Perú has long been one of the world’s largest producers of coca, the plant often used to produce cocaine.

It figures alongside Afghanistan, Colombia and Mexico in the list of countries where growing plants that can yield narcotics is a multibillion-dollar industry. Although Perú has seen a recent surge in the coca production, a United Nations initiative is helping farmers in the city of Tocache abandon coca and find alternative crops.

Officials think they can replicate the town’s success in other farming areas.

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Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s president, has bet his presidency on his so-called war on drugs.

But his military-focused strategy has, so far, seen little results in a conflict estimated to have cost more than 15,000 lives since 2006. And now the government is being accused of ignoring the biggest drug gang of all.

Accusations of a “corrupt” Mexican government protecting certain cartels have been around since the 1970s, but now some of the country’s leading investigative reporters say they have solid evidence showing that authorties are going after other cartels, but not targeting Sinaloa.

“There are no important detentions of Sinaloa cartel members,” Diego Osorno, an investigative journalist and the author of a book on the Sinaloa cartel published last year, told Al Jazeera’s Franc Contreras.

“But the government is hunting down [Sinaloa's] adversary groups – [and] new players in the world of drug trafficking.”

Tiny fraction

The government did recently annouce the arrests of two members of the Sinaloa cartel, but experts say the men arrested were not senior cartel leaders.

Edgardo Buscaglia, a leading law professor in Mexico and an international organised crime expert, has analysed 50,000 drug-related arrest documents dating back to 2003, and said that only a tiny fraction of the them were against Sinaloa members, and low-key ones at that.

“Law enforcement shows you objectively that the federal government has been hitting the weakest organised crime groups in Mexico. The Familia Michoacana, mainly, Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez,” he told Al Jazeera.

“But they have not been hitting the main organised crime group, the Sinaloa Federation, that is responsible for 45 per cent of the drug trade in this country.”

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman – one of the most wanted criminals in the world – runs the Sinaloa cartel. Arrested in Guatemala in the 1990s and transferred to a maximum security prison in Mexico, Guzman escaped in 2001 and has amassed a more than $1bn forture by trafficking cocaine, heroine and methamphetamines to the US.

The Mexican government has consistently denied any involvement with Guzman and his cartel, backed up the US drug enforcement agency, which is involved in counternarcotics operations there.

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Somalia’s spiralling instability has reached the capital, Mogadishu, as at least 17 people were killed and 61 injured in fighting between government forces and opposition fighters. But just who is fuelling the conflict this time around and is the country becoming a battleground in the fight against al-Qaeda?

Mwangi S. Kimenyi, Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Africa Growth Initiative of The Brookings Institution has an article worth a read: Fractionalized, Armed and Lethal: Why Somalia Matters.

For the last few years, Somalia has held strong onto the top spot in both the Index of Failed States and the Fragile States Index. And this country—if one can use that term—is likely to maintain its lead for the foreseeable future. But this is nothing to brag about.

By definition of a failed state, Somalia has no single legitimate governing authority and is divided among numerous constituent factions that are relatively strong and have control of some lucrative sources of revenue. These factions are well organized and function more or less as independent states. Yet no single faction has a monopoly on violence, which explains why Somalia has remained a failed state for so long. In essence, the various factions have no interest in a well organized sovereign state. As such, the failed state is in a precarious equilibrium, resulting in what may appear as paradoxically both a functional and stable, stateless society.

Probably because of its fragile nature and the fact that it is small and poor, the international community has grossly underestimated the capacity of this country to destabilize the region and to engage in extremely costly activities to the international community. At present, there are no well-coordinated international efforts to rebuild this state. Yet this country—or better, its various factions—possesses the potential to inflict major global damage and could be the next hotbed for international terrorism. Ignoring Somalia would be a huge political and humanitarian mistake. But the Somali state may also have degenerated beyond the stage where marginal interventions can be beneficial; thus the focus should shift to building a new state. As the events of the last two decades have shown, the Somali state was not consensual and focusing on reverting to the same structure is likely to be futile.

