How Complicit Governments Support the Drug Trade

John P. Ruehl

Several governments or government entities play a double game of enforcing some drug laws while ignoring others. Their reasons vary, and history proves it will be difficult to stop.

The modern globalized world has made it easier and far more lucrative to facilitate and enable international drug networks, and several governments, or elements within them, actively work with criminal groups to support the flow of drugs around the world. This has led to a surge in drug usage among people worldwide, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report 2022, with 284 million people between the ages of 15 and 64 using drugs globally in 2020, which amounts to “a 26 [percent] increase over the previous decade.”

State involvement in the drug trade occurs for a variety of reasons. The allure of profiteering can entice state actors to produce and transport drugs, particularly if their country is under financial duress. Producing drugs or merely taxing drug routes can bring in much-needed funds to balance budgets, create sources of “black cash,” or enrich elites. Allowing the drug trade may also be deemed necessary to ensure regional economic stability and can prevent criminal groups from confronting the state.

In other instances, government agencies and institutions might be “captured” by criminal elements that have gained extreme influence over political, military, and judicial systems through corruption and violence. Government entities also often become too weak or compromised to stop criminal groups, which “have never before managed to acquire the degree of political influence now enjoyed by criminals in a wide range of African, [Eastern] European, and Latin American countries.”

Finally, some governments use the drug trade to promote foreign policy objectives as a form of hybrid warfare. Supporting criminal groups in rival or hostile countries can help challenge the authority of the governments in these states, but it is also an effective way to promote social destabilization. Introducing drugs to other countries fuels local criminal activity, plagues their court and prison systems, induces treatment and rehabilitation costs, and causes immense psychological stress and societal breakdown through addiction.

The Complicity of State Actors in the Drug Trade

The Russian government’s involvement in the international drug trade is due to several reasons. Russian state entities have sought to raise cash for their own benefit but have also historically worked with powerful criminal groups due to corruption and to avoid bloodshed (though the Kremlin has steadily absorbed Russia’s criminal elements under Russian President Vladimir Putin). Additionally, with the West imposing sanctions on the Kremlin after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin is seeking to punish some EU countries for supporting Kyiv by bringing drugs into the bloc, leveraging its connections to the Eurasian underworld to do so.

The Kremlin’s role in the drug trade has provided it with influence over former Soviet states in Central Asia, which have also facilitated the drug trade from Afghanistan to Europe for decades. The criminal elements that control this northern route have immense influence over the political and security elites of Central Asian states and rely on cooperation with Russian intelligence services.

Much of the drug trade provides funding for Russian intelligence services, and the Kremlin appears to have approved an increase in drug trafficking in 2022 largely because of the financial difficulties stemming from its invasion of Ukraine.

The Balkans are also a key gateway for drugs entering Europe. In Bulgaria, corruption has seen high-level politicians implicated in drug smuggling, in addition to officials in Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. The Council of Europe, meanwhile, accused Hashim Thaçi, the former prime minister and president of Kosovo, as well as his political allies, of exerting “violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics” “and [occupying] important positions in ‘Kosovo’s mafia-like structures of organized crime’” in 2010. Kosovan politicians continue to face allegations of corruption.

Morocco’s government has largely accepted drug networks to support national economic livelihood, which serves “as the basis of a parallel economy,” while this relationship is reinforced by corruption in the country. Libya had more of a state-backed drug production and export apparatus under former leader Muammar Gaddafi, though this mechanism broke down following the civil war in 2011. However, the close relationship between Guinea-Bissau’s “political-military elites” and drug smugglers has made it Africa’s greatest example of state complicity in aiding international drug networks. The country’s importance in the international drug trade stems from its proximity to Latin America and Guinea-Bissau’s geographic use as a transit stop for criminal groups seeking access to the European market.

In recent years, politicians from Venezuela, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia, and other Latin American countries have been accused or suspected of aiding and abetting criminals involved in the drug trade. United States officials have also accused former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and his political allies of “state-sponsored drug trafficking,” as he awaits trial in the United States.

But there has been a decades-long involvement of the United States in the drug trade. In the 1950s, for example, the CIA gave significant support to anti-communist rebel groups involved in the drug trade in the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet. The cooperation lasted into the 1970s, and ongoing corruption in the region means state authorities continue to permit criminal groups a degree of operability.

The CIA also admitted to ignoring reports about Nicaraguan Contra rebels selling drugs in the United States to fund their anti-communist campaign in the 1980s. The United States permitted Afghan farmers to grow opium poppy during the Obama administration’s handling of the War in Afghanistan in 2009 and has been suspected of cultivating Latin America’s drug networks to control the region.

Drug deaths in the United States have, meanwhile, been rising significantly since 2000 and hit record highs during the pandemic, with fentanyl responsible for two-thirds of total deaths. China has been accused by Washington of allowing and enabling domestic criminal groups to import fentanyl into the United States.

While this trade partially diminished after pressure from Washington, fentanyl exports from China now often make their way to Mexico first before crossing the U.S. border. China’s willingness to cooperate with U.S. authorities, as well as authorities in Australia, where Chinese drugs are also imported, has declined as relations between Beijing and Western states have worsened. China’s government is also mildly complicit in the Myanmar government’s far more active and direct role in facilitating the drug trade in Southeast Asia. This is due to Myanmar’s need to both raise funds and control militant groups in the country.

Drug Trade Supporting Economies in Some Countries

Drug production and exporting also give regimes an option for long-term survival. A 2014 report from the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea indicates that after North Korea defaulted on its international debts in 1976, its embassies were encouraged to “‘self-finance’ through ‘drug smuggling.’” In the 1990s, this gave way to state-sponsored drug production to further increase access to foreign currency.

Most of the suspected or arrested drug traffickers from North Korea over the last three decades have been diplomats, military personnel, or business owners. In 2003, Australian authorities busted a North Korean state-sponsored heroin smuggling operation while following Chinese suspects. But by 2004, China was also admitting to problems with North Korean drugs crossing their mutual border. And in 2019, Chinese authorities arrested several people with connections to the North Korean government who were involved in a drug smuggling ring near the border.

