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zvaigzdelasas · 8 months ago

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[ABC is Private US Media]

Attacks on the international airport in Port-au-Prince generated headlines worldwide. Coordinated assaults on multiple prisons freed thousands of prisoners over the weekend. But all that could be just the beginning of what an increasing number of Haiti experts are openly referring to as a full-blown rebellion against the country's sitting government.

I was speaking to a senior diplomatic official in Haiti on Monday, a very sober and calculated person not prone to hyperbole. In discussing the situation, I used the word "gangs" and he cut me off.

"I would stop using that term if I were you," he said, arguing that gangs are what you find in American cities. In Haiti, there are multiple large criminal groups with enormous firepower, now unified with the stated goal of toppling the sitting government.

"They are armed rebel groups and this is civil war," the source said.[...]

Some 80% of the capital is under gang control, if not more, according to the UN. Those groups have fought each other and the government for years[...]

But things have fundamentally changed in the last month. We will get to the "why" in a moment, but consider the following:

-Haiti's dozens of gangs, largely grouped into two competing alliances, have seemingly set aside their differences and rather than attack each other, are working together to attack the government.

-The gangs are not hiding their goal. It is a change in government. Gang leadership, most notably a man called Jimmy Chérizier, aka Barbecue, has said the fighting won't stop until the unelected acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry is no longer in power. He's called for Henry's arrest.

-The gangs have launched a series of well-planned, massive attacks against key targets around the city. Nearly 30 police precincts have also come under fire, many completely taken over or destroyed. Government buildings have also been attacked, including one just 500 meters from the U.S. embassy. There is random, sporadic violence constantly around the city, but these attacks are strategic and targeted.

As to the why—gangs have long sought to fill a power vacuum left behind when President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021. But an inflection point came last month.

Henry, in charge since just a few weeks after Moïse's death, had said he would step down by early February. But then, he changed course. The U.S.-backed Henry said the security situation needed to improve before he could leave and new elections could take place. Last week, he committed only to holding elections in August of 2025, a full 18 months away.

That appeared to be the final straw.

In a way, this gang-fueled violence is the armed manifestation of widespread popular anger against Henry and his government. Ordinary Haitians are furious over the ever-worsening poverty, hunger, and violence we've seen under Henry. He is a near-universally loathed public figure.

It is not hard to find people in Port-au-Prince who fully support the actions taken by the gangs, even if they are terrified that they themselves or their families could be collateral damage.

It is not that most in Haiti support the gangs or the chaos they cause. Far from it. Most despise the death and destruction they’ve wrought in the country. But for now, some feel the gangs are the only group capable of forcing Henry out.[...]

Remember this staggering fact: in this democratic country, there is not one elected leader serving at any level of government anywhere in the country. No elections have been held since 2016.[...]

So the rebellion, the attempted revolution, has begun--alongside the seemingly never-ending suffering of millions of innocents.

6 Mar 24

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fuckyeahmarxismleninism · 4 months ago

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By Bethony Dupont

The ballyhooed elections will be nothing more than a scam to parachute in new neocolonial overseers and “legalize” their rule while deepening the Haiti masses’ impoverishment and servitude. Worse yet, the foreign and local bourgeoisies will accuse their victims of being responsible for their own pauperization and the ensuing social woes.

#Haiti #elections #imperialism #occupation #neocolonialism #armed struggle #workers #peasants #class struggle #poverty #racism #Struggle La Lucha

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mariacallous · 8 months ago

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On March 5, Haiti’s acting prime minister took off on a chartered Gulfstream jet from a New Jersey airport with nowhere to go.

Ariel Henry—Haiti’s unelected leader since July 2021—had spent weeks traveling in Africa and the Americas trying to rally international support for his country, which has been mired in chronic poverty, political instability, and an insurgency of criminal groups led by a former Haitian police officer turned gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier, known as “Barbecue.”

While Henry was out of the country, Barbecue and his allies coordinated an armed assault calling for Henry’s ouster. They stormed police stations and prisons, released around 3,700 inmates, and attacked the airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, making it too dangerous for Henry to land there.

