Haiti crisis boils over, forcing pivot in US policy

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s resignation on Tuesday marks a watershed moment for U.S. diplomacy, which for the last 32 months focused on keeping him in power against the warnings of experts and Haitian civil society.

Under Henry, who served as acting prime minister and acting president, armed gangs grew stronger as the government’s reach shrank, with the Caribbean nation becoming more and more reliant on U.S. support and the promise of an international police mission.

“It’s maddening for the Haitians and it’s maddening for me, and two weeks ago, if you recall, this situation was not at all urgent to the secretary of State and the U.S. government, despite the fact that it has been urgent for 32 months,” said Dan Foote, the Biden administration’s former special envoy to Haiti, who in 2021 resigned in protest against deportations back to the country.

Henry’s resignation came as criminal gangs heightened their attacks on key installations in Port-au-Prince, including the airport. Henry himself was unable even to return to Haiti after an attempt to secure a Kenyan police force to bolster Haiti’s National Police.

Henry, who was officially a transitional figure, was the longest tenured prime minister since the end of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986.

Though the State Department’s support was officially intended to help him rebuild a government structure in the wake of the 2021 assassination of former President Jovenel Moïse, Henry had shown few signs of relinquishing power until he was shut out of the country.

“If you look at the background and the context, Prime Minister Henry has always been a transitional figure,” State Department Matt Miller told reporters Tuesday.

“If you look at the way he came into office, the tragic circumstances, the assassination of the president — we have always called, along with Haitian civil society, Haitian political leaders — for a transition to free and fair elections and a transition to democracy, which of course requires stable security in which you can hold elections.”

Miller added that over the past few days it became clear “not to the United States, but to members of CARICOM [the Caribbean Community], to members of Haitian civil society, to a number of Haitians,’’ that the political situation under Henry was untenable.

In response to the developing crisis, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been busy engaging with Caribbean allies and Kenya to plot a path forward.

After a phone call with Kenyan President William Ruto on Saturday, Blinken traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, on Monday, where he discussed the issue with Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who hosted a Haiti summit that included input from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, France, CARICOM and some members of Haitian civil society via Zoom.

“We support the plan to create a broad-based, inclusive, independent presidential college that would, in particular, first, take concrete steps to meet the immediate needs of the Haitian people; second, enable the swift deployment of the Multinational Security Support Mission; and third, through that deployment, through a reinforced Haitian National Police, create the security conditions that are necessary to hold free and fair elections, to allow humanitarian assistance to get to people who need it, and to help put Haiti back on a path to economic opportunity and growth,” Blinken said in Kingston on Monday, adding that the Department of Defense doubled its peacekeeping mission support from $100 million to $200 million, and the United States pledged an extra $33 million for health and food security.

State Department officials in a call Tuesday focused on deployment and funding of the Kenyan-led multinational police force. An official said the department’s previous $100 million allocation to Haiti will be used to reimburse Kenya for its contributions and emphasized the dire need for the security assistance despite failed missions in the past.

“The international community, as well as Haitian stakeholders, are very cognizant of the mistakes of the past,” a senior State Department official said. “And they’re taking proactive measures to ensure that they are never repeated.”

The official said that the new security mission has a “crucial difference” from those of the past because it will be “integrated into the Haitian fabric of policing and security, rather than operating outside of that context.”

The CARICOM-sponsored plan for Haitian governance calls for a transitional presidential council that will have presidential powers and be composed of Haitians who agree not to compete in the next presidential election, have not been sanctioned by the U.N. or charged or convicted with a crime and who commit to supporting an international police force.

That last requirement is not landing well among parts of Haitian civil society.

“We welcome the support of the international community. We are grateful that they are now really looking into how to make a commitment to Haiti. However, a true Haitian-led solution cannot be contingent on having that person accepting conditions they do not agree with or may not be in the best interest of Haiti and its people in order to be in a position of power,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a diaspora nonprofit organization.

Though the presidential council will include representation from a broad array of political groups within Haiti, the requirement to support foreign military intervention – welcome in an immediate sense or not – strikes a raw nerve in a country that since 1791 has been fighting to rid itself of foreign dictates.

What has not been tried in Haiti, say experts, is allowing actual self-governance, with support rather than imposition from abroad.

“The international community has this — this wrong understanding that if there’s no government in Haiti, it’s just gonna go to s—. It already has gone to s—. It’s been to s— since Moïse got clipped, and it will get better if we just leave them alone for a little while,” said Foote.

And Haitians both in country and in the diaspora are bracing for another go at a familiar pattern.

“What I’m hearing from Haiti, from the Haitian community both in Haiti and in the United States once again is a ‘here we go again,’ because there were no Haitian representations,” said Jozef.