Securitizing aid relief - What is the injustice being perpetrated?

I'm very nervous about Canada's deployment of 1000 troops. It really bothers me that everyone here has automatically taken up the 'security' line when it comes to disaster response. We have been trained to assume that aid work requires 'securitization', particularly from the way in which Afghanistan and Iraq have been portrayed in the media. In reality, in both cases where there has been heavy-handed securitization the safety of the aid workers has become more dependent upon guns and the capacity to carry out the work at hand diminishes.

Now in Haiti, the line is we have to prevent riots before the aid can be effectively delivered but the problem is that the riots emerge because the aid is not reaching people for many reasons, but certainly including this security mentality.

With aid being turned away at the airport by the US so that US military planes can land with more troops I have to wonder about this process. Mexico had one of its aid planes turned away, CARICOM's disaster task-force was turned away. Who else is going to be turned away? Probably targets that the US does not want in Haiti - including Cubans and Venezuelans.

All of this is justified because the US military is a logistics machine, it has the personal and resources, and above all else because we believe that the poor and destitute will automatically turn to stark raving lunatics (without cause nor reason) or that they are ultimately under the control of corrupt gangs. Therefore the military is needed to keep 'security' and stop corruption. But who's military and under who's orders?

But one also has to really ask, are they really necessary? Are persons with guns the solution to the problem, or they a likely cause of their own problem? Yes there needs to be an establishment of control and organization to reach through the chaos, yes this will probably require some 'protection' and demonstration of legitimate force, but at the number of 11 000+ heavily-armed troops from US and Canada alone? A people after a disaster are in a state of shock, they are not organizing a threat to stability, only as they emerge out of their state of shock and begin to see injustice will they become angry. What might be the injustice that they see? Stockpiles of aid perhaps? Rich people having access to private jets to flee (slowing down the incoming aid)? The lack of presence of aid workers in some parts, and an over abundance in others? And all of this now being guarded by guns attached to flags of countries that have a long history of taking out popular leaders and replacing them with governments for the rich and foreign. Or maybe they will begin to connect their current crisis, with the events that dictated their poverty before the crisis and start to question if all the suffering and misery is not just an act of god, but one of man too.

I wonder how many armed guards Cuban doctors need or thought to bring with them? Somewhere close to zero I imagine, and I wonder why over 400 medical staff that the Cubans have working in Haiti act in the moment, without a thought to 'security' as we in the North have grown accustomed to think is necessary. Is it because they do actually feel threatened, are not scared of the 'gangs' or the raving mobs and riots? I wonder if that is also true for the doctors with MSF? I suspect it is but I don't know anymore as so many European and North American NGOs have been trained to think, or have always thought, like a colonizer.

We can remember back to Katrina, the looting did not start immediately, but when it did there was a legitimacy to start shooting and killing the 'thieves'. People coming out of shock if dealt with compassionately and to the best of ones ability are not going to turn into a raving mass and riot - do you attack the person who pulled others from the rubble, the doctor who worked to stop the bleeding, or those who do their best to ensure the food and water reaches everyone, not discriminating against one group over another? It is only when they emerge from that shock and see injustice they become angry and so-called security and stability is threated. If we are sending so many troops, preparing ourselves for insecurity and instability, I think everyone has to ask - what is the injustice being perpetrated?