(task) A Haitian Warlord Meets His Match: Hurricane Matthew - The New York Times

Haiti RS

4 cover

hurricane, food security, malnutrition, crime, violence, humanitarian aid

> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/world/americas/haiti-guy-philippe-hurricane-matthew.html <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/world/americas/haiti-guy-philippe-hurricane-matthew.html>
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> A Haitian Warlord Meets His Match: Hurricane Matthew
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> PESTEL, Haiti — Guy Philippe is among the most feared men in Haiti <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/haiti/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>, a nation with a rich history of men worthy of fear.
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> The United States Drug Enforcement Administration wants him for narcotics trafficking; the Haitian government for killing police officers. He led an armed rebellion that ousted a president and has survived, by his count, seven attempts on his life. From his redoubt on the rocky shoreline of southeast Haiti, he has evaded capture for nearly a decade.
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> Now, Hurricane Matthew has done what neither government nor armed forces have managed to accomplish: bring the outlaw commander to his knees.
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> “I don’t like to beg, but this time I have to,” Mr. Philippe said, touring the devastation wrought on his hometown, Pestel, an area of some 80,000 people ensconced in a natural fortress of rugged mountains. “It’s the first time in my life I feel I can do nothing for my people. They are starving.”
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> Villagers walk for hours to the nearest town in search of basic staples. Prices have risen sharply, emptying the pockets of those who can least afford it, forcing some into banditry to tend to their needs.
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> “How can we live like this?” said Mr. Philippe, who looks at least a decade younger than his 48 years. “We cannot have a country like this, where 80 percent of the people are living in poverty.”
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> Continue reading the main story
> While aid has already reached many areas in southern Haiti, especially the big cities, the remote corners have found little support from the convoys of trucks laden with food and medicine that groan up and down the highway.
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> This, experts say, is how it often goes at first with recovery efforts.
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> But Mr. Philippe has another theory for why his town has been excluded from government and international aid, despite it being the second-largest population center in the Grand Anse department. “They are punishing the people because of me,” he said in perfect English, one of four languages he speaks.
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> But hunger, he said, should be beyond politics. If it would make a difference, if it would make the aid groups and others feel safer, he said, he would leave the area. “If it will help, I will go to jail so that people can eat here,” he said. “Or I will leave for however long it takes.”
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> “Just bring food here,” he said.