In the past several weeks, I have watched dozens of sleek U.S. military planes descend over Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where I live. They were the first flights to land since gangs blockaded and halted commercial air traffic in March. U.S. news reports suggest that the aircraft contained civilian contractors and supplies to pave the way for the deployment of a Kenyan-led security mission to Haiti, which is expected to begin any day now.
But no one has informed Haitians who or what was on board. Even the members of Haiti’s new transitional government told me that they did not know precisely what the United States was flying into the country. Although the Haitian members of the presidential council have met with Kenyan and Haitian officials to discuss the force, they said they have not provided input to U.S. officials. Aides to newly installed Prime Minister Garry Conille confirmed that he has had no say on decisions related to the mission. It remains unclear what the force’s specific goals are or how it can contribute to rebuilding the Haitian state.
Haitians know far too little about the international security mission that is set to deploy on our soil. The United States should clarify its role in the mission and take responsibility for spearheading it, as it appears to be doing. Haitians must also be involved in managing the force, including developing its goals and monitoring its practices. We must ensure that it is accountable to the Haitian people if it is carried out with any of the carelessness, poor decision-making, excessive force, and sexual abuse that have marked previous interventions in our country. We must also ensure that the force is not seen as a panacea for the restoration of the Haitian state and its democracy.
From the outset, the security mission to Haiti has been beset by paradoxes. The force was authorized by the United Nations Security Council last year, but it is not a U.N. mission. Instead, the Multinational Security Support Mission has been conceived, facilitated, and managed by the U.S. State Department and U.S. military, although Kenya is expected to lead it on the ground. However, U.S. officials—including members of Congress—have deflected questions about the force by mentioning the U.N. and saying the Security Council is responsible.
The truth is that the United States outsourced the Haiti mission to Kenya. U.S. President Joe Biden has admitted as much: “We concluded that for the United States to deploy forces in the hemisphere just raises all kinds of questions that can be easily misrepresented about what we’re trying to do,” Biden said in May during a news conference with Kenyan President William Ruto, adding, “So, we set out to find a partner or partners who would lead the effort that we would participate in.”
As that partner, Kenya will “lead” troops from countries that will likely include Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Antigua and Barbuda. But in practice, it is “a U.S.-led mission with multiple actors,” congressional aides admitted to the Miami Herald. The U.S. Defense Department has pledged $200 million to help the mission, and it is clear from its preparations in Haiti—where some U.S. military officers and many U.S. private contractors are building a base and medical facility—that defense officials from the United States are the ones making the decisions.
Although the U.S. government plans to finance the force, it has not yet released the allocated money. Much of the $100 million that the State Department pledged for the mission is being held up by Congress, where Republican legislators have posed important questions about the force’s scope, mandate, and time frame—many of the same details that we Haitians would like to know, too.
In April, Biden authorized a $60 million military aid package using the presidential drawdown authority to move arms to the Haitian police and allow Kenyan forces to deploy to Haiti. In May, U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul and Jim Risch wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to criticize the move. “Plainly stated, the administration is rushing to fund an undefined and indefinite engagement in Haiti without Congressional approval,” they wrote.
When the mission does arrive in Haiti, it must have a game plan—but the actors involved do not seem to be on the same page. One member of the transitional government, Leslie Voltaire, recently told France 24 that the mission will primarily train the Haitian police in techniques to fight gangs, not fight gangs itself. That contrasts with a plan that a Kenyan official presented to Haitian, U.N., and foreign officials in Port-au-Prince last summer that suggested the force would protect roads, ports, and government buildings. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres previously called for a robust force that could provide “muscle” to “dismantle the gangs.”
Some of this ambiguity stems from the fact that Kenya has so far failed—for reasons that are unclear—to submit documentation to the U.N. Security Council delineating the force’s basic goals, as was requested by the resolution that authorized the mission in October 2023. This procedural hurdle has delayed the mission’s deployment.
Another concern is the inappropriate interest of Ruto and his wife in promoting evangelical Christianity in Haiti and targeting Haitian Vodou practices. In March, Rachel Ruto met with evangelical pastors at a Nairobi hotel to work out what the Kenyan first lady described as a “spiritual solution” for Haiti. Two Kenyan pastors present later explained to Reuters that despite Haiti’s security concerns, they see Haiti’s problems as “primarily spiritual.” The group drafted a white paper on Haiti that Rachel Ruto then presented to her husband.
