HAITI, ANYONE?

THIS is the opening paragraph of a news story in today’s edition of the authoritative New York Times newspaper:

“Gangs have taken over entire neighbourhoods in Haiti’s capital, and killings have more than doubled in the past year, but for the organisers of the Port-au-Prince Jazz Festival, the show simply had to go on.”

Here is another paragraph:
“As 11.5 million Haitians struggle to feed their families and ride the bus or go to work because they fear becoming victims of gunmen or kidnappers, they are also pushing forward, struggling to reclaim a safe sense of routine…”

Haiti, NYT said, “has sunk deeper into turmoil” and, in the absence of an international peacekeeping force, “there is no Plan B.”

Further, “if there is any hope of preventing Haiti from complete state collapse, its government, police force, Parliament and other institutions must be rebuilt.”

An international consultant was quoted as saying: “If you ask people in Haiti what they need, it’s security.

“They don’t think about food or school.

“We don’t have food because of security.

“People don’t go to school because of security.”

The newspaper said: “Gangs have such a chokehold on Port-au-Prince that they sometimes kidnap busloads of passengers and demand ransom.”

The gangs have “grown emboldened in the face of the government’s inability to confront them… (leaving) Haitians to fend for themselves.”

The consultant said: “We just don’t see a future.”

Is this Trinidad and Tobago’s fate?