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Swim to get out! The story of the Haitian junior soccer team
By Jean H. Charles
Posted: Jun 25, 2007 13:40 UTC
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BROOKLYN, NY, U.S.A. - The parents of the Haitian Junior Soccer team might have taken this advice too literally.
The malicious popular grapevine has attributed rightly or wrongly to the actual President of Haiti the dictum: Swim to save your skin. Indeed on their way to South Korea for a demonstration game, the Haitian Junior team lost eleven of its members in the United States, due to the interference of their parents and their friends.
The popular clamor and the fear of criminal prosecution (there was no criminal act, since no law was broken) have brought back almost all the youngsters on track. History will tell whether they will surmount this drama to win their way to a medal at the World Cup. They lost all the demonstration games in South Korea: Ghana (3-0), Brazil (5-0).
This story that captivates the world is a chapter of a much bigger one: the drama of the citizens of the failed states that try to leave their homeland by any means necessary to escape, political or economical strife. I travel enough to Haiti (four to five times a year) to observe that the state of the country is on the decline.
Things were not supposed to be that way. Haiti, the rebellious and the gallant daughter of Africa was the lantern that led freedom loving people to the Promised Land. While the gates have been incrementally opened for the rest of the people of this Western Hemisphere, for the majority of Haitians this freedom gate to good health, education and a decent job has been contracted. In fact, survey has shown that 65 percent of Haitians would leave their country if they find the means to do so.
I have participated to a recent conference in Atlanta concerning the state of Haiti and what can be done to help; the impression taken out of this symposium is all the indicators of welfare and well being in Haiti are going downhill. Yet, there is a stable elected government, The Minustah; the United Nations Peace Corps with a budget of US$500 million that dwarfs the US$400 million Haitian national budget has produced timid relief, whether in personal security or in infrastructure and institution building.
Whether the Haitians want to believe it or not, Haiti is now a failed State. Strong measures must be taken to bring about the rudiments of a functioning democracy in that country. I have developed a doctrine that I called the Renan Factor. At the end of the 19th Century, the dislocation in the world was similar to our times. Ernest Renan, the French Philosopher came with the concept that the nation building processes must pass through the muster of three important criteria: safe border, sense of the past and shared vision of the future.
I have demonstrated in a previous essay (Nation Building 101, the Case of Haiti,) that only the United States and (maybe South Africa) have gone into to the experiential process of creating a nation where the shared vision of the future is accepted and enforced through law, culture change and affirmative action.
I am proposing this plan of action that can and should be adopted by the candidates to the Executive Office at the White House, bringing the world closer to harmony and democracy:
1. The United States should amplify and continue in the next forty years, the policy that has worked very well for Blacks and for minorities in the last forty years. Make America a better place which is hospitable to all, whether for a WASP or for a new citizen.
2. Urge all the friendly countries of the world to adopt the same policy of hospitality. Create the shared vision of the future amongst all the citizens within the nation, meaning, and opening up access to the resources of health care, education, housing and job to all.
3. Impose by force and, or persuasion the doctrine of the shared vision of the future on the failed countries.
They are the breeding ground for refugees and for extremists. The failed States are now well known, Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma, North Korea, Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Laos and Palestine. A concerted effort by the international community must be done to help these countries to create a hospitable space for all within their nation. This policy must precede any effort of democracy and institution building. If we fail to do so, the end result will be the story of Iraq, billion of dollars pour in and almost nothing to show as a result.
To come back to Haiti, democracy building must pass through the consolidation of the rural world where ninety percent of the Haitians live in a de-facto apartheid system. The United States must put its resources where their mouth is: share the sea interdiction budget with a land interdiction program in Rural Haiti. The whole country will soon flourish. The youngsters who play soccer will gladly return and stay at home, because after all according to travel connoisseurs, there are only two paradises in this earth: Tahiti in the Pacific Sea and Haiti in the Atlantic.
Mr. Jean H. Charles Commentaries Home
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