World View: Hurricane Sandy a New Disaster for Haiti

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Hurricane Sandy a new disaster for Haiti
• Hillary in Algeria to discuss military invasion of Mali
• Al-Assad bombs Damascus, to celebrate end of Syria’s ‘ceasefire’

Hurricane Sandy a new disaster for Haiti

The only good thing about this picture is that the floods are hiding the piles of garbage littering the streets

Hurricane Sandy has been disastrous for the eastern United States,destroying the New Jersey shore where I grew up, but not nearly asdisastrous as it’s been for Haiti. Haiti has still not come close torecovering from the January, 2010, earthquake that killed hundreds ofthousands of Haitians, and collapsed most buildings, leaving thousandsof people buried under the wreckage and hundreds of thousands withouthomes. (See “Haiti, seething with ethnic violence, may require US forces for a long time”)The United Nations humanitarian team from Nepal brought cholera withthem, and that’s spread across the country. There are still 270,000Haitians living in refugee camps, and Hurricane Sandy has just beenone more disaster piled on a stream of previous disasters, killing 54and leaving refugee camps flooded. But the worst may be yet to come:the floods are spreading cholera again, and there has been massivedestruction of crops, raising the specter of famine, and a repeat ofthe violent “food price” riots of 2008. Guardian (London) and Reuters

Hillary in Algeria to discuss military invasion of Mali

With terrorists linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)increasingly taking control of the northern two-thirds of the countryof Mali, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is visiting Algeriato discuss regional plans for military intervention. The plan is forthe nations of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas)to supply 3,300 troops to retrain Mali’s army and help retrain thenorth. These forces will depend heavily on help from Algeria formilitary intelligence and logistics. The French are playing a heavyrole in preparing the Ecowas force, and this is causing growing uneaseamong Algerians who presumably fear that their formal colonial power,whom they only got rid of in 1962, will refuse to leave after themilitary action has ended. For that reason, Hillary Clinton ispromising greater United States involvement in the military effort, toreduce the concerns of the Algerians. VOA

Al-Assad bombs Damascus, to celebrate end of Syria’s ‘ceasefire’

About 500 people were killed over the weekend, during the so-calledceasefire negotiated by U.N. envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi. Tocelebrate the end of the ceasefire, the regime of president Basharal-Assad bombed opposition-held territory in Damascus, and the rebelopposition claimed responsibility for the assassination of al-Assad’sair force general, Abdullah Mahmud al-Khalidi. BBC andDaily Star (Beirut)

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