Fractionalized Society

A number of factors make Somalia an increasingly volatile country. The first of course is the presence of numerous factions that lay claim to a specific territory or strong mass of supporters. Some factions have established control of a sizeable part of the country while others consist of small warring groups. Of these factions, many have a claim to illegal enterprises and have established themselves as legitimate tax collectors or traders. With the vacuum created by the absence of a state sovereign, each faction has established its own organized “government” and possesses substantial capacity to impart violence. The factions include the governments of Somaliland and Puntland, both of which have been able to control a significant section of the country and are able to maintain some degree of peace. Other notable factions are the warring groups in the central region, including the Federal Transitional Government, Al-Shabab, Hizbul-Islam and Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jamaa. Then of course there are other groups like the Islamic courts that control most of South-Central Somalia, and the infamous pirates, whose sole interest is monetary gain (and which may support some of the other insurgent groups).

With all of these groups competing for control, it is not surprising that some of these factions have connections or are sympathetic with terrorist groups. Some Somali factions have accepted financial support from terror organizations in order to settle clan disputes.

The absence of a central authority combined with its general lawlessness makes Somalia an ideal haven for terrorists.

Illegal Arms Market

Not only is Somalia heavily fractioned, but these factions are well-armed. Although U.N. Security Council Resolution 751 placed an arms embargo on Somalia, reports indicate that the number and variety of small arms available in Somalia is greater than at any time since the early 1990s. Private businesses, nation states, arms dealers, Somalis in the Diaspora, and local clans/militia all contribute to the growing number of smuggled weapons in the country. In fact, small arms are so prolific in Somalia that they are a form of currency in most parts of the country.

The Somali arms market, based in Mogadishu, is a key hub for arms trading in East Africa and weapons are constantly being transported along its porous border to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and the DRC. The Kenyan government estimates that thousands of small arms are smuggled across the border every year. In fact, the Kenyan government is finding it difficult to fight crime as a result of the large number of illegal arms smuggled from Somalia. The presence of such a high number of guns poses a threat to security in Northeast Africa and beyond.

Drug Economy

Where there are guns, there are often drugs; and in Somalia the trade is in khat—a narcotic leaf that is traditionally consumed in parts of Africa and in Arab countries for its stimulating properties. Although khat is considered legal in many countries, it is an addictive drug. Khat is the most common drug in Somalia and it is estimated that approximately 75 percent of all males in Somalia use it. The khat trade is fairly lucrative, with a significant proportion of the drug originating from the Kenyan highlands and exported freely to Somalia. Kenya exports about $250 million of khat annually, beating out tea as one of the county’s most lucrative exports, with a majority bound for Somalia. The Kenya National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse estimates that Kenya exports about $300,000 worth of khat to Somalia daily. Despite the negative consequences of a stateless Somalia that Kenya is experiencing, there has not been any attempt by the Kenyan government to curtail this trade, because local interests benefit a great deal.

With no central government to regulate the trade, warlords in Somalia have extended their power and now collect taxes and customs duties on khat. Many clans and regional administrations rely on import tax from the drug as their main source of revenue. In 2003, the U.N. Panel of Experts on Somalia reported that many warlords now control the khat trade and use the proceeds to buy weapons needed to maintain control of their territory. This highly addictive substance even allows warlords to keep their troops loyal since otherwise troops suffer the consequences of withdrawal. Accordingly, khat is often included as part of troop salaries.

Diaspora Support of Factions

Evidence shows that civil wars are likely to last longer and be more intense in countries that have large populations outside of their own, due to support that members of the Diaspora provide to warring factions. Somalia is a case in point. Although the Diaspora can and has played a critical role in facilitating peace building and local reconciliation in some cases (especially in Somaliland and Puntland), in other cases the Diaspora has also provided financial support to warring clans facilitating conflict. Without financial support from the Somali Diaspora, many clans lack the resources to wage war against each other. Estimates show that at least 1 million Somalis—approximately 13 percent of the population—live abroad, mainly in Kenya, Yemen, the U.K., Canada, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the U.S. The UNDP estimates that annual remittances (or Hawala) from the Somali Diaspora are about $1 billion (about 18 percent of GDP). Although it is impossible to measure the exact amounts, the available data shows that the flow of remittances is substantial. On balance, the Diaspora is contributing to the further degeneration of the state.