The Syrian government has produced and exported drugs for decades. But sanctions and civil war since 2011 have severely weakened Syria’s leadership, prompting it to drastically increase its drug operations to raise funds and maintain power. Exports of Captagon and hashish now generate billions of dollars a year for the Syrian government and far exceed the value of the country’s legal exports.

In neighboring Iran, government officials, as well as state-affiliated groups like Hezbollah, are also complicit in profiting off the drug trade, which also implicates Lebanese officials. Involvement in the drug trade by state-sponsored groups like Hezbollah or Turkey’s Grey Wolves reveal attempts by Tehran and Ankara respectively to make these groups self-sustaining when state support withers.

Overt participation in the drug trade by certain states is likely to continue. Sanctions help fuel the drug trade by making states more inclined to resort to these networks to make up for lost economic opportunities. Additionally, most efforts to combat the drug trade are largely domestic initiatives. Less corrupt law enforcement agencies are often unwilling to work with their counterparts in other countries through forums like Interpol, for fear of their complicity in illegal drug networks. The drug trade also remains a valuable geopolitical tool for states.

Nonetheless, state involvement in the drug trade is a risky venture. It emboldens criminal actors, often involves inviting drugs into national territory, and can result in enormous public backlash. While preventing the involvement of state actors in these practices will be a difficult task, the most overt instances should be scrutinized more thoroughly to ensure these policies are given greater attention.

Forest fires kill at least 26 in Chile

Mauricio Saavedra

At least 26 people have lost their lives to catastrophic fires that are sweeping through central-southern Chile with no end in sight. Over 280 active fires are blazing in the regions of Maule, Ñuble, Biobío and La Araucanía, 350km to 700km south of Santiago, regions that are dominated by agribusinesses and millions of hectares of pine and eucalyptus plantations.

Fire in the Ñuble region of Chile. Sign reads, "Preventing a forest fire is easier than fighting one". (Photo: Lacasadeljotta) [Photo by Lacasadeljotta / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Wildfires have also broken out in the deep south of Los Ríos and Los Lagos, and in Valparaíso to the north of the capital.

Over the weekend, Minister of the Interior Carolina Tohá placed Ñuble, Biobío and La Araucanía under States of Catastrophe, which allows for the deployment of the Armed Forces into the zones.

Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Venezuela and other countries have responded to the call for help and are sending fire brigades, specialists and equipment.

A debilitating 14-year drought caused by climate change, criminally reckless forestry industry activity, unusually high temperatures and strong Patagonian winds have created the perfect conditions for the environmental disaster unfolding in Chile.

The devastating fires have already burnt through approximately 200,700 hectares according to preliminary estimates of the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF). They’ve predominantly ravaged enormous privately-owned plantations, pine and eucalyptus plantations that have been allowed to encroach into populated spaces where today they buttress homes, farms, indigenous communities, villages, towns and even regional cities.

These are the people being directly affected. Twenty-six people have perished in the space of a week, including a volunteer fire fighter, Yesenia Muñoz, who died while on active duty, as well as a firefighting pilot and a helicopter mechanic. Over 1,550 houses have been destroyed by the fires affecting some 3,300 people.

The death toll surpasses the forest fires of 2014 in the densely populated Valparaíso region, which killed 15, injured over 500, and destroyed more than 2,900 homes.

It also looks likely to surpass the 2017 forest fires, until then the worst in recent history. Some 467,000 hectares went up in flames. The tragic incident left 11 dead and localities such as Santa Olga were razed to the ground. 1,600 homes were set ablaze by fires that advanced at 8,240 hectares per hour.

In a sickening twist, the focus of the administration of pseudo-left President Gabriel Boric has been to lay responsibility on the population at large and ignore the elephant in the room. The government, assisted by the corporate media, have desperately sought to avoid any mention of the timber industry.

In announcing the deployment of the military, Interior Minister Tohá told a press conference that “an important part of the work that the armed forces and the forces of order is to have patrols to avoid risky situations. To avoid behaviors that could generate new fires…”

Prompted by a CNN reporter if she was aware of any intentionally lit fires, Tohá responded that while they are investigating cases, “we do know that 99 percent of fires are generated by human action whether voluntary or involuntary … So, regardless of what the investigations tell us, what we can say is there was human action behind it, that it was avoidable with precaution, and the insistence today is to concentrate on that because the vast majority of fires are caused by this type of reason.”

This servility to corporate interests has only emboldened the timber magnates. On February 4, the president of the Chilean Timber Corporation, Juan José Ugarte, alleged that the fires were intentional and menacingly called for the militarization of the entire central-southern territory.

“The capacities are at the limit, and for that reason it is vital to use the tools that the State of Exception allows, because it is required in some communes to establish curfews, prohibition of circulation of people, prohibition of the sale of fuel in drums, to not have accelerant vehicles that spread fires, establish control points of routes, among others, to give security to the neighbors and prevent people from continuing to cause fires,” Ugarte said.

Nonetheless, it has proved impossible to shut out the growing voices of anger representing the hundreds of thousands of families directly and indirectly affected by the yearly occurrence of bush fires that are widely believed to be the work of the forestry companies themselves to acquire more land—in 2021, seven Forestal Arauco brigadiers were arrested for intentionally lighting fires that burnt 15,000 hectares in Radal Siete Tazas National Park.

One fisherman from Punta Lavapié, a cove in the Gulf of Arauco, Biobío, interviewed by Megavisión demanded that forestry companies stop planting trees so close to their homes. “To all the private companies that continue planting near our homes, our coves and our workplaces. We are all artisanal fishermen and we are not going to leave here. You can't plant your resources so close to us,” he told a surprised reporter who quickly diverted the discussion to the cleanup efforts of the residents.

About 35 houses of the coastal village were razed to the ground. All the residents were forced to evacuate by sea on boats supplied by the local fishermen and by the Navy because plantations adjacent to the small village blocked all possibility of escaping by land.

In another interview, the mayor of the rural municipality of Santa Juana unwittingly criticized the government’s subservience to the timber magnates in the Biobío region.

