Dithering while Haiti burns

BOSTON — The prime minister of one of the larger Caribbean countries travels to East Africa to secure a police deployment that would help address runaway gang violence back home, where a recent attack on the national penitentiary freed 4,000 prisoners. Failing in his endeavors, he flies back across the Atlantic, but is unable to land because the gangs have seized the airport.

After a neighbouring country denies him landing rights, he ends up in a third country, while the notoriously bloodthirsty chief of one of the leading gangs demands his resignation. Foreign powers voice their concerns, but the hapless prime minister is left twisting in the wind. Fears of widespread famine grow, as the breakdown of the state and deepening civil disorder hamper even the most basic activities. Eventually, the stranded prime minister agrees to resign once a transition council has been established; but gang leaders are now demanding a continued role in any new government.

Though this may sound like the unlikely plot of a cheap telenovela, it is exactly what is happening in Haiti, the world’s first black republic, the first independent country in Latin America and the site of the New World’s first successful slave rebellion (1791-1804). Since the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (and among the poorest in the world) has been mired in chaos, with the government unable to impose any kind of order. Elections have not been held for many years and the unelected prime minister, Ariel Henry, lacks legitimacy. But he had been able to count on the US government’s full backing, until now.

Haitian authorities did make a serious effort to establish a professional police force some years ago. But the Haitian National Police, decimated in battles with the gangs and demoralised by a lack of government support, has become a shadow of its former self. The armed forces, better known for their propensity for overthrowing governments than for their military prowess, have long since been dissolved. The Haitian government has been desperately seeking assistance from the international community for over a year now, to no avail.

The United Nations estimates that 4,000 people were killed in gang-related violence in 2023 alone, while another 3,000 were kidnapped. And yet no country in the Western Hemisphere has been willing to become directly involved. The United States, for its part, offered $200 million to cover the costs of a 1,000-strong Kenyan police force deployment, a proposal greenlighted by the UN Security Council. The idea that it should fall to an East African country to intervene in the Caribbean stretches credulity, but such is the absurdity of Haiti’s plight. In any case, the deployment has been derailed by domestic opposition, with the Kenyan high court ruling against the plan.

While Haiti burns, reporters and pundits have been holding forth on all the reasons why the international community should not intervene. Such arguments draw on memories of the US occupation of Haiti between 1915 and 1934, and on the more recent crisis of the 1990s, when the US stepped in to remove a military junta led by General Raoul Cédras. As Joe Biden, then a US senator, said at the time, “If Haiti, a God-awful thing to say, just quietly sunk into the Caribbean, or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interests.” Other commentators emphasise the perceived failures of MINUSTAH, the UN mission that was sent to stabilise Haiti from 2004 to 2017.

But much of this bad press is unjustified. From 2004 to 2010, when a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, MINUSTAH had stabilised the country and helped it to regain a sense of purpose following the somewhat traumatic transition to democracy after the fall of the Duvalier dynasty in 1986.

The US and Canada are not the only ones refusing to do what is needed in Haiti. The same goes for the Latin American countries that previously played a central role in MINUSTAH: Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. In fact, MINUSTAH was the first-ever UN operation in which Latin American troops comprised a majority. At a time when the region is becoming less relevant on the international stage, it has much to gain by stepping in to address the most urgent crisis in its own neighbourhood. Who better to rescue millions of innocent Haitians from another downward spiral into violence, dysfunction and famine?

If the moral case for helping the hemisphere’s poorest, most crisis-ridden country does not carry much weight in today’s international political climate, perhaps sheer self-interest will do the trick. Letting Haitians “stew in their own juice” (my paraphrase of the current situation) is not only cynical and morally indefensible; it is simply foolish. Failed states have a way of becoming centers of international organised crime, terrorism and drug trafficking.

Do we really want a Somalia in the Caribbean?

Jorge Heine, a research professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, is the editor of “Fixing Haiti: MINUSTAH and Beyond” (United Nations University Press, 2011). Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024. www.projectsyndicate.org