Last week, the United Nations Security Council, a body typically riven by substantive disagreements among its permanent member states, managed to come together on Haiti. The small, impoverished nation of 11.5 million has been in a desperate state even before its former president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home two years ago. The U.S. and Russia don’t agree on much these days, but both are sufficiently like-minded to call for an international intervention force that would help the Haitian National Police take back control of the country.
A child eats a handful of grain from a pot at the Hugo Chavez public square in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which has been turned into a refuge for families forced to leave their homes because of clashes between armed gangs. About 60% of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital and biggest city, is under the control of gangs, whose principal source of firepower are “straw buyers” who purchase high-powered rifles at gun shows in the U.S. and ship them to Haiti. Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press
Unfortunately, while most recognize some form of outside involvement is necessary, nobody wants to lead the effort. This includes the United States, which has its own controversial history dabbling in Haitian politics. (The U.S. occupied the country for nearly 20 years early in the early 20th century.) The Biden administration has hoped to persuade Canada to take ownership of an intervention, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has demurred, focusing instead on sending security assistance to Haiti’s police and sanctioning Haitian politicians who have ties to the gangs rampaging the country.
It’s not hard to see why the U.S., Canada and Haiti’s neighbors in the Caribbean are wary of leading a rescue mission. While Haiti may not be officially in a state of civil war, it certainly feels that way to a lot of Haitians who are forced to cower in their homes as rival gangs shoot each other with high-caliber weapons. Approximately 60% of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital and biggest city, is under the control of gangs, which administer their respective districts through fear.
Police officers, underpaid and underequipped, have ceded most of the city to the very criminal entities they are supposed to be combating. Between January and June, homicides increased by more than 67% compared with the homicide total for the previous six months. The security situation has gotten so abysmal that ordinary Haitians are taking matters into their own hands – more than 100 people suspected of being gang members have been killed by mob violence, including public lynchings, as the police look on.
Beyond Haiti’s security troubles lies a percolating political crisis. The Haitian government is less a government in the traditional sense of the word and more a collection of unaccountable officials who preside over a bunch of rotting institutions.
Interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry wasn’t elected to his post, is seen as an ineffective, illegitimate leader by the majority of the Haitian population and may have even been involved in Moïse’s killing. There aren’t any democratically elected officials left in the country. While a three-member transition council is responsible for ushering Haiti to elections this year, no serious person actually thinks elections can be organized when the country looks like a war zone. A large section of Haiti’s civil society wants Henry to leave his post and a transitional government to take over, but Henry has rejected such a proposal.
Haiti’s national police agency, meanwhile, is dealing with its own issues. Officers are top targets for gangs. Recruitment isn’t keeping pace with retirements. The pay is pathetic. And according to Pierre Espérance, a respected Haitian human rights observer, Haitian police commanders often cancel operations against gang holdouts at the last minute, raising questions about how connected the crime fighters are to the lawbreakers. Jimmy Chérizier, the leader of Haiti’s largest gang formation, is himself a former police officer.
All of this raises the obvious question: What can the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean and the U.N. do about it? U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, President Biden and now the U.N. Security Council are all on board with the idea of an international intervention force, which Henry first requested in October.
But one must understand just how difficult such a mission would be in a state that has failed to provide the most basic services to its population. An intervention force in Haiti, led by the U.N. or some other entity, wouldn’t be an act of peacekeeping or even peace enforcement – it would be an act of counterinsurgency. Foreign troops, working with the Haitian police, would have to engage in warfare with gangs in densely packed neighborhoods, evict those gangs and hold the terrain until the Haitian government is competent enough to bring back its authority.
Given the capacity of Haiti’s government as it currently exists, such a mission is guaranteed to be long, bloody and increasingly unpopular for troop-contributing nations over time.
Previous foreign interventions in Haiti – there are too many to count – have started with good intentions but ended with little to show for the effort. Betting that another intervention will succeed where others have failed would be akin to betting everything you own at the roulette table.
However, this doesn’t mean the U.S. and its partners in the region can’t do anything. There is a big middle ground between initiating a de facto invasion of Haiti and sitting on the couch watching the crisis unfold. One of the more important actions Washington can take is cracking down on the smuggling of illicit firearms, which is providing the firepower for the gangs’ takeover of the country.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime reports that “the principal source of firearms and munitions in Haiti is in the U.S.,” where so-called straw buyers – buyers who purchase firearms for people who aren’t allowed to possess them – can acquire high-powered rifles at private gun shows and ship them to Haiti.
If the U.S. wants to help the Haitian people, mitigating – or ideally, eliminating – this pipeline would be a good place to start.
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