[ The UN force occupied Haiti in 2004-2017 violated Haitians’
human rights, abused women and children, and introduced a cholera
epidemic that killed 40,000 Haitians.]
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NEW FOREIGN INTERVENTION WOULD BE DISASTROUS FOR HAITI’S PEOPLE  
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W.T. Whitney
October 4, 2023
Counterpunch
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_ The UN force occupied Haiti in 2004-2017 violated Haitians’ human
rights, abused women and children, and introduced a cholera epidemic
that killed 40,000 Haitians. _

U.S. Marines in Bel Air, Haiti, 2004., Photograph Source: LCPL KEVIN
MCCALL, USMC – Public Domain

 

The United Nations Security Council on October 2 voted to approve a
resolution prepared by the United States and Ecuador that authorized a
multi-national force to be deployed to Haiti for a year “to combat
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bands and reestablish security.” The vote was 13 nations approving,
Russia and China abstaining, and none opposing.

In mid-September at the United Nations General Assembly, U.S.
President Joe Biden and Ariel Henry, Haiti’s acting president,
called for a multi-national militarized occupation of Haiti. U.N.
Secretary-General António Guterres had done so
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U.S. spokespersons say
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is being sought from the U.S. Congress and the same amount, as in-kind
contributions, from the Pentagon. Secretary of State Blinken promised
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financial and logistical assistance” from the United States.

As of August 15, armed bands, or gangs, had killed 2.439
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this year, according to a UN report.

Meeting in Nairobi on September 25, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin and his Kenyan counterpart agreed
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Kenya will provide 1000 “security officers” and will “lead a
multi-national peacekeeping mission to Haiti.” According to the UN,
12 countries have committed to being part of the mission.

The Communist Party of Kenya issued a statement
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the Kenyan government’s participation. It pointed out that U.S.
power derives from “the enslavement of millions of African people,
whose labor laid the foundation for [U.S.] economic prosperity.”

The United Nations itself is neither leading or organizing the
intervention. For good reason: the UN force occupying Haiti in
2004-2017 violated
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human rights, abused women and children, and introduced a cholera
epidemic that killed 40,000 Haitians.

We offer four explanations for why the proposed intervention will harm
Haiti’s already beleaguered majority population.

One, previous foreign interventions have brought trouble. Nothing
suggests this one would be different. Here’s the record:

• The aforementioned UN occupation

• NGOs invaded
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the 2010 earthquake. They wasted donated funds.

• U.S.-assisted military coups in 1991 and 2004 removed the
progressive Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

• The U.S. “Operation Uphold Democracy” reinserted Aristide in
1994 on condition that he enforce neoliberal rules.

• The U.S. government provided vital support to the father-and-son
Duvalier dictatorship from 1957 to 1986

• The U.S. military occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 was
brutal.

• France required pay-back with interest for slaves having gone
free, in all, $560 million
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2022 dollars) and up to $115 billion in lost development.

• The U.S. responded to Haitian independence, proclaimed in 1804,
with a trade embargo and diplomatic isolation, each lasting for
decades.

Two, Haiti’s oppressed majority population needs a government, not a
façade of one. A government in Haiti that served the people might
provide a buffer between an imported, militarized foreign police and
the Haitian people. One realizes that Haiti has no functioning
government, much less one friendly to the people’s cause.

Michel Martelly became president in 2011, courtesy of U.S.
manipulation. The last general election in Haiti, in 2016, allowed
Jovenel Moïse to be president. The two wealthy politicians belonged
to the rightwing PHTK political party. The elections they won were
thoroughly corrupt and saw abysmally low-turnouts.

Moïse and others embezzled billions of dollars taken from the
low-interest loans that President Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan
government made available to Haiti’s government. The funds were to
have supported Haiti’s development and allowed for the government to
purchase low-cost oil under Chavez’s Petrocaribe program and to
provide subsidized fuel and food for Haiti’s impoverished people.
The U.S. government sanctioned Venezuela in 2015 and loans and cheap
oil stopped.

In response massive protests erupted against government corruption and
waste of the Petrocaribe funds. What with increasing shortages and
rising prices, they’ve continued since 2018. In a context of
multifaceted conflict among Haiti’s oligarchs, Moïse was
assassinated in July 2021.

There has been no president since, other than acting president Ariel
Henry, whom the Core Group made prime minister shortly after the
assassination. Representatives of the United States, Canada, several
European countries, and the EU make up the Core Group. Haiti’s
parliament has not functioned for over three
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The distressed Haitian masses have no political party that reliably or
effectively speaks for them. They have no say about foreign
governments’ plans for them. They have no institutional resources or
constitutional protections against potential abuse at the hands of
foreign occupation forces.

Three, the gangs have ties with Haiti’s wealthy powerbrokers. It’s
a relationship inconsistent with a simple story of interventionists
taking on gangs. The association grew out of the recurring outbursts
of social protest.

Haiti’s establishment sought protection from disorder and
destruction triggered by the ongoing protests, primarily in
Port-au-Prince. In the absence of an army, and with the police unable
to cope, gangs came into existence.

They were to bring order to city neighborhoods. Some of the protesters
joined the gangs. Wealthy Haitians have been funding
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The gangs took on the additional role of blocking agitation for
political change. Funds flowed
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local oligarchs and from abroad for that specific purpose.

There’s a sea of contradictions. In suppressing the gangs, the
interventionist forces would be defying the wealthy classes that pay
them. But those same wealthy classes, as represented by their
political boss Ariel Henry, are calling for a foreign security force
to defeat them. The struggling people of Haiti may not readily follow
such convoluted scheming, but they are familiar with the likely
outcome.

Four, the timing of the proposed intervention coincides with movement
within the gangs toward a new kind of politics. One suspects that the
proposed intervention represents a heavy-handed response to stirrings
for political change.

Some leaders of some gangs appear to be disenchanted with inter-gang
fighting and with dependence on the rich and powerful. They are
making alliances
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mouthing revolutionary sentiments.

Press reports center on veteran gang leader Jimmy Cherizier. They’ve
latched onto his nickname “Barbecue,” assigned to him as a small
boy; it evokes the specter of fiery violence. This former
highly-regarded policeman brought other gangs into his “G9”
alliance and now is reaching out to other gangs.

Cherizier, quoted by
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Kim Ives, speaks his mind:

“We are a great people. Our national motto is ‘Union makes
strength.’ Our objective is to once and for all overthrow the system
that exists in Haiti and achieve the dream of [Haitian founding father
Jean-Jacques] Dessalines, which is for the nation’s wealth to be
shared by all its citizens … Our battle isn’t just going to be to
demonstrate with people in the streets. We have guns, and we will
fight with them… We took our independence with arms.”

Cherizier told Ives
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that, ““this is a corrupt system; these people are using us to
fight their political battles, and we do not want to be their cannon
fodder anymore.”

Sabine Manigat, a sociologist at Haiti’s Quisqueya University, has
the last word
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The “image of Haiti portrayed in the foreign press, which highlights
misery and insecurity, does not paint the full picture of a country
where a social movement survives, people who are standing up and
fighting and who require international solidarity, not
intervention.”

_W.T. WHITNEY JR. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist
living in Maine._

* Haiti
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* United Nations
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* military intervention
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