carries out it’s development in the “proper” way.

In short, the plans and strategies proposed by the ICF conference “did not in any way involve representatives of the poorest people of the country” but were “written by some 200 external consultants,” Oxfam’s Ruthrauff concluded.