Santa Juana, which sits between the Wood Route and the Biobío River and is where the fires crossed to other locations, found itself surrounded by fire on all sides. Ten residents have lost their lives and 50 percent of the rural homes have gone up in flames.

The mayor, Ana Albornoz, (who happens to be allied with the current administration of the pseudo-left president Gabriel Boric) told the media, “The first shelter we had, the school of Colico Alto, we lost. We lost the health care center in the sector, we have no possibility of providing health care for the neighbors affected in the rural area. We are evacuating the sector of Los Castaños, because the fire, in addition to expanding towards Santa Juana, is spreading towards rural sectors of the municipality.”

She continued, “We are unable to cope. We are alone. There is an abandonment by the State of Chile. There is no plan for plantations, we need it to be regulated and that was not done by the State. The legislation we have is horrible, it does not protect us. The Biobío Region is entirely planted with (pines). Sometimes it seems that only Providencia, Las Condes and big cities matter, but not the communities that feed our country.”

Many thousands more have turned to social media to air their anger at the current and past governments which have bent over backwards to help the timber industry magnates, beginning with the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Pinochet brought in decree law 701 in 1974, which subsidized 75 percent of the cost of pine plantations, and in 1980 brought in the Water Code, which allowed for the private ownership of water. From 1974 to the present, Arauco (owned by the Angelini Group) and CMPC (Matte Group) had received US $1billion from public funds and own close to 2 million hectares of land combined.

To create a propitious climate for the expansion of the industry, the dictatorship removed indigenous Mapuche communities from ancestral lands at the point of a gun. It also rescinded the land seizures of the 1960s and 1970s, handing them back to latifundistas, while brutally repressing left-wing peasant organizations.

With the return to civilian rule in 1990, alternating Christian Democratic, Socialist Party and right-wing governments have applied “anti-terrorist” and “state security” laws against Mapuche communities, which have turned increasingly to armed struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands. Meanwhile politicians of all stripes have been mired in one corruption scandal after another involving the oligarchic families of Chile.

Today President Boric, promoted as a “progressive,” “environmentalist,” “feminist” by liberals and the pseudo-left, is continuing in line with his predecessors.

US-backed provincial leader in Solomon Islands removed from office

Patrick O’Connor

Yesterday a no-confidence motion in the provincial assembly ousted the premier of Malaita province in Solomon Islands, Daniel Suidani.

The development represents a blow to the United States government, which has funneled so-called aid money into the island of Malaita and extended political support to Suidani and his backers as a reward for their vociferous anti-China and anti-central government stance.

Daniel Suidani in September 2022 [Photo: Solomon Islands Government]

Suidani’s ouster comes just days after the US formally reopened its embassy in Solomon Islands, which had been closed in 1993 but was relaunched as part of Washington’s drive to counter Beijing’s influence in the South Pacific.

The national government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in September 2019, and in March 2022 developed a security pact with Beijing. The diplomatic switch was met with consternation and protests from powerful figures within Washington.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio threatened to crash the Solomons’ impoverished economy. The security pact saw threats by the Biden administration to stage a military intervention in the event that a Chinese military base was opened in the small, strategic Pacific country.

These were blatantly illegal ultimatums issued against an elected government entering into relations with other states.

For US imperialism, however, everything—including basic precepts of international law—is subordinated to its war drive against China. Washington is attempting to diplomatically and militarily encircle China, while ratcheting up anti-China rhetoric within the US and internationally, most recently via the scare campaign over an apparently stray weather balloon. The Solomons-China security pact cut directly across this agenda, while raising the spectre of an end to unchallenged American hegemony across the Pacific Ocean.

It was within this context that Malaitan Premier Daniel Suidani rose from the obscurity of Solomon Islands’ village politics to become the US pointman within the country over the past four years.

On the eve of the 2019 diplomatic switch, a team of American officials travelled to Malaita, including members of the Department of State, Department of Defence, Department of Trade, as well as embassy and aid personnel. US intelligence operatives were undoubtedly also present. After this secretive trip—no press statements or social media posts accompanied the mission—Suidani declared that his provincial administration regarded as illegitimate the central government’s recognition of Beijing.

The Malaitan premier insisted that he would maintain his own foreign policy relations with Taiwan—despite this being explicitly illegal under Solomon Islands’ law.

Suidani sought to whip up Christian fundamentalist and anti-communist sentiment in Malaita and prohibited Chinese trade and investment in the province. His supporters in the now proscribed Malaita For Democracy outfit (M4D) issued a pogromist threat in September 2020 to ethnic Chinese residents, demanding they leave the Malaitan capital of Auki within 24 hours.

The US pledged tens of millions of dollars in so-called aid directly to Malaita, amounting to at least 50 times more money than the province receives from any other country. Suidani also enjoyed critical political backing—he and his colleagues have received “training” from personnel with the International Republican Institute, an organisation with close ties to the US intelligence agencies.

As early as January 2020, the World Socialist Web Site warned that the US and its key ally in the region, Australia, were preparing a “regime change” operation against the Solomon Islands’ Sogavare government. This was borne out when Suidani’s M4D supporters travelled from Malaita to the capital, Honiara, in November 2021 and attempted to storm the parliament and take Sogavare hostage. When this proved unsuccessful, they burned and looted much of the city for three days, murdering three people.

Suidani’s removal as premier appears to reflect growing opposition to his rule in Malaita. Promised US investments have largely failed to materialise and desperate poverty and chronic infrastructure problems remain. Paved roads and bridges are either non-existent or in advanced disrepair, yet Suidani has blocked Chinese construction firms from doing work as they have in other provinces. Suidani also blocked the installation of Huawei mobile phone towers, limiting reception on the island. This issue was recently raised against Suidani by Malaita’s deputy premier, Glen Waneta.

Suidani and his executive failed to appear before the provincial assembly yesterday, apparently after learning they lacked the numbers. The provincial budget failed to pass the assembly last month, demonstrating growing defections to the opposition. Seventeen assembly members reached quorum yesterday and voted for the no-confidence motion, the text of which included allegations against Suidani of financial mismanagement and corruption.

