By Damilola Banjo / PassBlue
The United Nations Security Council endorsed an international police mission last fall to try to regain control of Haiti from the powerful armed gangs dominating parts of the country. Yet violence is now convulsing more regions of Haiti as the mission has been put on hold and the interim Haitian government has resigned.
The Council has been deliberating in the last few weeks behind closed doors on how to seize the moment to restore a semblance of peace in Haiti, but the gangs wield a firm upper hand, and immediate regional solutions involve steps that do not require the electoral will of Haitians.
Caricom, the intergovernmental regional bloc, recently orchestrated political measures — calling it a transitional council — with the United States, in consultation with other countries as well as civil society, the private sector, political parties and faith groups, all aiming to calm Haiti down. But the proposals face resistance from many Haitians, including the gangs.
Two key steps need to happen in tandem for the transitional council to begin, diplomats said at the UN this week: naming an interim leader and arranging a security plan to ensure the safety of Haitian citizens. Some experts contend, however, the latter is more urgent than the political agenda. (One source familiar with the Caricom proposal said that an ex-Supreme Court judge may be named as interim leader.)
The permanent representative to Japan and current rotating president of the Security Council, Kazuyuki Yamazaki, told PassBlue that the Council is deliberating with “other countries, including Kenya, in finding a way forward.” Yamazaki did not say what options the Council might be considering.
The creation of an international security support mission was to be led by Kenya, who volunteered for the role after larger countries, like Canada and the US, declined to take up such a politically loaded position. But Kenya soon met opposition from within after declaring its willingness. A Kenyan court quickly barred the government from deploying the country’s police unless certain conditions were met in Haiti. Months later, President William Ruto’s government indicated the mission was back on track. Then Haiti’s interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned on March 12, and Kenya paused the mission again, citing the lack of a formal government in Haiti.
Henry was forced to resign after being locked out of his country while traveling home from Kenya. Gang members had taken control of the airport and seaport in Port-au-Prince, the capital, keeping Henry from returning. Henry had gone to Kenya in February to speed up the process of the UN-backed 1,000-strong police mission, where he signed a “reciprocity agreement” with Ruto. The Caricom agreement also required Henry to resign.
The Kenyan official in charge of the police mission, Monica Juma, did not respond to a request from PassBlue for a comment. The UN said five other countries — Benin, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, and Chad — have pledged to contribute troops to the mission. Experts told PassBlue that the mission would need more than 5,000 trained personnel to combat the gangs. Benin, a Francophone country, confirmed to the UN on Feb. 17 its willingness to send 1,500 “seasoned soldiers” from its defense and security forces to Haiti and will up the amount to 2,000 men within six months.
Kamina Johnson Smith, Jamaica’s foreign minister, met with the Security Council privately on March 18 to update members on the Caricom proposal. She echoed the need for both a political and a security plan to resolve the deadly confrontations by gang members in Haiti against civilians.
José Singer was a special envoy to the UN when his country, the Dominican Republic, was a member of the Security Council in 2019-2020. In a phone call with PassBlue about Haiti, of which his country shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, he said that Kenya would need the money and other logistics in place before the mission started, to be effective. The US has pledged $300 million, the highest share so far for the operation, but it is unclear whether the money would go through the UN or directly to Kenya. Moreover, the US Congress is blocking the release of the funds.
“Kenya does not have the money, but they are willing to put their [police] in front for the mission, but they cannot move ahead without the money,” Singer said. “The mission will take money and time, and nations have not shown much interest in how much they’d give. No one, apart from the US, has stepped up on the money part, and without the money, Kenya can’t move. It is an expensive operation, and the more time passes the more expensive it becomes.”
Calls by Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, for “urgent deployment” of the UN-backed police mission, on March 5, show the critical necessity of the intervention. At the same time, the notorious gang leader and former member of the Haitian police, Jimmy Chérizier, famously known as Barbecue, warned of civil war.
The UN has a funding appeal underway to supplement the support mission’s operations. Yet that dedicated coffer has attracted just $11 million. Singer said the UN is the only organization equipped to solve the gang violence in Haiti but acknowledged that finding the best strategy is tough.
“The United Nations has all the tools to help Haitians rebuild, but it has to follow the lead of the people,” he said.
