Six years ago, Brazilian singer Caetano Velosa penned of the most haunting songs about Haiti ever written, “And no matter if the eyes of the world may be for a moment turned off,” he pleaded, “Think of Haiti, pray for Haiti. Haiti is not here.”

And it won’t be here anytime soon.

Over $54 million in loans promised to the Haitian government by a subsidiary of the Treasury Department in 1998 have been suspended, as revealed in documents released yesterday by four independent human rights organizations.

Critics have called the lack of oversight by the Machiavellian American government in the incident, “one of the most egregious examples of malfeasance by the United States in recent years.”

With a GDP decline of -2% a year, 7% (300,000) of its children considered enslaved by the United Nations, 40% of the population devoid of access to elementary health care, 76% of births delivered by non-qualified personnel and an illiteracy rate of 45%, Haiti is indisputably the poorest country on Earth.

The loans were approved by the Inter-American Development Bank in 1998, originally intended for to improve the country’s sanitation system in the Haitian towns of Cayes and Port-de-Paix. Only 30 percent of Haiti in direct access to drinking water, which has lead to a scourge of dysentery and intestinal parasites.

Yet the IDB, over which the U.S. Treasury holds considerable influence, have failed to initiate projects involving water improvement, which the report said is, “largely the result of aggressive attempts by the U.S. government to block the disbursement of these loans.”

According to the Corruption Perceptions Index, an institute commissioned by the University of Passau in Germany, Haiti is considered by international scholars as the most politically corrupt nation in the world. Certainly, Haiti’s political turmoil and financial difficulties contributed to the delays, as the report consistently reinforces.

With over 50 years of military dictatorship, the current puppet government is a subordinate of the United States. Jean-Aristide was Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, taking office in 1990 amid great popular support. Yet having weathered a bloody military coup and enduring economic crises, he was booted out in February 2004 when opposition to his rule grew increasingly vicious.

Now in exile in South Africa, Mr. Aristide has fostered promises to return to Haiti and points fingers at the United States as the culprit to his exile. Washington denies this.

The loan report was prepared by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law; a Haiti-based health care provider called Partners in Health; the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights; and Zanmi Lasante, a Haitian advocacy group.

The groups filed a lawsuit to gain access to internal government correspondence explaining why the United States sought to avert the approved loans from reaching Haiti in the years after their approval. The Inter-American Development Bank’s charter says that the bank should not interfere in the political affairs of member countries.

But the delays in disbursing the loans were linked by U.S. officials to their concerns about the administration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose first presidency was overthrown by a military coup in 1991 and whose return to power in 2001 was cut short three years later with the encouragement of the Bush administration.

The current president, René Garcia Préval, took office in May 2006, and almost immediately signed an oil deal with Venezuela, subsequently traveling to the United States and meeting with its politicians.

Whatever the political circumstances, armed gangs roam Haiti as free as cockroaches. Most of these gangs are composed of former soldiers from the Haitian army, which was disbanded 10 years ago. Residents of poor neighborhoods and members of Lavalas, President Aristide’s political party, are murdered without legal consequences. Members of Haiti’s wealthy elite, are suspected of financing the former soldiers and paying gangs to kill Lavalas supporters. In some neighborhoods, Lavalas supporters have taken up arms and begun resist the oppression.

The interim government has been unable to enforce the rule of law, disarm the gangs, or restore the government’s authority in the cities controlled by former soldiers. When Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue set a deadline of September 14, 2004 for all groups holding illegal weapons to disarm, the deadline came and went, but stagnancy assumed the role of change.

Several members of President Aristide’s government and prominent supporters of Lavalas have been detained illegally, including former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, and Haitian singer Anne Auguste. As of February 18, there were over 700 political prisoners in Haiti’s jails. Most of these prisoners have been held illegally for months without formal charges.

Back in February, Colin Powell made an abnormally frank statement about the ordeal, saying the United States would resist $200 million in loans from the Inter-American Development Bank until the Haitian government and its opposition found a method to resolve disputes from their interim elections held in 2000.

”We are terribly concerned about the political unrest that continues to haunt Haiti,” Powell said. ”We are concerned about some of the actions of the government, and we do not believe enough has been done yet to move the political process forward.”

”We believe we have to hold the Haitian government to fairly high standards of performance before we can simply allow funds to flow into the country,” he added.

Whatever the economic and governmental restrictions, basic sanitation supersedes political racket.

It is excessive, unreasonable and the greatest example of political realpolitik to deny the poorest nation in the world funds that can be funneled with government oversight. The United States holds more than enough power to guarantee a country a measly water project if need be. But they clearly choose to need not.

Congressman Eliot Engel once said, “We all would like to see a brighter future for Haiti. Human rights, freedom, and the rule of law must be established in the poorest nation in our hemisphere.”

What this rule is will be determined by the actions of the U.S. government in the approaching months.

Let’s close with Veloso. “From thieves and other mulattos almost white, or treaties just as black, when you hear the silence of smiling in the face of slaughter…

Think of Haiti…”

Hearing that, Henry Kissinger just popped some Celexa, and is turning in his grave.