Instead, Henry tried to negotiate a plan to land in neighboring Dominican Republic, but he was rebuffed at the last minute by the government there, according to U.S. officials, Caribbean officials, and regional experts familiar with the matter. Other Caribbean countries reacted coolly to the prospect of hosting Henry as his support domestically and abroad began collapsing. Finally, he landed in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, where he remained in limbo until March 12, when he announced his intention to resign.

The chaos and uncertainty of Henry’s final flight as prime minister underlined the political tumult that has gripped Haiti—and the tepid response to Haiti’s downward spiral by an overstretched international community reluctant to tackle yet another crisis.

If Haiti isn’t yet formally deemed a failed state, it’s well on its way. Government institutions and basic services have broken down and gang violence has sparked one of the worst humanitarian and refugee crises in the Western Hemisphere.

“It’s an extremely dangerous situation,” said Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s former foreign minister who now runs the Haitian Observatory of International Relations think tank. “Without a change, we are facing a possibility of an entire nation becoming a big open-air jail run by gangs.”

Yet what that change should look like—and who might be willing and able to step in to make it happen—remains as unclear now as it has for more than two years.

Haiti’s near collapse has led to frantic meetings among regional leaders in recent weeks and heated debates between the Biden administration and Congress over what role, if any, the United States should play in the unfolding emergency in its own backyard. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Jamaica on Monday to meet with Caribbean leaders on the issue, and he pledged an additional $100 million in U.S. funds to finance the deployment of a multinational force to help stabilize the country.

The Biden administration is urging Congress to unlock even more funds. Two powerful Republican lawmakers—Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee—argue that the administration doesn’t have adequate plans for how it would use those funds. They also charge that the administration let its Haiti policy fester in indecision for too long, exacerbating the country’s current predicament.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has faced chronic instability for decades, fueled in part by devastating natural disasters and international aid mishaps, including a U.N. mission that brought a deadly cholera outbreak to the country as well as sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children by U.N. peacekeepers, and a 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000, followed by bungled international relief efforts that sparked a cycle of mismanagement and stunted development projects.

In 2021, then-President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated by a group of gunmen in his home, sparking the current political crisis in the country. (A Haitian judge last month indicted three prominent individuals—Moïse’s widow, an ex-prime minister, and a former Haitian chief of police—for involvement in the assassination, charges they have denied as baseless political reprisals.) Henry took over as acting president shortly after and soon began pleading with foreign powers for a military intervention to address the country’s spiraling instability.

Gangs have taken control of much of Port-au-Prince, and rights groups say the gangs have used rape and torture as weapons against the civilian population. Thousands of Haitians have been killed and kidnapped.

“It is difficult to overstate the gravity of the political, security, human rights and humanitarian situation in Haiti today,” the U.N. mission in Haiti wrote in a report to the U.N. Security Council in January, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy. The violence has led to a surge in Haitians fleeing the country; the report noted that the number of Haitians fleeing to Central America with the aim of making it across the U.S. southern border increased 23-fold in 2023—from 1,550 people in July to 35,500 people in October.

The U.S. Embassy in Haiti this week evacuated some diplomats and nonessential personnel as well as deployed a specialized detachment of U.S. Marines to bolster the embassy’s security. Gen. Laura Richardson, commander of U.S. Southern Command, told lawmakers in a hearing on Thursday that the U.S. military had plans ready to evacuate U.S. citizens if the crisis worsened.

“It’s absolute chaos. People are crying out for even some basic level of security,” said Nicole Widdersheim, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “We need to see the international community doing something very rapid to bring security and stability and protection from the violence.”

The international community, meanwhile, procrastinated on the matter for over two years, officials and experts said.

After Moïse’s assassination, the United States balked at the prospect of leading a multinational force. In 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden privately asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if Canada would take the lead, current and former officials said. Canada declined, but it offered to contribute $100 million to help fund such a force. No other country in South or Central America stepped up. Haiti, coordinating with the Biden administration, then turned to Africa. Kenya agreed to lead a mission and deploy 1,000 police officers to Haiti as part of an effort that would be coordinated and bankrolled mostly by the United States.