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On January 19th, Ambassador Carolina Barco of Colombia addressed an audience at NDN and the New Policy Institute about advancements in Colombia and progress in their relationship with the United States.

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Montenegro has become a major smuggling route for South American cocaine into Europe in recent years.

Working with Latin American authorities, Serbian intelligence officials recently broke a suspected drug trafficking trying to get $350m worth of cocaine to Western Europe through Montenegro.

Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Phillips reports on how governments across the region are struggling in their battle against organised crime.

Ioannis Michaletos, an analyst at the World Security Network recently gave a short interview to the Montenegrian newspaper “DAN” regarding the emergence of the Balkans as a cocaine smuggling hub used as a transit point for entry into European Union and increasingly Russia.

In your opinion, where is the cocaine that arrives in Montenegro destined to?

The bulk of the cocaine arriving in ports of Montenegro is destined for European markets and the local Balkan ones. The Kosovo territory plays an important role because shipments are gathered there and then are distributed in the north from Bosnia or Serbia to Croatia and Hungary and then to Western-Central Europe.

Other shipments travel to the South through FYROM-Albania and Greece and then to Western Europe mainly through vessels.

Europe is certainly a prime destination for Latin American cocaine traders, for two reasons. One is the rise of Euro against the Dollar. The latter is the currency used in all Americas, so the smugglers earn a harder currency (The Euro) which they exchange for Dollars thus increasing their financial strength.

The second reason is the unification of Europe and the non-existent border controls in an area of almost 500 hundred million people that created over the past decade tremendous opportunities for all kinds of illegal activities. The police authorities in many European countries proved ineffective to deal with this kind of situation.

Is the corruption and involvement of organised crime in local pollitics in Montenegro related to the cocaine smuggling in the region?

Corruption in political and social level plays a vital role in the cocaine contraband and of course in any other kind of illegal activity. Although there are not presently so many evidents of high-level corruption regarding cocaine trade, it could be safely assumed that it exists, since in a small country it would be almost impossible to have a rising trend in this illegal sector without the knowledge of the authorities.

Money laundering – How does it relate with the above?

Money laundering takes numerous forms. The most usual ones, especially in the Balkan countries, is to launder capital through: Construction, real-estate, tourism, foreign currency exchange bureaus, gas stations, transport companies, cazinos, night-clubs, NGO’s and insurance companies. This is more or less the main sectors where the attention of international authorities is being concetrated and it also involves all Balkan countries and Montenegro as well.

Which countries from South America export cocaine to the Balkans?

Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru, Ecuador are the traditiional production or distribution centers of cocaine in Latin America. Organized crime networks in these countries have all found links to crime syndicates in the Balkans and cooperate with them strongly over the past decade.

Lastly, which European criminal networks organisations that coordinate the cocaine trade?

There have been numerous reports about N’draggeta, Kosovar Mafia and others. Usually the connection between all these groups is to have intermediate groups of people that facilitate transportation. Ship owners, transport companies, corrupted public officials and indepedent traders, act as liaisons between a group like Ndragheta for instance and the Cali cartel.

It is difficult to pin point the exact human network involved, because this is police work ,but we can speculate that Italian and Balkan groups have the majority of this illegal trade under their influence presently and seem to be able to evade prosecution in the upper level, despite many succesfull operations by the security authorities of many states the past few years.
The use of intermediates seems as very effective by these networks that are able not to “get their hands dirty” and evade prosecution.

It might help if Montenegrin authorities were co-operative, but apparently they are not.

Goran Soković and Dejan Šekularac, accused of smuggling two tons of cocaine from South America to Europe, were released from custody in Montenegro.