Around 100 Suidani supporters reportedly clashed with police after the premier’s removal, with protestors throwing stones and officers firing tear gas. According to social media reports, the rioters attempted to enter the assembly building, reprising their previous occupation of the assembly building in October 2021. This anti-democratic incident resulted in an earlier no-confidence motion being unable to be heard.

The situation remains tense ahead of the scheduled assembly vote for a new provincial premier. Just before Suidani’s removal, a spokesman for a group of his supporters among Malaitan chiefs issued a provocative statement warning of violence unless the provincial government remained in power. Flex Fiumae told the Solomon Star last Sunday: “If anything goes wrong, resulting in damages to properties and loss of lives, the mover of the [no-confidence] motion and the non-executive will be blamed for triggering the situation.”

Suidani’s removal will see no let-up in the propaganda campaign in the Australian and US media against the Sogavare government and China. Already, without a shred of evidence, Suidani’s ouster is being attributed to a corrupt conspiracy. Mihai Sora from an Australian corporate thinktank, the Lowy Institute, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that there is “speculation that Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare financed these motions against Suidani, backed by money from China, which would be glad to see the premier removed.”

This unsubstantiated speculation is being fueled by the Australian and American governments as part of ongoing efforts to destabilise the Sogavare government.

Canada deploys surveillance plane over Haiti to lay groundwork for US-demanded military intervention

Roger Jordan & Keith Jones

Canada’s Liberal government moved closer to launching a full-scale military intervention in Haiti this past weekend, deploying a long-range Canadian Armed Forces surveillance plane to support operations by the country’s national police to combat a sustained wave of gang violence. The Western Hemisphere’s most impoverished country, Haiti has been gripped for years by an ever widening social calamity, characterized by mass hunger and destitution, the COVID-19 pandemic, a cholera epidemic, and a proliferation of heavily-armed gangs that are allied with competing factions of Haiti’s corrupt, pro-imperialist ruling elite.

The Biden administration has been pushing Ottawa behind the scenes and in public statements to assume a leadership role in a military intervention in Haiti since late October. In a joint statement issued Sunday, Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly confirmed that a C-140 Aurora spy plane had begun surveilling Haiti, but refused to specify how long the mission would continue. “This Canadian patrol aircraft will provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability to bolster efforts to establish and maintain peace and security for the people of Haiti,” the ministers declared in their statement. “The CP-140 aircraft has already deployed to the region and is currently operating over Haiti. It will remain in the region for a number of days.”

Protesters calling for the resignation of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry run after police fired tear gas to disperse them in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]

To describe the blather about Canada working to establish “peace” and “security” for “the people of Haiti” as hypocritical would be an understatement. The social disaster that faces the vast majority of the country’s 12 million inhabitants is the outcome of a long series of catastrophic foreign occupations and interventions stretching back over a century, primarily led by US imperialism, but also in recent decades directly involving its Canadian ally.

The last of these interventions began in 2004, when US and Canadian troops collaborated with far-right paramilitary forces associated with the old Duvalier dictatorship—which Washington had backed to the hilt for three decades ending in 1986—to violently overthrow Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The intervening two decades have witnessed the imperialist powers in the so-called “Core Group,” which includes the US, France and Canada, back a series of increasingly right-wing governments that have presided over deepening social and economic breakdown, especially since the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Under pressure from the Biden administration, the Trudeau Liberal government has made preparations over recent months to mount a new imperialist military occupation of the island nation. The Trudeau government sent a batch of armoured vehicles to the Haitian national police in October and made a second delivery last month. Ottawa also dispatched a fact-finding mission to Port-au-Prince late last year after Ariel Henry, the imperialist-installed acting president, appealed in October 2022 for a foreign military intervention to suppress the criminal gangs that control much of Port-au-Prince and other cities and exact tolls on traffic and the transport of fuel and other essentials.

Henry has held power since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse—in what appears to have been a settling of scores within the traditionally pro-Duvalierist, ultra-right-wing faction of the ruling elite from which Moïse himself hailed. The well-armed gangs, some of which were used by Moïse to suppress popular unrest, are backed by powerful figures within the Haitian oligarchy.

If there is a certain reluctance on the part of the Trudeau government to rush to deploy ground troops to Port-au-Prince, this is certainly not to be explained by any aversion to aggressive military operations in other countries. Over the past two decades, Canadian imperialism has participated side-by-side with its US ally in the savage destruction of Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, and is now in the front ranks of the imperialist war on Russia.

The delay in finalizing the intervention in Haiti has much more to do with the depth of the crisis confronting Haitian capitalism and its pro-imperialist puppet regime, and fears that the attempt to bloodily prop it up could prove costly.

Henry, who is widely suspected of having a hand in Moïse’s assassination, is hated by the vast majority of the populace. His rule is also seen as illegitimate by the bourgeois opposition, which has long argued that Moïse’s election and that of his predecessor and mentor, Michel Martelly, were the result of manipulation and outright fraud.

Among Haiti’s workers and toilers there is mass opposition to American imperialism due to its more than century-long role in bloodily suppressing the democratic and social aspirations of the Haitian people. But there is also widespread and mounting hostility to Canadian imperialism, with repeated protests in recent years targeting Ottawa’s role in upholding the country’s vicious, corrupt capitalist ruling elite.

The Liberal government clearly fears that a Canadian-led military intervention would face mass popular opposition from the outset, and that this could dangerously undermine the “democratic” and “human rights” façade behind which Ottawa conducts its predatory foreign policy, including its increasingly significant roles in the US military-strategic offensives against Russia and China.

It also needs to be noted that the gangs are heavily armed and could prove difficult to disarm. As for the National Police, some of whose former personnel are now gang leaders, they are likely to prove a less than reliable ally of a Canadian-led military intervention. Late last month, a group of officers staged a violent day-long protest in Port-au-Prince to press for more state support and weaponry, forcing acting Prime Minister Henry to shelter in the airport as they fired guns into the air. At least 78 police officers have been killed on duty since Moïse’s assassination, including 14 who were kidnapped.