That plan stalled when Kenyan opposition politicians challenged the program’s legality. The U.S. government, meanwhile, already overstretched by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, let Haiti fall by the wayside, current and former U.S. officials told Foreign Policy. Biden didn’t nominate a U.S. ambassador to Haiti until May 2023, nearly two years after Moïse’s assassination. Biden’s nominee, career diplomat Dennis Hankins, was confirmed to the post by the U.S. Senate on Thursday.

“A lot of countries at the beginning were reluctant to take the lead, though Haiti needs urgent help,” Edmond said. But, he added, “At the end of the day, we also need to take our own responsibilities for our own country. I don’t think I will throw the blame only on the international community.”

Henry’s resignation announcement was quietly seen as a relief by some U.S. and regional officials, but it also created new challenges as the region tries to cobble together a temporary governance structure from afar to lead Haiti out of its crisis.

His announcement came after quiet pressure from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), officials said, as well as repeated threats from gang leaders should he return to the country. (The White House has denied reports that it also pressured Henry to resign.)

Now, CARICOM is helping craft a new presidential transitional council composed of seven voting members and two observers, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by Foreign Policy. Candidates for the council would be put forward by at least five active Haitian political parties with input from CARICOM-screened civil society organizations. Once appointed, the new council, in theory, would help restore legitimacy to Haiti’s absent government and lead the country on a path toward stability and, eventually, elections. Henry has said he’ll officially step down once the new council is in place.

Almost immediately, though, current and former officials said, those efforts hit a wall as Haitian elites began wrangling with CARICOM officials over who should make the final cut, and some potential member candidates voiced fear for their families’ lives if they joined the council. On Friday, Blinken said that most of the parties have named their representatives for the council but that several still have not.

Edmond said many Haitians are skeptical of the plan and “don’t believe it’s the right solution.” Edmond said he believes a better alternative would be for the Haitian Supreme Court to take temporary control and appoint a technocrat as prime minister to strengthen Haiti’s national police forces and lead the country into elections.

Meanwhile, Henry’s resignation has put on hold the U.S.- and U.N.-backed plan for Kenya to deploy a police force to Haiti to help restore order to the country. Kenyan President William Ruto said he remained committed to the plan but that it would only occur after the transitional council was established. It’s unclear whether Henry’s resignation will create new legal hurdles for Ruto to carry out the deployment.

Biden administration officials also considered offers from Senegal and Rwanda to lead the security assistance force, but those proposals were ultimately rejected in favor of Kenya, current and former U.S. and Haitian officials said. Rwanda faces widespread criticisms over its checkered record on human rights and authoritarian bent, and Senegal is currently mired in its own political crisis over delayed elections. However, Kenya’s police have also been accused of committing abuses at home by human rights groups, including the use of excessive force and the killing of more than 100 people in 2023.

The planned Kenyan operation, even if it is able to commence, faces significant practical and logistical challenges, U.S. officials and congressional aides said. For starters, neither Kenya, the United States, nor other regional powers have stated what the rules of engagement would be for Kenyan forces once they are deployed to the country, where they face the daunting task of quelling powerful and heavily armed gangs and a weakened and embattled local police force.

There is also the broader question of whether adding more police will solve the deeper systemic issues that led to the current situation. “The police cannot make significant inroads against gangs absent a broader political breakthrough,” Pierre Espérance, the executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti, argued in Foreign Policy last July. “In Haiti, gang members are not independent warlords operating apart from the state. They are part of the way the state functions—and how political leaders assert power.”

An unclassified U.S. intelligence assessment released this week predicted that Haitian gangs “will be more likely to violently resist a foreign national force deployment to Haiti because they perceive it to be a shared threat to their control and operations” and that Haiti’s national police have been “unable to counter gang violence and [have] been plagued by resource issues, corruption challenges, and limited training.”

Any deployment of Kenyan forces would also require substantial logistical support from the U.S. military, U.S. officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter said. Administration officials have told Congress that once given the green light, Kenyan police could be deployed to Haiti in a matter of 45 to 60 days in ideal conditions—and without U.S. boots on the ground. But Haiti has no clear base or logistics hub for the Kenyan police to be deployed to, particularly after gangs seized control of major power centers in Port-au-Prince.