According to TV Montenegro, Soković and Šekularac were released after the state prosecution decided that there was not enough evidence to prosecute them, because Serbia refused to send evidence against them until Operation Balkan Warrior was complete, Podgorica’s television station Vijesti reported.

Montenegrin investigative judge Miroslav Bašović released the two from custody after he was informed that there was not enough evidence available to keep them incarcerated and press charges against them.

It was also stated that the Serbian organized crime prosecution refused to help in the case, on the request of the Montenegrin sector for fighting organized crime, corruption, terrorism and war crimes.

According to the Serbian prosecution’s decision, the information will not be forwarded until the case before the Serbian courts against Soković, Šekularac and 19 others has finished.

The Serbian prosecution stated that an exchange of information at this time could possibly endanger the case being led in Serbia.

The mastermind behind the massive drug smuggling operation is believed to be Darko Šarić, who is currently a fugitive from justice.

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The spiraling drug-related violence in México has now claimed 1,015 lives in the first 34 days of 2010. It’s the fastest that dubious milestone has been achieved. In 2009, the 1000th death did not occur until February 24th, the 54th day of the year. It took 113 days to top that marker in 2008, 134 days in 2007, 181 days in 2006, and 254 in 2005. At the present rate, one Mexican is being killed every 48 minutes in drug-related violence.

Though the drug-related violence is an often internecine affair over control of a $10 billion dollar market in the United States, the number of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire is increasing rapidly and in horrific fashion. Last weekend, masked gunmen stormed a party in a working class neighborhood of cinderblock homes and killed 16 teenagers who had gathered to watch a boxing match on television. Some of the victims were shot as they tried to flee and their bodies were found near neighboring homes. The victims’ ages ranged from 15 to 20.

Authorities now believe that the attack was carried out by mistake after arresting a suspect who served as the lookout during the attack. The main Juárez-based drug cartel had targeted the party because it had received reports that members of a rival trafficking group were in attendance. The orders were to kill everyone in attendance.

The violence continued on Monday when in another attack also in Ciudad Juárez, armed men burst into a bar around dawn and killed four men and a woman. Elsewhere, gunmen killed 10 people and wounded 15 in a bar in Torreón, a city in the northern state of Coahuila. The death toll continues to rise even as México has scored some victories over the drug cartels with the death of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the so-called Boss of Bosses, who was killed in a shoot-out along with six bodyguards that also claimed the life of a Mexican marine in mid-December and with the mid-January capture of Teodoro “El Teo” García Simental who gained notoriety for dissolving the bodies of his victims in lye.

But vacuums at the top of drug cartels leave openings for ever-ambitious and evermore ruthless lieutenants to fill. The surge in violence we seeing is part of the climbing (killing) your way to the top in a drug cartel. El más macho gana. Still this should not be read that México is winning the war of drugs, that war cannot be won given human nature, the size of the market and the depths of poverty that exist on both sides of the Río Grande.

The war next door is far different from the war in Colombia. To begin with, Colombian cartels largely avoided fighting each other. In their heyday of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Medellín and Cali cartels carved out distinctive supply routes and markets rather than openly battle to monopolize the trade. They were more comfortable with their duopoly. Colombia did see a surge in drug cartel on drug cartel violence after the Colombian government managed to kill Pablo Escobar and capture the other drug kingpins. The two main cartels splintered into several smaller ones though eventually by the end of the 1990s the FARC emerged as the main drug trafficking organization in Colombia.

México has six major cartels: Sinaloa, Golfo, La Familia, Los Zetas, Tijuana and Juárez. In addition to these six, there are a host of smaller ones. And unlike in Colombia where the two cartels were each centered in different parts of the country, in México the cartels overlap in territory. And unlike the situation in Colombia where shipment took various routes (land, air and sea), drug shipments from México are almost exclusively by land thus setting the stage for control of the safest and most reliable routes. Thus most of the deaths are in the border areas.

This year so far about sixty percent of the drug-related fatalities have been in just four Mexican states: 24.3 percent in Chihuahua, 22.5 percent in Sinaloa on México’s Pacific coast, 11.5 percent in Baja California Norte across from San Diego and 8.2 percent in Durango.

