PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Heavily armed gangs are sowing mayhem, killing indiscriminately, breaking open prisons and blocking aid. Nearly half the country is hungry; 1 million people are starving. The country’s leader has announced plans to resign.
Haiti has been here before — several times, in fact, since the ouster of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986: Its government has fallen or been chased out, the streets have erupted, and the United States has stepped in to lead international efforts to stand up new leaders who can be seen as legitimate and will be friendly to Washington.
It has yet to work.
Haiti’s presidency has been vacant since the 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïse. Its National Assembly has been empty since the last lawmakers’ terms expired last year. Prime Minister Ariel Henry has been unwilling or unable to bring new elections.
When Henry left the country this month to build support for a U.N. security force to restore order, the gangs rampaged, shutting down the international airport and the main seaport and attacking at least a dozen police stations. They haven’t let him back in.
Now U.S. officials see a way forward. After emergency negotiations this week between U.S., Haitian and neighboring leaders, the Caribbean Community (Caricom) announced the creation of a panel of Haitian leaders to put the country on the path to elections. Henry said he’d resign once this transitional presidential council picked an interim prime minister to succeed him.
The United States has a long history of intervening in Haiti. U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Washington initially supported the murderous and kleptocratic Duvalier dictatorship. U.S. forces invaded in 1994 to restore the ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and returned in 2004 to restore order after Aristide fled to exile.
In 2011, the United States helped Michel Martelly win the presidency. The United Nations last year accused him of using “gangs [during his term] to expand his influence over neighborhoods to advance his political agenda, contributing to a legacy of insecurity, the impacts of which are still being felt today.”
This time, U.S. officials say, they’ve learned the lessons of history. They’re not imposing a government on Haiti, they insist; they’ve made a concerted effort to center Haitians in the talks.
“It’s Haitian-designed,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Wednesday. “It’s Haitian-led.”
But critics ask just how Haitian-led an agreement can be that was negotiated by foreign diplomats meeting in Jamaica while Haitians joined by Zoom. They say it was cobbled together hurriedly and lacks a long-term vision for security.
And they say the council would simply turn the problem over to a political and business elite that in some cases is responsible for the nation’s dysfunction. Many in this squabbling, insular group have been trying and failing to achieve political consensus and stability for years.
“The idea that this ultimately should be a Haitian-driven solution is right,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior Latin America fellow at London-based Chatham House. “The question is: Which Haitians?”
U.S. and other officials reject criticism that the agreement was drawn up in a backroom with little Haitian input. A senior State Department official told The Washington Post that at least 39 Haitian stakeholders participated in the Jamaica talks. A Jamaican official put the number at 66.
“It’s not one meeting at which things were agreed behind closed doors,” Kamina Johnson Smith, Jamaica’s foreign minister, told reporters this week.
More than two centuries of subjugation and exploitation by larger powers helped transform Haiti from the economic powerhouse of the Caribbean to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. That history weighs heavily on the Biden administration.
Georges Michel, a Haitian historian, warned of the long history of the international community and the United States seeking to “impose their will — whether openly or discreetly.”
“The history of Haiti is replete with foreign actors trying to shape the outcomes and decisions around the leadership of Haiti,” a senior State Department official said. “And what they’ve said is that it’s vital that there be Haitian ownership of the political process and the way forward.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the diplomatically and politically sensitive situation.
It’s difficult to overstate the severity of the crises in Haiti, a country where the legacies of colonialism include corruption, endemic poverty and warlordism. Gangs control 80 percent of Port-au-Prince, the capital; they’ve killed thousands with impunity and driven hundreds of thousands more from their homes.
The country’s democratic institutions have been hollowed out. The few hospitals operating in Port-au-Prince are full. Schools are closed and businesses are shuttered; Haitians mostly stay home.
“The challenge that lies ahead is gigantic,” said Romain Le Cour, a senior expert with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. “You have to rebuild almost every institution from the ashes.”
The council is to include seven voting members nominated by civil society, private-sector and political groups, including allies of the deeply unpopular Henry. There’s to be one nonvoting member each from the private sector and the faith community.
The panel is to make decisions by majority vote. Le Cour, for one, is skeptical it can work.
“We have to be realistic about the fact that building a transitional council with seven members — in some cases belonging to parties or currents that are antagonistic — and making them work together, align with common interests and advance toward a comprehensive and transparent and cohesive political solution is going to be a significant challenge,” he said.
U.S. officials reject claims that the council’s reliance on elite members of the business or political community poses a significant problem.
“Whether these are elites or whether or not these are people who have been active and known faces in Haitian politics or society for quite some time, I would note that those are the people that Haitians are turning to when they are trying to reach an agreement on who will represent them in this council,” the State Department official said. “This is not the group that will govern Haiti indefinitely as a group.”
There are signs already that standing up the council won’t be easy. U.S. officials said Tuesday that they expected members would be appointed in the next 24 to 48 hours. But by the end of the week, the council had yet to materialize, underscoring the deal’s fragility.
Moïse Jean Charles, a former senator and presidential candidate, told reporters here Wednesday that his Pitit Desalin party, which initially agreed to the proposal and was granted a voting spot on the council, had decided to “reject” it. He said he would not work with Henry’s allies.
“Like it or not,” he said, “we are going to install our own presidential council.”
His three-member council would include Guy Philippe, who led the 2004 rebellion that ousted Aristide. Philippe has support from some gangs, but is barred from the negotiators’ transitional council on at least two grounds: He pleaded guilty to U.S. charges of money laundering and conspiracy, and he has publicly opposed the U.N. security mission.
Most of the negotiators’ council has been named, but a couple of seats remained unfilled, Blinken told reporters during a visit to Austria on Friday.
“This is never going to be smooth and never going to be linear,” Blinken said.
The delay in forming a council is evidence of a rigorous and inclusive process, the State Department official said.
“If this had been simply an edict from the international community … it’d be decided by them,” the official said.
The United States would like to see the process move along faster, but Americans should appreciate how long it can take to forge political consensus, the official said.
“It’s being hashed out by Haitians right now, and yeah, they have differences,” the official said. “But imagine trying to come up with a similar institution in the United States if you’re talking to stakeholders in our country to form a presidential council, and you have people on one end of our spectrum and people on another end of our spectrum, trying to find a way forward in an agreement. It’s complicated.”
The Caricom plan won’t be effective unless there are serious efforts to build state capacity, Sabatini said. In the past, he said, the international community has focused on getting Haiti to elections no matter their circumstances.
“That’s dangerously facile,” Sabatini said.
Coletta reported from Toronto and Hudson from Washington. Michael Birnbaum in Vienna contributed to this report.