The UN has an unsavory reputation in Haiti. In 2010, a UN peacekeeping contingent inadvertently brought cholera to the country, killing at least 10,000 Haitians. A plethora of sexual abuse cases have also dogged the UN’s peacekeeping missions over many years, and they withdrew in 2019. Now, a small political mission, Binuh, is meant to help steer the country toward eventual democratic elections. In the current chaos, some international staff of Binuh have been evacuated from Haiti.
The US and Caricom are working to select the transitional presidential council to name Henry’s interim successor and organize a general election in Haiti. The council will have nine members: seven with voting powers; one from civil society and another from the religious community. The key to the council, numerous diplomats said on March 18, after a UN Security Council closed-door meeting on Haiti, is picking the interim prime minister.
Slavoj Zizek, a professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School, wrote in Project Syndicate, a media site of opinion essays on global topics, that Haiti is exhibiting all the “familiar features of a failed state” following the seizure of all critical infrastructure by gang members. He also warned that the gang might likely take over the government.
They have seized most of the capital’s downtown and some government headquarters, Matthias Pierre, a former elections minister in Haiti, told the BBC.
Reports from Haiti say the gang members also control some rural communities. The government declared a 72-hour state of emergency on March 10, after gangs stormed the country’s two major prisons and freed inmates that have since re-enforced the gangs, Pierre said. Heavy gunfire rang through the capital as schools and businesses remained closed.
Singer said there are better ways to address the lack of a legitimate government in Haiti other than the transitional council. The Security Council and other key players in the international community must allow Haitians to take the front row in electing their representatives, he said. (Henry himself had been appointed prime minister by ex-president Jovenel Moïse two days before he was assassinated in his home in July 2021.)
Haiti has a semipresidential system of government, and Singer said the people should be allowed to elect mayors for the 146 municipalities, as recognized by the Haitian constitution. The majors can then elect the 42 district heads who can call for a constitutional review that allows for a presidential government setup.
“This way, Haitians can have a president who is elected by them,” Singer said. “It is a Haitian problem and has to be a Haitian-led solution. Starting the election from the bottom up is better than starting it from the top again because that has not worked. What Caricom is trying to do is important but has to be what Haitians want. The international community can only make suggestions. It is unlikely that they will be successful with the gangs still having this much power.”
The gang leaders have already rejected the solution provided by the US and Caricom. Guy Philippe, a former police officer who won a senate seat in 2016 in the Haitian parliament, before he was extradited to the US and imprisoned for drug-trafficking-related offenses, has declared his desire to lead Haiti. Philippe is a major gang leader in the country, but the US and Caricom have said that ex-convicts and anyone under investigation could not be part of the transitional council.
Renata Segura, the deputy program director of Latin America and Caribbean at the International Crisis Group think tank, said that although there is a need to keep communication channels open with the gang members, the no ex-convict clause by Caricom rules out the gang members from taking part in a legitimate government.
The gangs and political elites have always carried on a symbiotic relationship until the former grew self-sufficient. Now, they are more powerful than the politicians who once used them as tools for civic oppression. The use of gangs against opponents was pioneered in the late 1990s and early 2000s and has since been adopted by many other politicians in Haiti, Michael Deibert, an American writer and a researcher with the Center of International Studies at the University Institute of Lisbon, said.
“Haiti needs an effective way to investigate and punish the political and economic actors with links to these armed groups,” Deibert said. “The so-called transitional council supported by Caricom gives most of its political power to many of the same political forces that have succeeded already in bringing Haiti to this abyss.”
By Zehra Imam / Mondoweiss
As Palestinians are slaughtered by the thousands in Gaza and violently attacked during night prayers in the al-Aqsa Mosque by Israel, the West Bank endures massacres that at times go unnoticed during this holy month. I have spent my Ramadan in conversation with a friend from Jenin.
Much has changed since I visited Aseel (not her real name) in August 2023. There are things I saw in Jenin that no longer exist. One of them is my friend’s smile and her spark.
Usually, they say Jenin is a small Gaza. During Ramadan, because the attacks generally happen at night, people are an easy target because they are on the streets late at night. In the past, it was rare for the IOF to enter during the day. Now, they attack during the day; their special forces enter, and after people discover them, their soldiers come within minutes.