All told since Felipe Calderón became President in December 2006 more than 17,000 people have been killed in México’s drug wars. By the end of this year that number could easily come close to 30,000 if the present rate of one murder every 48 minutes continues.

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Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the Iranian president, has proposed a budget estimated at $368bn for 2011, with a promise that spending will focus on agriculture, education and research.

It is unclear how much of this budget will go on tackling the nation’s rising drug problem, though opium continues to pour into the country from neighbouring Afghanistan.

In the last 10 months, Al Jazeera correspondent Alireza Ronaghi reports that police have seized over 400 tonnes of drugs and have lost dozens of police officers in the attempt to eradicate drug abuse in the Iranian capital, Tehran.

Now some public security officials are saying the effort to chase and arrest drug dealers and users is almost pointless in the face of the sheer quantity of narcotics brought into the capital city every day.

At a conference on drug control in Tehran this week, Brigadier-General Hamidreza Hosseinabadi, head of Iran’s anti-drug task force, criticised international organisations and Western powers for their lack of co-operation.

“Those who chase terrorists in Afghanistan, they have left drug traffickers free.

“I think they even guide traffickers. They allow a fifty percent increase of drug production in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, where the head quarters of British forces is located. What does that mean?” Hosseinabadi asked.

Another senior Iranian anti-drug official went even further accusing the US, Britain and Canada of playing a major role in Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade.

“According to our indisputable information, the presence of the United States, Britain and Canada has not reduced the drug trade and the three countries have had major roles in the distribution of drugs,” said Taha Taheri, the deputy head of Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters.

Iranian officials have always criticized Western countries over their policies towards Afghanistan, where poppy cultivation has drastically increased since the US-led military occupation of the country in 2001.

Taheri added that drug catalysts are being smuggled into Afghanistan through borders that are controlled by US, British and Canadian troops. Some 13,000 tons of drug catalysts are brought into Afghanistan every year.

Antonino De Leo, the representative of UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Iran, says he is eager to help but his hands are tied.

“Our technical assistance programme … is funded by extra budgetary resources,” he told Al Jazeera. “So UNODC does not have funding at its disposal to purchase any equipment, carry out any training or even purchase drug sniffing dogs.”

About 92 percent of the world’s opium, the raw material for heroin, is produced in Afghanistan, where it generates more than $3 billion a year for farmers and traffickers, according to the UN. In June 2007, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran agreed to crack down on drug trafficking that’s funding the Taliban insurgency and destabilizing the region. The three countries agreed to share intelligence on smuggling routes, bolster frontier security and hold joint counter- narcotics operations. But so far not much has come from these agreements.

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Since the first of these semi-submersible crafts appeared in 1993, they have become increasingly sophisticated. These vessels travel just below the ocean’s surface and cover distances of up to 2,000 miles from Colombia up to Mexico. Each submarine has a crew of up to four and can carry up to 12 tons of cargo though the most popular prototype carries 7 tons.

Because they leave tiny wakes, these submarines are extremely difficult to detect visually or by radar. Even when they are spotted, crew members quickly sink the vessels to get rid of the evidence and avoid being prosecuted for drug trafficking.

In the first six months of 2008, the U.S. Coast Guard along with the US Navy detected 42 semi-submersibles off the coast of Central America, but capturing them remains elusive. Authorities seized just 14 semi-submersibles in 2008.

Colombian authorities now believe that up to 70 percent of the cocaine leaving the country’s Pacific coast is packed aboard these semi-submersibles. The cost of construction is estimated at one million USD. Each craft is generally sunk after completing each journey.

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Christopher Sabatini, the senior director of policy for the Council of the Americas, and Shannon ONeil, a fellow in Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, join Martin Savidge to discuss US foreign policy in Latin America. The topics of discussion cover natural resources, relations with Cuba, Venezuela and the war on drugs.

