Date: Fri, 21 Oct 94 17:13:50 PDT
From: RISKS Forum <risks@csl.sri.com>
Subject: RISKS DIGEST 16.48

RISKS-LIST: RISKS-FORUM Digest  Friday 21 October 1994  Volume 16 : Issue 48

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Date: Thu, 20 Oct 1994 18:15:37 -0700
From: Phil Agre <pagre@ucsd.edu>
Subject: Computer model of Haiti

In an article in The Nation, Allan Nairn asserts that the American military
force occupying Haiti is more concerned about the popular movement that
elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide than it is about the oligarchy that created 
the attaches.  I don't know whether this assertion is fair, but Risks readers
might be interested in one part of his evidence.  The full citation is:

  Allan Nairn, The eagle is landing, The Nation 259(10), 3 October 1994,
  pages 344-348.

Here's a quote:  

  ... the Pentagon's Atlantic Command (ACOM) has commissioned Booz, Allen,
  Hamilton, a corporate consulting firm, to devise a computer model of Haitian
  society.  A similar model was ordered for Iraq for Desert Storm.  The model
  tries to predict "the effects of social, political and economic actions on
  various sectors of society".  In an April 29 report Booz, Allen presented a
  "Power Relationship Matrix" which divides Haitian society into seven groups,
  including the "Lower Class Majority", and asks questions like "What would
  mobilize the masses to take action?"

  The crux of the Booz, Allen/ACOM planning theory is thus: "Whether political
  power is a direct function of popular support or based on the allegiance
  of key groups and coercion of the remainder of the populace, cohesion of
  support is a critical question in assessing political power".  They place
  greatest emphasis on the importance of "Organized Civil Society" -- popular
  and professional groups, unions and associations, development workers --
  seeking to identify the points at which mass cohesion will crack.  This,
  they say, is the key to any program for "control of the populace".

  Their priority is to build an "organized information bank" and to run a
  systematic, ongoing "assessment of the relative strengths of opposition
  organizations", as well as of leading "political personalities".  "The
  tracking of opposition organizations", they say, "should be limited to those
  which are known to have a basis of political action and some established
  capacity for taking political action".

  As the Washington Office on Haiti has documented in detailed reports, A.I.D.
  [the US Agency for International Development] is already exploring this
  divide-and-conquer strategy in Haiti, seeking to cultivate and fund, as on
  embassy memo put it, "responsible elements within the popular movement"
  along with "moderate Duvalierist factions".  (pages 347-348)

An exercise for the reader: if they implemented such a program for your home
town, what would it look like?

Phil Agre, UCSD

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End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 16.48 
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