The spy plane mission indicates that a decision on a Canadian-led military intervention may be imminent. During a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the North American leaders’ summit in Mexico City last month, Biden again pressed Ottawa on the issue. If Trudeau has not green-lighted such a deployment by the time the US president visits Canada in March, it could well serve as the backdrop for unveiling a Canadian-led military operation. This is the preferred outcome for the Biden administration, which is eager to avoid yet another US-led operation as it wages war against Russia and intensifies its all-sided campaign of diplomatic, economic and military pressure against China.

Bob Rae, the Trudeau government’s ambassador to the United Nations, told a meeting of the UN Security Council in January that Canada intends to “do things differently than in the past” and “learn from the history of large, outside military interventions in Haiti because they have actually failed to bring about long-term stability for Haitians.” The “solutions” Ottawa is striving for must be “led by Haitians and Haitian institutions,” Rae claimed.

Behind the florid rhetoric, Rae was essentially saying that pressure is being applied behind the scenes to establish a more stable regime that can better front an imperialist intervention. Henry duly sought to oblige his imperialist masters with his announcement February 6 of the creation of a “High Transition Council,” which he stated unanimously supports a foreign military intervention to “restore order.” Its three members represent the political, business and civil sectors. They include Mirlande Manigat, a former right-wing presidential candidate associated with Henry’s supporters; Laurent Saint-Cyr, president of Haiti’s Chamber of Commerce; and Pastor Calixte Fleuridor, from the country’s Protestant Federation.

The imperialists would like to see the political integration of the bourgeois opposition “Montana Accord” parties into a transitional regime capable of imposing the dictates of the major powers and international investors, who are demanding “stability” to facilitate the ruthless exploitation of Haiti’s impoverished workers. Washington and Ottawa are also anxious that the social crisis in Haiti not destabilize the broader Caribbean region, including through a mass exodus of desperate refugees to the neighbouring Dominican Republic and beyond.

Amid the unfolding nightmare in Haiti, both the US and Canada continue to deport Haitians en masse.

A report released this week by the UN Children’s Agency UNICEF underscored the extent of the social catastrophe produced by decades of imperialist intervention and the corrupt rule of their local stooges. Fully 2.5 million children, half of the country’s entire child population, will require emergency assistance this year due to a lack of food and other basic necessities. As Bruno Maes, UNICEF’s Haiti representative told the Guardian, “Haitian children don’t just face challenges accessing food and potable water while the health system collapses around them. There is also a lack of protection. Children are being abused, young girls are being raped and services are not there at the scale they should be for their survival and development.”

A deadly cholera epidemic continues to rage across the country. According to a UN report dated January 15, 483 deaths, 1,742 confirmed cases and 24,232 suspected cases can be attributed to the outbreak that began last year. The impact of the disease is compounded by widespread malnutrition, with the World Food Program reporting that 4.7 million Haitians, more than a third of the population, face acute hunger.

Chief responsibility for this abysmal state of affairs lies with the imperialist powers. After decades of military occupations and interventions, and the backing of brutal dictatorships, they responded to the 2010 earthquake that claimed at least 250,000 lives by offering up Haiti’s impoverished masses as a source of cheap labour for international finance capital. Money provided to support the victims was funneled through pro-imperialist organizations like the Inter-American Development Bank, and large investment deals brokered by the war criminals Bill and Hillary Clinton were struck.

Under this regime of “aid,” approximately 60,000 jobs were created in the low-paying apparel sector, as large international concerns took advantage of extremely low wage rates and Washington’s removal of export restrictions to cash in. At least 11,000 of these jobs have disappeared since December 2021.

The latest announcement came from South Korean producer Sae-A Trading Co., which is cutting 3,500 jobs from its workforce of 7,000 and closing one of its six factories in northeastern Haiti. The company, which operates as S&H Global in Haiti, arrogantly complained about the prevalence of strikes by customs officials, gang violence and the unreliable local power supply in a statement full of corporate managerial-speak. “These disruptions,” declared Sae-A Trading, had led “to orders canceled and trust lost from our retailer customers in the USA as they suffered significant losses from delayed and non-delivery of merchandise.” For 2023, it continued, the large US-based retailers are rerouting orders “elsewhere around the Caribbean and Central America leaving us, S&H Global with a dearth of orders.”

Howard University awarded $90 million contract to conduct military research for the Pentagon

Dominic Gustavo

Howard University in Washington D.C. has been awarded a five-year, $90 million contract by the US Department of Defense and the US Air Force to fund a research center dedicated to developing advanced technology for the military.

The center will be one of the Pentagon’s 15 officially designated UARCs (University Affiliated Research Centers) and the first to be based at a historically black college/university (HBCU), a dubious “honor” that was announced with great fanfare on January 23 by university President Wayne A.I. Frederick.

The announcement came as the school hosted Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall to proclaim “a historic and tremendous accomplishment for Howard University.”

In his remarks, Austin lamented that “Only a tiny fraction of our department’s research funding goes to HBCUs.” He then declared, “To sharpen America’s technological edge and to strengthen America’s outstanding military, the department is committed to investing in even more HBCUs and minority-serving institutions. Today, we are taking that commitment to a new level.”

With the Founders Library in the background, a young man reads on Howard University's Washington, D.C. campus, July 6, 2021. [AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin]

Air Force Secretary Kendall added, “What we are celebrating today directly supports two goals incredibly important to our nation, one is a need to grow and diversify the pool of scientists and engineers across the country, particularly those contributing to our national security.”

The research center, which will receive $18 million in funding annually for at least five years, will focus on artificial intelligence, machine learning and cybersecurity, with an emphasis on “autonomous systems.”

Danda Rawat, who is director of Howard’s Data Science and Cybersecurity Center, explained to the university newspaper, The Dig, that “Howard’s UARC will focus on advanced battle management systems (ABMS) and tactical autonomy, which the Air Force defines as autonomous systems acting with delegated and bounded authority of humans in support of tactical, short-term actions associated with a longer-term strategic vision in war.” He added that this research would “provide operational advantages to our war fighters.”