In the past eight years with US distracted by two land wars in Asia, Latin America has sought its own alternatives. During the Bush Administration, Latin America effectively rejected the Clintonian Washington Consensus that caused such a deep economic dislocation. The region began to forge its own paths torn between the hard left led by Hugo Chávez and a pragmatic left by Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva. The continent remains divided between these camps despite the recent electoral success by the right in Panamá and Chile.

For the Obama Adminstration, Latin America largely remains a low priority apart perhaps from the war on the drugs. From the Latin American perspective, there was an expectation that there would be greater movement on the US-Cuban relationship. The hope was the US would lift the embargo and seek a rapid normalization of ties. The other rift that has developed is over the approach to the ouster of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. Latin American policy towards is itself divided but both México and Brazil have refused to recognize the newly elected government of Porforio Lobo.

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Clearly the next 48-72 hours are critical in reaching survivors and helping Haitians get back on their feet. The first thing is to clear the rubble, find trapped victims, get food, water & blankets and tents in place and provide medical attention. I’m sure Cuba will step in. They have great doctors and emergency response teams. Cuba provided amazing relief when the Kashmiri earthquake hit a few years ago. The United States, France, and the Latin Americans will also respond.

There’s never a good time for a natural disaster obviously and natural disasters hit Haiti very very hard. Had this happened next door in the Dominican Republic, the damage wouldn’t have been as catastrophic though granted a 7.0 is a 7.0. This is a major seismic event of historic proportions.

Still, I hope world attention on Haiti will bring a renewed focus on a failed and abandoned state. Haiti is rather unique among failed states in that it has not caused wider repercussions to its neighbors. The US and the Dominican Republic have been impacted in terms of Haitian immigration but that’s pretty much it.

The thing is that Haiti is a solvable problem (unlike Afghanistan or Yemen). Not to minimize the problems that confront Haiti. Seventy-six percent of its population lives below the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty (defined as $2 dollar a day or less). There is of course a deep societal cleavage in Haiti with a few families controlling the vast majority of wealth. The GINI is .65 which is one of the worst in the world. But here’s the thing in 1988, only 65% of the population lived below the poverty line. So Haiti is going backwards and it’s a country that can’t afford to go backwards.

Haiti is not just a failed state but it is a collapsing society. And that’s really more the issue. I’m hard pressed to think of a country that confronts as great an ecological challenge as Haiti perhaps parts of Kazakhstan, Russia, China are worse but that parts. The whole of Haiti is an ecological disaster. Maybe North Korea is worse or as bad but we don’t have the clarity (at least I don’t) that we have with Haiti. One can see Haiti’s problem from the air.

The border between the Dominican Republic (the DR) and Haiti is visible from the air. It’s the only world border that is so visible that is not a river or mountain range. That’s because the DR is forested and Haiti is not. The DR is green and Haiti a mauve brown. No country on Earth has been as rapidly deforested as Haiti has been over the past 80 years. Sixty percent of the country was forested in the late 1920s. Today only 1.5% of Haiti is forested. So when all those hurricanes passed over Hispaniola, the DR was scarcely touched while Haiti was ravaged.

So why is Haiti so deforested? Well, ultimately it does come down to governance. The DR had somewhat enlightened if despotic rulers (Joaquín Balaguer had a fondness for parks and he managed to save the DR’s watershed) while Haiti suffered the Duvaliers and perhaps worse a series of inept corrupt kleptocratic governments. But that’s just the overlay.

Here’s the nut of the problem. There is no infrastructure in Haiti. The electrical grid serves perhaps a quarter of the population. Haitians have no fuel with which to cook their meals and thus they took to cutting down their forests to make charcoal.

Now take immigration. We have also seen the Haitian boat people. But most Haitians who leave Haiti either cross into the DR by foot or fly to Miami. 63% of the Haitians who leave Haiti actually have a high school education. What that tells you is that the base for an incipient middle class is voting with the feet as they say but if we can get them to stay they might then pressure Haiti into transforming itself. So Haiti has become poorer because those with skills can flee and not necessarily on a raft.