Another complicating factor is the funding mechanism. After balking for nearly two years on proposals to deploy their own forces to Haiti, the U.S. and Canadian governments have both pledged to fund the Kenyan-led force, but no funding mechanism has been set up yet to do that. A multinational police mission in Haiti could cost an estimated $500 million to $800 million per year, State Department officials have told congressional oversight committees.

Risch has held up an estimated $40 million of the first tranche of U.S. funding for the Kenya-led mission. “[A]fter years of discussions, repeated requests for information, and providing partial funding to help them plan, the administration only this afternoon sent us a rough plan to address this crisis,” Risch said in a joint statement with McCaul. The administration “owes Congress a lot more details in a more timely manner before it gets more funding,” they said.

John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesperson, said the situation is getting worse in the meantime. “The violence has been increasing, not decreasing, as well as the instability. And, of course, the Haitian people are the ones that are suffering as a result,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Edmond said that even if the Kenya-led mission gets underway, the United States has a “moral obligation to consider, before the arrival of the Kenyan forces, a way to help the national police forces that are now being overwhelmed by the gangs.”

“The United States is the leader of the free world. Haiti is a member of that world, one of the closest neighbors to the U.S. There is a moral obligation here to step in.”

Widdersheim said the United States can’t dodge responsibilities. “Half measures won’t be good enough this time,” she said. “The U.S. government hasn’t in the past seemed to care enough to truly invest in Haiti’s long-term development, and it’s to our detriment because nothing ever sticks; we just get stuck doing half measures that always fail.”

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newhistorybooks · 7 months ago

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“This book presents a brilliant analysis of the neoliberal policies imposed on Haiti by international institutions. Dupuy skillfully connects decades of extractive foreign interventions in Haiti, from the US occupation to the aftermath of Jovenel Moïse’s assassination. Haiti since 1804 points the way toward a future in which Haitians might finally regain sovereignty over their own economy and government."

#uwlibraries #history books #caribbean history #history of haiti #political history

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thefreethoughtprojectcom · 3 months ago

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Two plotters of the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse were exposed as DEA informants. Another was unmasked as an FBI informant.

Read More: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/government-corruption/assassin-of-haitian-president-reportedly-linked-to-us-intelligence

#TheFreeThoughtProject

#the free thought project #tftp #haiti #assassination #us government #fbi #dea #informants #jovenel moise #inside job

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anarchotahdigism · 8 months ago

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Haiti’s government declared a state of emergency and nighttime curfew late Sunday in an effort to regain control of the streets after a huge popular uprising over the weekend saw armed fighters storm the country’s two biggest prisons.

The 72-hour state of emergency took effect immediately. The government said it would set out to find the escapees from prison. “The police were ordered to use all legal means at their disposal to enforce the curfew and apprehend all offenders,” said a statement from Finance Minister Patrick Boivert, acting prime minister.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry traveled abroad last week to try to salvage international bourgeois support for bringing in a US-backed security force to pacify the country in its conflict with increasingly militant organizations countrywide." ... "But the siege Saturday night of the National Penitentiary came as a shock even to Haitians accustomed to living under the constant pressure due to colonial misrule. Almost all of the estimated 4,000 inmates fled in the jailbreak, leaving the usually criminally overcrowded facility empty Sunday with no prison guards in sight and plastic sandals, clothing and furniture strewn across the concrete patio. Three bodies with gunshot wounds lay at the prison entrance." ... "Among the few dozen who chose to stay in the prison are 18 former Colombian soldiers accused of working as mercenaries in the July 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. Amid the clashes Saturday night, several of the Colombians shared a video pleading for their lives.

'Please, please help us,” one of the men, Francisco Uribe, said in the message widely shared on social media. “They are massacring people indiscriminately inside the cells.' " .... "A second Port-au-Prince prison containing about 1,400 inmates was also overrun. Gunmen also occupied the nation’s top soccer stadium in a highly symbolic display of defiance Internet service for many residents was down as Haiti’s top mobile network said a fiber-optic cable connection was slashed during the rebellion." .. "The rebellion is significant since the president, who is US-backed and unelected, has been organizing an international occupation force to impose its will on the country. There has been no notable progress on social issues, economic issues, or reparations for US and French destruction of the country.

