Get Our Newsletter

We’ll send our latest essays, archival selections, reading lists, and exclusive editorial content straight to your inbox.

Reading List August 21, 2021

Haiti and Afghanistan

How U.S. intervention devastated both.

Today marks one week since a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, with latest figures estimating that 2,000 people died and more than 10,000 were injured. This occurred just eleven and a half years after a quake of a similar magnitude traumatized the country, and five years after Hurricane Matthew left 1.4 million in need of humanitarian assistance due to crop loss, cholera, and flooding and infrastructure damage. 

But these catastrophes are not solely “natural,” as Junot Díaz reminds us, “they are always made possible by a series of often-invisible societal choices.” Whether it was Haiti’s early history as a French colony or the United States siphoning away 40 percent of the country’s income, the world has “done its part in demolishing Haiti” and implicated more than just those drowned or buried in rubble.

Indeed, even as Haiti tried to rebuild after 2010, the damage inflicted by the international community did not end. As Jake Johnston notes in his damning essay on how disaster relief became a disaster of its own, little of the $10 billion donated to Haiti was actually used in its reconstruction. “This is, sadly, another chapter in a long history of poverty perpetuated by outside powers,” he writes. “Bureaucracy, internecine quarrels, moneyed lobbying, waste and inefficiency—these are not monopolies of poor, ‘developing’ countries such as Haiti. They are the problems of the United States and its foreign aid complex.” 

We also want to acknowledge the ongoing situation in Afghanistan where, like Haiti, U.S. intervention has had catastrophic consequences. Readers can expect more on Afghanistan in the coming weeks as we start to roll out our special coverage of the War on Terror for the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. But for now we have highlighted some archival essays and forums that critique the pursuit of counterinsurgency—and predicted its ineffectual conclusion. “The counterinsurgency efforts appear a tactically superior, yet more humane and culturally sensitive alternative to earlier U.S. strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Nasser Hussain wrote for us in 2010. “But a deeper understanding requires a sense of history. And even a cursory review of that history reveals the colonial roots of contemporary counterinsurgency theory and practice.”

Junot Díaz
There are no natural disasters, only social ones.
Nasser Hussain
Can a colonialist strategy be reinvented?
Colin Dayan

It is now eight days since an earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince.

Jake Johnston

Four years after the devastating earthquake in January 2010, despite billions of dollars in aid, the housing crisis persists.

Ethan Bueno de Mesquita
Washington Post reporting exposed that U.S. operations in Afghanistan were horribly mismanaged, but even a well-run mission would have been doomed to fail.
Colin Dayan

Jonathan Katz has written the book about the Haitian earthquake. How does he contextualize the tragedy in the country's history?

Sidney W. Mintz

The inescapable truth is that “the world” never forgave Haiti for its revolution, because the slaves freed themselves.

Nir Rosen

Counterinsurgency doesn’t make sense. It asks soldiers, concerned primarily with survival, to be Wyatt Earp and Mother Theresa.

Colin Dayan

I went back to Haiti on August 15, a year and a half after the earthquake. The place where I had lived on and off since the summer of 1970 was unrecognizable. But the politics were familiar.

Sidney W. Mintz

In the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake, an anthropologist reflects on his fieldwork in Haiti fifty years earlier.

Steven Hahn
Several recent books offer a more complete, bottom-up picture of the role sailors and Black political actors played in making the Atlantic world.

Our weekly themed Reading Lists compile the best of Boston Review’s archive. Previews are delivered to members every Sunday. Become a member to receive them ahead of the crowd.

Boston Review is nonprofit and reader funded.

Contributions from readers enable us to provide a public space, free and open, for the discussion of ideas. Join this effort – become a supporting reader today.

Sign Up for Our
Newsletter

Vital reading on politics, literature, and more in your inbox. Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter, Monthly Roundup, and event notifications.

Donate Today!

Most Recent

Poetry

even the long-gone
once knew tenderness.

Kristin Emanuel

But awareness alone won't solve the problem. Here's what we should do.

David S. Jones

Amna Akbar talks with Bernard Harcourt about his new book—and how we can build on existing forms of cooperation to transform society.

Amna A. Akbar, Bernard E. Harcourt, Anthony Morgan

Vital Reading

Get our latest essays, archival selections, reading lists, and exclusive editorial content straight to your inbox. 



 


Supporter Membership

$100 / year

If you love Boston Review, support us with this biggest yearly membership.

Membership at this level includes:

  • Print subscription to Boston Review
    (4 issues/year)
  • Digital subscription to Boston Review
    (4 issues/year)
  • Access to our member portal and entire digital archive
  • Curated weekend Reading List
  • Weekly From the Archive newsletter

Digital Membership

$25 / year

Get even more out of Boston Reviewwith our digital membership.

Membership at this level includes:

  • Digital subscription to Boston Review
    (4 issues/year)
  • Access to our member portal and entire digital archive
  • Curated weekend Reading List
  • Weekly From the Archive newsletter

Print Membership

$50 / year

Turn the pages of Boston Review with our best value membership. 

Membership at this level includes:

  • Print subscription to Boston Review
    (4 issues/year)
  • Digital subscription to Boston Review
    (4 issues/year)
  • Access to our member portal and entire digital archive
  • Curated weekend Reading List
  • Weekly From the Archive newsletter