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The U.N. Security Council approved such a force about five months ago, to be led by an undermanned, undertrained and underequipped force of 1,000 Kenyan police, supplemented by smaller forces from smaller countries. But even that doomed-to-fail contingent hasn’t materialized, blocked by a Kenyan court and left in limbo by the indifference of much of the international community. Kenya now says the deployment is on hold following Henry’s announcement that he would resign.
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In fact, it is the lethal combination of indifference, compounded by naiveté, that set the stage for Haiti’s collapse, which was entirely predictable and predicted. The outside powers that exercise influence in Haiti, led by the United States, elevated Henry, wanting little more than someone to maintain calm after the country’s President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021.
At the same time, many of Haiti’s so-called friends in the United States and Europe, including activists and do-gooder nongovernmental organizations, railed against the prospect of international intervention, insisting that Haitians on their own could prevent a slide into anarchy.
That stance was understandable given the toxic legacy of past foreign missions, including the most recent one, a 13-year U.N. stabilization force that ended in 2017 amid evidence that troops had sexually exploited Haitian girls and women, and caused one of the world’s most deadly recent outbreaks of cholera. Yet the opposition to outside intervention overlooked the fact that the U.N. mission also enabled a period of relative stability in a nation where that has been the scarcest commodity.
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The combined effect of the international community’s apathy and reluctance to intercede was to leave Haiti in a state of suspended animation. Since Moïse’s death, the country has had no legitimate government and no prospect of new elections, not to mention an anemic police force outgunned by gangs affiliated with a powerful business elite. The last time Haitians went to the polls was eight years ago, and the terms of every official elected then have expired.
The inevitable upshot is that Haiti’s florid disorder has slid into pandemonium. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes, as malnutrition and poverty have deepened in a society already beset by hunger and extreme want.
Prompted by the swelling crisis, and likely worried it could trigger flotillas of people bound for U.S. shores, diplomats from Washington and elsewhere have swung into belated action. Meeting this week in Jamaica, they cobbled together a plan under which a transitional seven-member presidential panel — one theoretically free of gang leaders or other criminals — would govern the country and appoint a new interim prime minister.
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It’s a nice idea; it also smacks of desperation. And it leaves unanswered the question of how such a jury-rigged body’s authority would be enforced in the face of the estimated 300 armed gangs that hold sway in Port-au-Prince and beyond.
The only real solution is the deployment of an international force with the muscle to keep the peace, restore some semblance of normalcy and, over time, create conditions under which elections can be organized. Failing that, and notwithstanding the historical baggage foreign intervention summons in Haitian memory, the sad but probable outlook for Haiti is for more of the same — and worse.
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The temptation in contemplating Haiti’s current blood-soaked, dystopian horror is to think it can’t get worse. It can and likely will unless outside powers intervene, and quickly.
Amid the meltdown of a failed state, with a gang-controlled capital and deepening humanitarian disaster, Haitian warlords and foreign leaders alike have warned that the hemisphere’s poorest country could soon descend into civil war.
Yet the very term “civil war” suggests something far more organized, symmetrical and susceptible to resolution than the mayhem that already besets the nation and might easily intensify.
Those warnings in the past two weeks were sounded as armed criminal gangs attacked police stations and jails, allowing thousands of inmates to escape; paralyzed the country’s major airport and roads; and prompted foreign embassies to evacuate their diplomats. One prominent gang leader now threatens to assault hotels in the capital, Port-au-Prince, where he says government ministers loyal to the ineffectual prime minister, Ariel Henry, are hiding. Bodies lie in the street, uncollected.
The widely reviled Henry, installed and largely supported on the say-so of the Biden administration, is waylaid in Puerto Rico, his return to Haiti having been blocked by gangs that threatened to kill him at the airport should he try to fly home. On Tuesday, he said he would resign once a transitional presidential “panel” is installed.
The conditions under which Haiti’s bedlam might deteriorate further are as varied as the powers of imagination. A likely precondition for a continued chaotic spiral is simply the status quo or anything resembling it — meaning a scenario in which the international community continues to dither and debate rather than promptly organize and deploy an armed stabilization force.
The U.N. Security Council approved such a force about five months ago, to be led by an undermanned, undertrained and underequipped force of 1,000 Kenyan police, supplemented by smaller forces from smaller countries. But even that doomed-to-fail contingent hasn’t materialized, blocked by a Kenyan court and left in limbo by the indifference of much of the international community. Kenya now says the deployment is on hold following Henry’s announcement that he would resign.
In fact, it is the lethal combination of indifference, compounded by naiveté, that set the stage for Haiti’s collapse, which was entirely predictable and predicted. The outside powers that exercise influence in Haiti, led by the United States, elevated Henry, wanting little more than someone to maintain calm after the country’s President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021.
At the same time, many of Haiti’s so-called friends in the United States and Europe, including activists and do-gooder nongovernmental organizations, railed against the prospect of international intervention, insisting that Haitians on their own could prevent a slide into anarchy.
That stance was understandable given the toxic legacy of past foreign missions, including the most recent one, a 13-year U.N. stabilization force that ended in 2017 amid evidence that troops had sexually exploited Haitian girls and women, and caused one of the world’s most deadly recent outbreaks of cholera. Yet the opposition to outside intervention overlooked the fact that the U.N. mission also enabled a period of relative stability in a nation where that has been the scarcest commodity.
The combined effect of the international community’s apathy and reluctance to intercede was to leave Haiti in a state of suspended animation. Since Moïse’s death, the country has had no legitimate government and no prospect of new elections, not to mention an anemic police force outgunned by gangs affiliated with a powerful business elite. The last time Haitians went to the polls was eight years ago, and the terms of every official elected then have expired.
The inevitable upshot is that Haiti’s florid disorder has slid into pandemonium. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes, as malnutrition and poverty have deepened in a society already beset by hunger and extreme want.
Prompted by the swelling crisis, and likely worried it could trigger flotillas of people bound for U.S. shores, diplomats from Washington and elsewhere have swung into belated action. Meeting this week in Jamaica, they cobbled together a plan under which a transitional seven-member presidential panel — one theoretically free of gang leaders or other criminals — would govern the country and appoint a new interim prime minister.
It’s a nice idea; it also smacks of desperation. And it leaves unanswered the question of how such a jury-rigged body’s authority would be enforced in the face of the estimated 300 armed gangs that hold sway in Port-au-Prince and beyond.
The only real solution is the deployment of an international force with the muscle to keep the peace, restore some semblance of normalcy and, over time, create conditions under which elections can be organized. Failing that, and notwithstanding the historical baggage foreign intervention summons in Haitian memory, the sad but probable outlook for Haiti is for more of the same — and worse.
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