drug trafficking crackdown for Haiti

One of the few realities to penetrate the smokescreen of fear, lies and sensational journalism that veils the true Haiti from those in the more developed west is that this complex island nation has a major drug trafficking problem. On Monday, the combined powers of the Haitian National Police and the U.S.'s DEA and special forces began a roll-up. These efforts have been met with some success:

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and Haitian police raided the home of former army officer Guy Philippe near the southern town of Les Cayes... Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has long been a key transshipment point for South American cocaine headed for markets in the United States and Europe... While the U.S. and Haitian agents failed to capture Philippe, they did arrest a hotel owner, Lavaud Francois, on drug trafficking charges on Monday, said Osman Desmangles, a spokesman for police in the northern town of Gonaives.

Read the whole article here, (the truest and best article on the story, given my sources). One can only hope that this trend continues. The presence of drug traffickers corrupts so many levels of society, politics and security here -- not to mention the international implications.

Despite my intellectual comprehension of Haiti's dilapidated state of affairs, I still sometimes struggle with the notion that this place is my present reality. The neighborhood where the U.S. air-power swooped down to arrest Guy Philippe is only 10 minutes from my downtown office. Several times, Guy has sat a table over from me at the local watering hole and his wife (incidentally an American from Wisconsin) has exchanged pleasantries with me once or twice at a popular lunch place. Though I came to this country with multifaceted intentions, I had no idea I would find myself close, sometimes dangerously so, to history as it unfolds.