Stripping away the euphemisms, the center will be dedicated to the development and improvement of the US military’s killing machines, including the drones that for decades have wreaked terror and havoc in the United States’ neocolonial wars in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia—wars that have led to millions of deaths and the destruction of entire societies.

Howard’s partnership with the most reactionary and bloodstained institution on the planet is presented as a progressive advance for “people of color.” Speaking to The Dig, Howard Professor Bruce Jones explained, “There is a dearth of people of color going into these areas of tactical autonomy, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cyber security… This [contract] enables Howard University to provide a pipeline of students and faculty into these strategic areas. In securing this UARC, Howard acts as a model for other HBCUs to do the same.”

There are 14 other universities with Pentagon-funded UARCs, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin and Johns Hopkins University. While Howard is the first HBCU to be awarded this “prestigious” program, this is merely the latest step in the integration of HBCUs into the military-intelligence apparatus, part of the broader militarization of American higher education.

Eleven other HBCUs are classified under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as R2 (Research 2) high research activity institutions, conducting research that can be utilized for military purposes, and in many cases specifically intended for military use.

A September 2022 issue of Diverse: Issues in Higher Education detailed the extent of this collaboration, quoting an Air Force spokesperson who reported: “The Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act required the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish a plan to elevate a consortium of Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCUs/MSIs), assess their ability to participate and compete in engineering, research, and development activities, and report the plan to Congress. … The goal is to grow and diversify the available pool of scientists and engineers to support more comprehensive solutions to the department’s most challenging problems.”

Among the “problems” being tackled by these research centers, such as the one located at the HBCU Florida A&M University (FAMU), is the issue of communication with hypersonic aircraft, which is difficult due to the high speeds involved. The solution would allow hypersonic craft to operate entirely unmanned, giving the US a military edge over its principal competitors, designated in the article as Russia and China.

The establishment of the UARC at Howard will open the road for the university to receive a Carnegie R1 (very high research activity) designation, which in turn will open the floodgates for even more funding and grants. This fact was noted with glee by the university’s president, himself a millionaire who answers to a wealthy Board of Trustees made up of venture capitalists and Democratic Party operatives.

The research center at Howard will provide the infrastructure for a consortium of HBCUs that will collaborate and share academic resources among themselves in support of the research. Among these schools are Jackson State University, Tuskegee University and Tougaloo College. The founding of the center at Howard will therefore serve as a catalyst for the further integration of these institutions into the military-intelligence complex.

The unholy alliance between the Pentagon and the wealthy executives who run Howard University is a demonstration of the fundamentally reactionary character of identity politics.

When the race- and gender-obsessed middle classes speak of “diversity,” they are referring to the elevation of a narrow layer of grasping careerists to well-paid positions in academia, the state and the corporate world. There is no contradiction between these aspirations and the war aims of American imperialism. Indeed, they are in lockstep: the wealth of these affluent layers is tied to Wall Street by a million threads.

On the other hand, this “diversity” has nothing to do with the interests of the great mass of the working class of all races, from whom the gargantuan costs of the ever-expanding military apparatus and its imperialist wars are extracted in the form of increased austerity and exploitation.

This basic contradiction has found its expression at Howard, which has a wealthy, mostly black administration, while it hosts mostly black students from working class backgrounds, who face deplorable living conditions on campus. Similarly, the mostly black faculty face low pay and high exploitation. The administration claims it has no money to pay for better dorms or higher wages, even as it receives millions of dollars to fund the latest weapons research.

The integration of Howard and other HBCUs into the military apparatus of US imperialism is part of the broader militarization of America’s colleges and universities, which are being transformed into a pipeline for trained technicians and specialists who can be put to use in the burgeoning military-intelligence field. Any aspect of academics that cannot be put to this use is deemed worthless. Hence the attempt by the Howard administration to shut down the university’s classical studies department in 2021, which was called off only after it provoked outrage among students and faculty.

Patient deaths on the rise due to health care understaffing

Kevin Reed

A poll of working registered nurses (RNs) in Michigan shows that understaffing is the number one issue they face, making hospitals unsafe and leading to an increase in patient deaths.

The poll was conducted by Emma White Research, an Ann Arbor-based public policy research agency, and explored registered nurses’ perceptions of their working conditions, the staffing shortage and the reasons nurses are leaving the profession. Several of the questions were the same as those asked in a similar poll in 2016. They show the changes in nurses’ views over the past seven years.

Emma White Research conducted the poll from January 2 through January 8 by holding 400 interviews via live mobile and landline phone calls and text-to-web communications among registered nurses living or working in Michigan. The nurses were selected from a list of RNs provided by the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA).

The poll was conducted on behalf of the Michigan Nurses Association (MNA), a union representing 13,000 nurses in Michigan. The MNA has been conducting a campaign for the passage of a “Safe Patient Care Act” by the Michigan legislature, that would set mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios.

The results of the poll, which were published on January 23, expose the dire conditions that nurses are working under across Michigan. The results are, in fact, a microcosm of the situation facing nurses throughout the US and around the globe.

The following is a summary of the key findings:

• More than seven in ten RNs say they are assigned an unsafe patient load in half or more of their shifts. Of the nurses polled, 71 percent said they agreed with the statement, “Nurses are often assigned too many patients at once.”
• More than nine in ten RNs say requiring nurses to care for too many patients at once is affecting the quality of patient care. Ninety-four percent of nurses responded that they strongly agree or somewhat agree with the statement, “Some people say that the quality of patient care in Michigan hospitals is suffering because hospitals are requiring registered nurses to care for too many patients at once.”
• Nurses reported increases in awareness in every category of negative patient outcomes as compared to 2016. The eight negative outcomes listed range from nurses lacking time to properly comfort patients and families (92 percent) to medication errors such as wrong medication, wrong dosage or missed medication (75 percent) and longer hospital stays (64 percent). Most categories increased by 10 percentage points or more from the 2016 poll results.
• A dramatic measure of the deteriorating conditions in hospitals was the number of nurses who say they know of a patient death due to nurses being assigned too many patients. This category nearly doubled from 22 percent in 2016 to 42 percent this year.
• Of those who plan to leave nursing within the next two years, 75 percent said staffing and nurse-to-patient ratios are the biggest problem on their jobs, and 85 percent say that they are assigned too many patients at once. Significantly, of these nurses planning to leave their jobs in the next two years, 58 percent said they know of a patient who died due to insufficient staffing.
• The vast majority of RNs, 79 percent, blame working conditions for the staffing crisis, rather than a shortage of qualified nurses.