These ambiguities point to the need for U.S. officials to be transparent with the Haitian people about U.S. and Kenyan plans for the country. Among other details, international officials should divulge the locations, time frames, and lines of command for the force’s deployment. They must also explain how the international police officers will successfully collaborate with a compromised and exhausted Haitian police force—and who will be held accountable when things go wrong.
The mission’s lack of transparency is alarming given the history of failed international interventions in Haiti, which have harmed Haitians and degraded state capacity. The last international intervention, the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, deployed from 2004 to 2017. Its soldiers were eventually accused of using excessive force against Haitians, committing acts of sexual abuse, and starting a cholera epidemic that killed around 10,000 people. The mission also failed to achieve its goals: It did not restore stability, advance democracy, strengthen Haitian institutions, or protect human rights in any lasting way.
Now, U.S. and international officials seem to be no better positioned to achieve lasting benefits for Haiti. They appear to be working with the remnants of a Haiti’s ousted government to manage logistics, including with problematic police chief Frantz Elbé, who is still in his post. Haiti’s illegitimate and ineffective former prime minister, Ariel Henry, resigned this spring after gangs challenged his leadership and he lost international support.
It is not clear whether the transitional government to replace Henry is up to the task of managing this multinational force. Four of the seven members of the presidential council hail from factions connected to criminal groups. They include affiliates of the Parti Haitien Tèt Kale (PHTK), known for its corruption, connections with gangs, and control of Haiti for the past dozen years; supporters of former acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who served the last PHTK president; supporters of Henry; and allies of putschist Guy Philippe, who has been convicted in the United States of money laundering related to cocaine trafficking.
As one of Haiti’s leading human rights defenders—and as someone who has worked closely on police reform with Haitian officials and collaborated with civil society leaders on proposals for improving governance —my vision for the U.N.-backed mission is as follows.
The force can be most useful if it creates space for the Haitian government and civil society to rebuild. The Haitian police force and judiciary must be strengthened and restructured so that they can arrest and prosecute criminals. The Haitian government, with international support, must develop programs for interrupting political leaders’ sponsorship of gangs as well as blocking the gangs’ moneymaking and trafficking routes so that this system does not return when the international force leaves.
Military force alone cannot provide Haiti with long-term stability, and Haitians’ needs must be at the center of any military effort. Ports and airports need to become functional again so that Haitians can move about and access food imports, but this must be done with safeguards that block the drug and gun traffic into Haiti that reinforces gang power. The international community must also help the state provide Haitians with basic public services so that Haitians know that their government can and will serve them. The force must prioritize social solutions that address citizens’ needs, such as expanding access to hospitals and schools.
The Haitian state has neared total collapse. Since February, gangs in the capital have united to attack its institutions, including by burning police stations, emptying prisons, and looting government offices. Many police officers have revolted against Elbé, the police chief, who has been accused of gang connections and has often issued orders to stop anti-gang operations just when they are on the verge of success, as I detailed in Foreign Policy last year.
In mid-May, gangs used a bulldozer to destroy two prisons. One was built by Canada in 2012 in Croix-des-Bouquets; the other was the women’s prison in Cabaret. These facilities could have held suspects apprehended by the multinational force. Days after, gangs also used bulldozers and backhoes to raze four multistory police substations, without police resistance.
Haiti’s gangs do not expect the multinational force to end their operations forever. Jimmy Chérizier, who heads the gang alliance in Port-au-Prince, has said that he predicts an extended period of bloodshed, but also that eventually international forces will tire and leave. He anticipates that his gangs will endure.
Whether Chérizier’s gangs are able to continue operating depends on whether Haitians like me—who are invested in promoting stability and democracy in our own country—are able to work with the United States to set safeguards, transparency, and decision-making structures for the multinational force. This force can only be useful in the long term if it gives the government space to combat the root causes of our social and political instability.
To accomplish that, the United States must stop concealing its role in the Kenyan-led mission and collaborate with us to build solutions that will carry Haiti forward.
The post U.S. Military Planes Are in Haiti. Haitians Don’t Know Why. appeared first on Foreign Policy.
