Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned this week after days of speculation and pressure both at home and abroad as gangs took control of the island nation.
“The police are outgunned, they’re outmanned. Their operations usually end in failure because the gangs have infiltrated the police force and so they are sharing intelligence with the gang members, and the police just simply cannot match the current situation,” Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder of URL Media partner The Haitian Times, said in an interview with CNN last week. “…There’s nothing else you can do, there’s no structure in place.”
Henry, who was put in power following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, left the country in late February in an effort to finalize a controversial accord with Kenya to send a delegation of police to help quell gangs. But during the trip, an alliance of gangs ratcheted up violence in the nation’s capital city, launched brazen attacks on police and army installations, and barred Henry’s return, prompting the U.S. military to evacuate its personnel, The Haitian Times reported.
“[Henry’s] task was to create conditions for elections, and he has, so far, failed to do so,” Pierre-Piere said in that interview ahead of Henry’s resignation.
While Pierre-Pierre said the situation in Haiti has been gradually deteriorating since 2018, Temple University journalism professor Linn Washington Jr., in an interview this week with URL Media partner WURD Radio, said the foundation for the current crisis was actually laid 20 years ago.
“The problems that we now see started back in 2004 when the democratically elected president of Haiti, a guy named [Jean-Bertrand] Aristide, was overthrown in a coup d’etat,” he explained. “A coup d’etat that was instigated and carried out by the U.S. and France, and the country has been pretty much ungoverned since then.”
Washington said that the Aristide affair is central to understanding the current situation, because not only was he duly elected by the Haitian people, but he also wanted to rein in the corruption and control exerted by Haiti’s elite, as well as demanded that France return the money that Haiti was forced to pay after it expelled the former colonial power in the early 1800s.
“Haiti lost money that could have built up Haiti, and they didn’t finish paying that off until around 1950,” Washington said. “And Aristide said, ‘We want our money back.’”
And while much of today’s unrest can be linked to Aristide’s 2004 ouster, Pierre-Pierre said in an interview with Ian Masters this week that the country’s unofficial caste system, which Aristide fought to end, was the “root cause of a lot of the problems lately.”
The only way he sees a permanent fix to the country’s underlying issues is for the international community to come in with a holistic approach that includes a deep and sustained program of aid, reconstruction and institution building. However, with this year’s presidential election looming, he isn’t holding his breath for the U.S. to step in.
“[Biden’s] not willing to do that,” Pierre-Pierre said. “They’ve made it very clear that there will be no U.S. soldiers engaged in combat in any shape or form in Haiti, because right now this is a delicate issue for the Democrats and Biden in particular.”
As for what’s next for the country, The Haitian Times reported the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) had established a seven-member presidential council that it hopes will help stabilize the nation, but with deep skepticism from the people of Haiti and outright rejection from a number of the country’s political actors and gangs, it’s still too early to tell what will happen.
Pierre-Pierre called the current situation “delicate,” and that the people of Haiti have grown weary of failed foreign interventions.
“We left this cancer to fester, to grow for too long, and now what’s required is rather drastic measures.”
— Alicia Ramirez
Uplift. Respect. Love.