The results of the poll paint a devastating picture of conditions in hospitals and health care systems in the tenth most populous state in the US. Since 2016, the working conditions for nurses in Michigan have deteriorated significantly, especially during the three years of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the staffing crisis in the health care industry preceded the pandemic and was markedly exacerbated by it. The disconnect between the needs of the public for increased health care services, the need of hospital employees for improved staffing resources, incomes and working conditions, and the drive by the health care industry for increasing profits and financial performance has been manifest for decades.

While the health care industry in Michigan received a collective $3 billion in emergency government funding during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has shown no inclination to reverse the decline in the number of nurses working in direct care. According to records maintained by the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA), there are 154,758 registered nurses with active licenses in Michigan, but the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows just 102,480 are working as RNs in the state.

Any serious examination of the source of the staffing crisis points to the role of the for-profit health care industry, run by powerful capitalist and financial interests, that subordinate all aspects of patient care to the drive for profit.

The remaining segments of the poll were devoted to asking nurses if they support the “Safe Patient Care Act” which would “establish a limit on the number of patients a nurse is assigned at one time.” Nurses were also asked if the measure passes “do you think the quality of care for the patients you see will improve.”

The poll also asked about a law in Michigan that would “eliminate mandatory overtime for nurses.” On these questions, of course, the nurses polled were overwhelmingly in favor by a margin of 75 percent or more.

However, the campaign by the MNA for the passage of the “Safe Patient Care Act” seeks to conceal the root cause of the staffing crisis, and divert nurses away from a mass struggle against the corporate and political institutions responsible for the crisis.

As the MNA has shown repeatedly, such as when 6,000 nurses were blocked from taking strike action, and their contract fight at Michigan Medicine was betrayed last spring and summer, the union has no intention of organizing any fight to mobilize the strength of nurses and other health care workers against the capitalist interests responsible for the understaffing crisis.

Public anger grows as death toll in Turkey-Syria earthquake rises

Ulaş Ateşçi

The catastrophe is worsening after Monday’s 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes in Kahramanmaraş, on Turkey’s southern border with Syria, destroyed thousands of buildings in both countries.

Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced last night that the death toll from the earthquakes, which hit 10 cities in Turkey, has reached 5,434, with nearly 32,000 injured. Syria has also been hit hard: 1,600 people died, and nearly 4,000 people have been injured.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced yesterday that his government has decided to declare a state of emergency for three months in 10 cities hit by the earthquake. The bill is to be voted in parliament today.

Responding to widespread protests to his government’s inaction in the face of the earthquake disaster with an attempt at intimidation, Erdoğan claimed there is “national unity,” stating: “While the state and the nation are working hand in hand to overcome this historic disaster, we are closely monitoring those who intend to pit our people against each other with fake news and distortions.”

Erdoğan added: “When the time comes, we will bring them to account. Our prosecutors identify those who try to create social chaos with such inhumane methods and take the necessary actions swiftly.”

In reality, the social chaos in the region is the result of the government’s turning a blind eye to the widely foreseen earthquake disaster and its indifference to the consequences. Yesterday, while Agriculture and Forestry Minister Vahit Kirişçi was met with protests in Adana, masses of earthquake victims protested in the governor’s office in Adıyaman, chanting: “Adıyaman is unprotected.” Both cities were devastated by the earthquakes.

The government is trying to criminalize posts by journalists or social media users that reveal the almost complete lack of state response in the disaster area and the fact that millions of people, including those trapped under the rubble, are abandoned to their fate.

Yesterday, an anti-democratic investigation was opened against Tele1 TV journalists Enver Aysever and Merdan Yanardağ on charges of “public incitement to hatred and hostility” for their statements on the earthquake disaster.

Meanwhile, the Journalists’ Union in Turkey issued a statement last night, saying: “With the announcement of the state of emergency, journalists are being removed from the rubble in some regions. Investigations are being opened against TV commentators and social media users. They want to censor those who talk about negligence and places where help is not coming.”

Millions of people across the country and internationally have mobilized to collect and deliver aid to the earthquake victims. Many health care workers and miners trained in search and rescue have also volunteered to go to the region. However, coal miners in Zonguldak were only able to reach the affected region after 36 hours because the authorities did not arrange a plane.

Other aid personnel also had great difficulty in reaching the necessary places. Many volunteers complained on social media about the lack of coordination and organization by the state. Every moment lost worked against those under the rubble.

Around 23 million people in Turkey and Syria are thought to have been directly affected by the earthquake. The harsh winter conditions in both countries, with snow and rain, necessitated the rapid rescue of tens of thousands of people trapped under the rubble. However, neither in Turkey nor in Syria was this requirement met.

In Syria, divided by the 12-year war for regime change waged by NATO powers, including Turkey, and with many buildings damaged before the earthquake, the Damascus government’s ability to help earthquake victims continues to be undermined by crippling imperialist sanctions. There is no international aid or comprehensive search and rescue efforts in the affected towns in northern Syria.

In Turkey, the damage to highways and airports built on fault lines undermined the disaster response, but the Erdoğan government’s incapable response to the earthquake exposes its political bankruptcy. This is not a failure of this or that official but a reflection of the indifference of the financial oligarchy to the suffering and vital needs of the broad masses.

Remarkably, 36 hours after the earthquake, there were still places where search and rescue teams have not reached. In many places, urgent needs such as shelter, electricity, heating and water cannot be met. While earthquake survivors say there are many bodies under and above the rubble, these terrible conditions also point to the danger of disease outbreaks.

“With the addition of the search and rescue teams that have reached Hatay as of tonight, we will be doubling the number of teams for tomorrow,” Health Minister Koca said last night. However, these teams should have reached the affected in the very first hours.

