Will Haiti become our next Afghanistan?
Doubtful. I don't see the prospect for extensive armed conflict, particularly attacks against American forces. I just don't see a the practice of suicide bombings and IED planting becoming widespread. There is nothing like the Taliban or Al Qaeda there, at least not in even vaguely significant numbers.
I suppose by "the next Afghanistan" you don't mean a place of active war against fanatics, but just a place where there will be a significant US military presence for some time. Well we might indeed get that. OTOH the presence will be far smaller (thousands or perhaps temporarily very low tens of thousands, rather than high tends of thousands to very low hundreds of thousands), and far cheaper (at least for direct military costs) since the soldiers are very unlikely to see significant fighting.
Over time I expect the reconstruction effort to be less of a military one and more of a civilian one. The military is pretty good at moving large amounts of people and supplies to an area relatively quickly, and even though its not the primary mission the military is pretty good at relatively quick response to a massive disaster like this, but long term you will have more non-military government aid workers, and civilian contractors.
I think the death levels are lower than the tsunami awhile back, but they are of comparable magnitude, and in a much smaller area. In the earlier disaster you had maybe a quarter of a million dead or a bit more, from countries that had a combined population of well over a billion. Now you have maybe 100 to 200K or a bit more, in a country of 9 million people. Perhaps one out of 50 in the whole country.
For a comparable number in the US it would be like losing the entire population of Gaum or San Bernardino, or half of Wyoming. For a comparable percentage in the US it would be like losing Maryland or Tennessee, or the combination of both Los Angles and Houston. (City populations only not metro areas).
Beyond the relatively large percentage dead, you have all the homeless and otherwise disrupted, the infrastructure destroyed or damaged, and the fact that all of this happened in the one area of the country that while still very poor had the most wealth and resources and was the seat of government.
For now I think Haiti has ceased to function as a country. So if by "the next Afghanistan" you mean the next effort at nation building than yes it looks like that's going to be the case. |