The violence must be understood in this context."

#ftp #fire to the prisons #fuck the poilce #acab #free them all #prison abolition #anticapitalism #anarchism #antifascism #haiti #free haiti

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beardedmrbean · 8 months ago

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Haiti's government declared a 72-hour state of emergency on Sunday after armed gangs stormed a major prison. At least 12 people were killed and about 3,700 inmates escaped in the jailbreak.

Gang leaders are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, whose whereabouts are unknown since he travelled to Kenya.

Gangs control around 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Gang violence has plagued Haiti for years.

A government statement said two prisons - one in Port-au-Prince and the other in nearby Croix des Bouquets - were stormed over the weekend.

It said the acts of "disobedience" were a threat to national security and said it was instituting an immediate night-time curfew in response, which started at 20:00 local time (01:00 GMT on Monday).

How gangs came to dominate Haiti

Haitian media reported that police stations were attacked, distracting authorities before the coordinated assault on the jails.

Among those detained in Port-au-Prince were suspects charged in connection with the 2021 killing of President Jovenel Moïse.

In the capital, gangs have erected barricades to prevent security forces from encroaching on their territory, while their strongholds in Port-au-Prince's vast shantytowns are still largely on lockdown.

Schools and many businesses are closed, and there are reports of looting in some neighbourhoods.

Police have set up roadblocks and there is much uncertainty on the streets.

The latest upsurge in violence began on Thursday, when the prime minister travelled to Nairobi to discuss sending a Kenya-led multinational security force to Haiti.

Gang leader Jimmy Chérizier (nicknamed Barbecue) declared a co-ordinated attack to remove him.

"All of us, the armed groups in the provincial towns and the armed groups in the capital, are united," said the former police officer, who is accused of being behind several massacres in Port-au-Prince.

Haiti's police union had asked the military to help reinforce the capital's main prison, but the compound was stormed late on Saturday.

On Sunday the doors of the prison were still open and there were no signs of officers, Reuters news agency reported. Three inmates who tried to flee lay dead in the courtyard, the report said.

A journalist for the AFP news agency who visited the prison saw around 10 bodies, some with signs of injuries caused by bullets.

One volunteer prison worker told the Reuters news agency that 99 prisoners - including former Colombian soldiers jailed over President Moïse's murder - had chosen to remain in their cells for fear of being killed in crossfire.

They have now been transferred to a different prison.

The US embassy in Port-au-Prince on Sunday urged its citizens to leave Haiti "as soon as possible". The French embassy said it was closing visa services as a "precaution".

While Haiti has been plagued by gangs for years, the violence has further escalated since President Moïse's assassination at his home in 2021. He has not been replaced and presidential elections have not been held since 2016.

Under a political deal, Mr Henry was due to stand down by 7 February. But planned elections were not held and he remains in post.

A spokesperson for the White House's National Security Council said it was "monitoring the rapidly deteriorating security situation" with "grave concern".

They said the path forward "lies with free and fair elections" and violence serves "only to delay a democratic transition while... upending the lives of thousands".

Speaking to the BBC's Newsday, Claude Joseph - who was serving as acting prime minister when President Moïse was assassinated and who is now head of the opposition party called Those Committed to Development - said Haiti was living through a "nightmare".

Mr Joseph said Prime Minister Henry wanted "to stay as long as possible in charge".

"He agreed to step down on 7 February. Now he decides to stay, despite the fact that there are huge protests throughout the country asking him to step down - but it's unfortunate that now those criminals are using violent means to force him to step down."

In January, the UN said more than 8,400 people were victims of Haiti's gang violence last year, including killings, injuries and kidnappings - more than double the numbers seen in 2022.

Many health facilities have stopped operating because of the bloodshed.

Anger at the shocking levels of violence, on top of the political vacuum, have led to several demonstrations against the government, with protesters demanding the resignation of the prime minister.

#nunyas news

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