According to Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) official Orhan Tatar, around 24,000 personnel of many different organizations are on duty in the earthquake zone. Since around 6,000 buildings in Turkey have completely collapsed, this means that for every building that collapsed, there are only four personnel on duty. This obvious inadequacy has led to the deaths of those trapped under the rubble, as search and rescue operations in many areas were either non-existent or started too late.

Speaking to BBC Türkçe yesterday morning, Arzu Dedeoğlu, a resident of Hatay’s Iskenderun district, said: “We waited until the evening but no one came. We brought a crane by our own means, but they didn’t want to and they intervened to stop. There are two children [under the rubble], my sister’s children, Ayşegül and İlayda. The children have passed away!”

Dedeoğlu cried out against the late arrival of aid, adding: “Why didn’t those who came now come before noon? We brought a generator by our own means, we tried, but we ran away when the apartment shook with the aftershocks.”

According to the same report, earthquake victims waited all day for help, but the cries from those trapped in the rubble stopped yesterday morning. “If you had come yesterday, we would have saved them,” another woman said.

In the same place, a citizen named Ali Önder expressed his anger at the state and the political establishment, stating: “I have eight people under the rubble. No one has come, and there is still no AFAD. Don’t let those who leave us alone like this come to ask for our votes, don’t! There is no one on behalf of the state, everyone pulled out their relatives by their own means. We dug with our hands!”

However, the government has deployed more police and gendarmes to the region than search and rescue workers specialized in earthquakes. According to Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, 18,000 gendarmes and about 10,000 police officers have been dispatched to the region, and 10,000 more will be sent.

Speaking to Cumhuriyet TV in Elbistan district of Kahramanmaraş yesterday, an earthquake victim said: “No one has arrived. Everyone is cold, and tents have not been set up. All living beings died under the debris. Not a single [official] person came. Elbistan was left to die.”

These massive earthquakes have long been expected, and scientists have explained what needed to be done to prevent such devastating consequences.

Hüseyin Alan, chairman of the Chamber of Geological Engineers, exposed the guilt of the government and the political establishment as follows: “There are many reports and academic articles on the fact that these faults will produce earthquakes and could break at any moment. Taking these into account, we have often tried to draw attention to this region. In fact, our Chamber has conducted studies for 24 cities and more than 500 neighborhoods and settlements on this fault. We have repeatedly said and written that these settlements should be prepared for earthquakes.”

He added: “We prepared and presented reports on this issue. We have presented this report to the President, to the relevant ministries. We have repeatedly pointed out that measures need to be taken. We didn’t get a single response. ... Not from the President, not from an MP ... No one turned to us. ... Not even a single improvement was made. All our warnings went unanswered. ... So the expected happened. It was blindingly obvious. We knew this was going to happen.”

In an interview with Habertürk TV channel yesterday, respected geologist Prof. Dr. Naci Görür emphasized that their warnings were not heeded. He explained: “It is clear what we will do. We have to build earthquake-resistant cities. The first priority of future governments should not be roads and airports. Of course they should also be built. But the first priority is to build earthquake-resilient cities that will ensure the safety of the people.”

Epidemics of Race-Based Violence and Police Brutality

Wim Laven

Have you ever spoken with a parent of black boys about the struggle and fear of keeping them safe? There are several familiar concerns, but a number that are unique. “He is 12 now and I think I need to tell him he is not allowed to wear hoodies anymore,” is such an example.

A great deal of research shows that white people and black people have different experiences with law enforcement. A friend explained: “when you get pulled over for speeding on your way to work you might call in and let them know you’ll be late. I call my wife and tell her that I love her.”

Some people think it hyperbolic, but that makes me uncomfortable. The evidence is irrefutable, racial bias in police violence is undeniable, even the prestigious international medical publication The Lancet reports: “Mounting evidence shows that deaths at the hands of the police disproportionately impact people of certain races and ethnicities, pointing to systemic racism in policing;” Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than White men.

Focusing on numbers, while irrefutable at this point, has not created positive change. It often inspires victim-blaming, as in when the videos show police shooting an unarmed Black man and the response from some is, “but what happened before the recording started?” as though the Black person must have done something to deserve dying and the film is incomplete.

More people have been tracking the use of “copaganda” (coverage of police biased to show law enforcement in a positive light) and there is clear evidence—for better and worse—that people (on the whole) believe law enforcement is doing better job than they actually are.

Writing for The Nation, civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger reports: crime reporting is not based on “criminological facts,” reportage is marred by “alarmist headlines,” and “dehumanizing language,” with “overly simplistic stories” that “provoke fear in the public.”

Is it any wonder that dominant-culture people are not getting a good picture of the epidemic minority communities are experiencing?

Police departments have openly admitted, or some of their officers have declared, to using racial profiling as a “strategy” and continue to employ prejudicial technologies and practices. Even in liberal blue states like California, despite ongoing efforts demanded by the public and promised by politicians, the data shows the nationwide phenomena of racial profiling is resistant to improvement. From the San Francisco Chronicle just months ago:

Black people are far more likely to be stopped by police than white people, and that the disparity widened in 11 of the state’s 15 biggest law enforcement agencies from 2019 to 2020.

The problems of both profiling and subsequent violence by police are regularly referred to by police chiefs as “a few bad apples.” But it’s possible the failure to improve is related to the nature of some applicants to become police. The FBI has warned of the increasing threat of white nationalist and supremacist groups infiltrating law enforcement.

Thus the “bad apple” conversation ignores the systematic and structural realities. Policy and procedure have caused, created, and permitted the violence to occur.

For decades we have had bad apples growing on bad trees in polluted orchards. I’m tired of so much focus being on the apples at all. If we started addressing the copious amounts of cultural, institutional, and structural racism the prejudice and hate would not have a home in law enforcement.

We need to stop promoting warrior cops and violent retributive justice. We need to demilitarize our police departments and return to ideas of service. But most importantly we need to finally decide enough is enough; innocent people have been terrorized and killed by police for too long. We cannot continue to let them literally and acutely painfully get away with murder.