Getting Haitians to stay really at this point requires the international community getting involved to a degree that hasn’t really been attempted. Basically the country has to be put into a receivership. That, of course, isn’t something we have done before. There is no international mechanism for doing this sort of nation-building.

When I look at Haiti (and I’ve been twice), I see another Easter Island without the Moai. The reason I find Haiti so damn interesting is that well as a historian I am witnessing a societal collapse which is rare. Not that societies don’t collapse but in the course of a human lifetime we are seeing one play out. Governance is of course a factor but that’s too easy an explanation.

So what makes Haiti different? Well, it is an African society transplanted to the New World and the only slave society to successfully revolt and overthrow the established order but that was in the 1790s and I don’t think Haiti’s problem are ethnically based. Barbados is one of the most successful countries anywhere. So being a former slave society is not indicative of future prospects. Granted the sugar plantations in French Haiti were much more brutal than those in British Jamaica. But Haiti threw off its European overlord in a very brutal 13 year revolt. It was the most violent of the New World revolution and the only one to have an explicit racial character. Of the half million African slaves on the sugar plantations, perhaps 100,000 died. So Haiti was born in blood. The experience cannot be discounted.

But independence probably did have a cost in Haiti. It perhaps came too early (1804) though really the problem is that power went from a French elite (the French plantation owners were mostly massacred) to control by an army – the first Haitian President Dessalines declared himself emperor – that in the first years was led by dark-skinned blacks though in time lighter-skinned (see Harry Reid isn’t alone) blacks increasingly took charge. Almost immediately after independence, Haiti was split between a dark-skinned north and a mulatto south. And in no other country except perhaps Venezuela (another slave society) did the military play as large a role in governing. The constitution existed only on paper.

The racism in the 19th century left Haiti isolated. The US didn’t recognize Haiti until 1862. France recognized Haitian independence in 1838 but on the condition that (and get ready for this) Haiti paid reparations to French property owners. I forget the amount off the top of my head but they were onerous and succeeded in bankrupting the Haitian state. Therein lies another of Haiti’s longstanding problems, a bankrupt state. The other was, of course, a deep political instability. Of the 22 heads of state between 1843 and 1915, only one served out his prescribed term of office. Three were killed in palace revolts, really a rarity in Latin America. Coups elsewhere were the bloodless kind. In 1915, President Wilson invaded the country and the US would effectively rule the country until 1934.

But ethnically within Haiti there were changes. The mulatto class took economic power running the country as if it were an estate. The political power for the mulatto class came once the US left. The Duvaliers, pere et fils, ruled the country with US backing from 1957 until 1986. Internal rule was enforced through use of militias, again a Latin American rarity. So the country does remind one more of Africa than Latin America.

The other really curious thing about Haiti is its overpopulation. It is the second most densely populated country in the Americas after El Salvador. Here African traditions do play a role. The average Haitian woman has some 5 children but there’s a catch. They will have fewer children if they have a male first. Have a girl and it’s try try try again until you have a boy.

The country does have potential but it needs to be rescued from itself. The question is how? We no longer live in a colonial world and the US really only intervenes now if there is a threat to US interests and Haiti doesn’t really fit that bill though the country is infected by the corruption of the drug trade. Part of the reason that the US wasn’t sorry to see President Aristide go in 2004 was that the US knew he allowed Haiti to be a transshipment point. Then again the clique that ousted President Aristide were also financed by drug money.

But a Haiti that remains a shell of a state is one that falls prey to being a vehicle for drug trade. I’m a legalization is the least worst option kind of guy but failing that I think it important not to allow countries to be controlled by drug cartels.

My big push on Haiti has been on reforestation. If I could fix one thing in Haiti it is that I would move to reforest the country. I’d look at what Cuba did in Piñar del Rio and see if we can learn from that experience. Of course, it would be great to have the Cubans involved but that’s not going to happen unfortunately.

Haiti merits our attention and not just because a devastating earthquake has taken place. We can fix Haiti in a decade if we really wanted to, all that is lacking is the will.

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