Carl Ja­cobs

Out of evil, the old say­ing goes, cometh good. Whether or not the earth­quake which dev­as­tat­ed Haiti on Jan­u­ary 12 can be re­gard­ed as evil, Dou­ble Rooks ex­pects that the max­im nev­er­the­less would ap­ply and the coun­try of L'Ou­ver­ture would ex­pe­ri­ence a fresh be­gin­ning in­to a much brighter fu­ture. Re­cov­ery and re­con­struc­tion will take a long time but, with the help­ful re­sponse of so many coun­tries and hu­man­i­tar­i­an agen­cies, the re­silient peo­ple of Haiti should be able to turn this tragedy in­to an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a bet­ter life for them­selves.

What role can the sport­ing world play in this ur­gent re­build­ing process? Daaim Shabazz, cre­ator and op­er­a­tor of the Chess Drum web­site, urges the idea: "Thus far, sev­er­al sports or­gan­i­sa­tions and Olympic com­mit­tees have pledged moral sup­port. Fi­fa pres­i­dent Joseph Blat­ter al­so re­leased a state­ment of moral sup­port. "It is my hope that or­gan­is­ers, play­ers and of­fi­cials from around the world will show some sol­i­dar­i­ty in sup­port­ing re­lief ef­forts for a dev­as­tat­ed na­tion. "This is not a po­lit­i­cal con­flict, re­li­gious, eth­nic or class war, but a bat­tle be­tween the earth's nat­ur­al forces. Who knows where the next bat­tle will be fought?"

Shabazz, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor at Flori­da Uni­ver­si­ty, notes that the Hait­ian na­tion­al an­them speaks of Haitians be­ing urged on by their an­ces­tors to fight a valiant bat­tle with­out the fear of death. It urges, "Our past cries out to us: Have a dis­ci­plined soul!" The ul­ti­mate bat­tle that re­mains for Haitians may be sur­vival, he says, "but we hope their strong re­solve will re­sult in a stronger na­tion. The chess com­mu­ni­ty will be wait­ing for their re­turn!" In the con­text of Haiti's mon­u­men­tal agony, of course, the game of chess may be seen as a mi­nor con­cern, but Shabazz of­fers poignant in­sights in­to the re­cent progress of the sport, the per­son­al­i­ties be­hind its op­ti­mistic de­vel­op­ment and the griev­ous set­back it has suf­fered from the dis­ori­ent­ing rav­ages of the earth­quake. Hope­ful­ly, his ac­count will move the con­science of the sport­ing world.

Chess was one of the so­cial out­lets be­ing reignit­ed as part of the coun­try's vi­brant cul­ture. When the Hait­ian team con­test­ed the Turin Olympiad in 2006, the na­tion broke a ten-year hia­tus, hav­ing played pre­vi­ous­ly in 1988, 1990, 1994 and 1996. "They were full of spir­it and am­bi­tion," says Shabazz, "and it was ap­par­ent that they were en­thu­si­as­tic about re­turn­ing to the in­ter­na­tion­al stage." Led by na­tion­al cham­pi­on Pier­sont Le­brun and top scor­er Jozy Bazile, the Haitians fin­ished with a score of three wins, four draws and six loss­es. "While this was a mod­est show­ing," notes Shabazz, "it pro­vid­ed them with the mo­men­tum for re­build­ing their con­fi­dence and to make progress as an ac­tive fed­er­a­tion."

Af­ter two years of steady de­vel­op­ment, the Hait­ian Chess Fed­er­a­tion plant­ed a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone by launch­ing L'Acad­e­mie d'Echecs, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion de­signed to pro­mote chess in schools. "From the acad­e­my's web­site, they ap­peared to be very ac­tive and the pro­grammes they or­gan­ised seemed to be gain­ing sup­port," Shabazz ob­serves. The Acad­e­my, dri­ven by its en­er­getic pres­i­dent Sabine Bon­net, was able to se­cure spon­sor­ship and be­gan to stage sev­er­al tour­na­ments, par­tic­i­pat­ing al­so in ac­tiv­i­ties in neigh­bour­ing Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. In 2008, as fate would have it, the Fed­er­a­tion's plans for send­ing a team to the Olympiad in Dres­den were blown away by a se­ries of hur­ri­canes which rav­aged the is­land and killed 800 peo­ple.

Un­de­terred by that mis­for­tune, the Hait­ian chess com­mu­ni­ty pressed on and in De­cem­ber 2009 the coun­try crowned Mon­doly Sanon its na­tion­al cham­pi­on af­ter his un­beat­en per­for­mance of 7.5/9 among the ten fi­nal­ists. Ac­cord­ing to Shabazz, Sanon "was poised to be the top board for Haiti in the 2010 Olympiad in Siberia." Just weeks af­ter the cham­pi­onship, the earth­quake wrecked large sec­tions of the coun­try in­clud­ing its cap­i­tal Port au Prince, leav­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 150,000 dead and 600,000 home­less. Hav­ing to en­dure the trau­ma of such a cat­a­stro­phe, the idea of go­ing to the Olympiad in Rus­sia next Sep­tem­ber would sure­ly be un­think­able, lost as it was in the Hait­ian ru­ins.

The need to teach chess to Haiti's young peo­ple had be­come a pas­sion for the Acad­e­my's pres­i­dent, a not­ed mem­ber of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, who lost vir­tu­al­ly every­thing in the earth­quake. For­tu­nate­ly, her hus­band and chil­dren es­caped se­ri­ous in­jury but the Bon­net fam­i­ly, as with thou­sands of oth­ers, is now faced with the tremen­dous chal­lenge of re­con­struct­ing a nor­mal life. How­ev­er, as hope springs eter­nal, we have no doubt that Haiti will arise from the rub­ble, re­turn­ing even­tu­al­ly to a full so­cial life in which the sport of chess can re­sume to play its own con­struc­tive part.