Every 2-3 days, there is a new attack in Jenin. In our minds, there is a constant ringing that the IOF may come. We don’t know at what time we will be targeted or when they will enter. There is no stability in our lives.
Even when we plan for something, we hedge it with our inshallahs and laugh. There are a lot of ifs. If they don’t enter the camp. If there are no martyrs. If there is no strike.
On the second day of Ramadan, they attacked my neighborhood again. We thought it was a bombing because it started with an explosion, but the house was shaking. We were praying fajr, and everyone was screaming outside. The sound of the drone was in our ears. “No, these are missiles,” we realized.
There was panic in the streets. Women fainted. People had been walking back from praying at the mosque, and some were still in the street. Alhamdulillah, no one was hurt, we say.
The balcony to the room at my uncle’s house where we slept had fallen. It no longer had any glass, and a bullet entered my uncle’s bedroom and reached the kitchen. The drone hit the trees in front of our house. The missiles destroyed the ceiling, and the rockets reached my neighbor’s house on the first floor, exactly in front of our house.
Since October 7, Jenin has become a target. There is a clear escalation in the camp and the city. The IOF has used many different weapons to kill us here. They have even been aggressive toward the infrastructure, as though every inch of our city was resisting them.
They destroyed much of the camp, and there is no entrance now. The arch is gone, and there is no sign reminding us that Jenin refugee camp is a temporary place. There is no horse. Only the street is left. You have the photographs. You were lucky. They changed the shape of the camp, and everything has been destroyed.”Aseel
The first time Aseel and I met in person was in Nablus at the Martyrs Roundabout. As we caught up, we ate a delicious concoction of ice cream, milk, nuts, and fresh fruit that was a perfect balm to the heat. She took me to some of her favorite places nestled within the old city of Nablus. A 150-year-old barber’s shop that felt like you had entered an antique store where plants reached the ceiling and where the barber was a massive fan of Angelina Jolie. A centuries-old house now called Tree House Cafe looked like a hobbit home from Lord of the Rings, where we hid away as she sipped her coffee and I drank a mint lemonade. We visited one of the oldest soap factories in the world with ingredients such as goat’s milk and olive oil, jasmine and pomegranates, even dates and Dead Sea mud.
We happened to chance upon a Sufi zawiya as we walked through a beautiful archway decorated with lanterns, light bulbs, and an assortment of potted plants, after which we saw a cobalt blue door on our left and an azul blue door with symmetrical red designs, and Quranic ayat like incantations on our right as doors upon doors greeted us.
The air was welcoming yet mingled with the memory of martyrs whose memorials took over the landscape, sometimes in the form of larger-than-life portraits surrounded by complex four-leafed magenta-white flowers; posters above a water spout next to a heart-shaped leaf; a melted motorcycle that, too, was targeted in the neighborhood that hosted the Lions’ Den. We stopped to pray at a masjid, quiet and carpeted.
After a bus ride from Nablus to Jenin, on our walk before entering Jenin camp, Aseel showed me the hospital right outside the camp. She pointed out the barricades created to keep the occupation forces from entering specific streets. This is the same hospital that the occupation forces blocked during the July 2023 attack, which now seems like a lifetime ago.
What caught my eyes again and again were the two Keys of Return on top of the entrance of Jenin Camp that symbolized so much for Palestinians.
“This is a temporary station,” Aseel read out loud to me. “That’s what it says. We are supposed to return to our homes.”
“Netanyahu said he is planning another big attack, so the resistance fighters are preparing because it can happen any day,” she had told me that evening as we shared Jenin-style knafeh, baked to perfection. Then she stopped, looked at the sky, and said humorously, “Ya Allah, hopefully not today!” And we both laughed because of its potential reality.
Dinner on the terrace at her uncle’s home was a delicious spread of hummus, laban, fries, cucumbers pickled by her aunt, and arayes — fried bread stuffed with meat. Then we moved the furniture to sleep on mattresses in a room that extended to the rooftop terrace with a breeze, overlooking Jenin Camp and the rest of Jenin City. We could hear gunshots in the distance. The drones were commonplace, and the heat did not relent. Temperatures soared, and the electricity was out when we woke up at 5 a.m. I heard her pray, and later, as we sipped on coffee and had wafters in the early morning at her home, my eyes went to a piece of tatreez, or embroidery, of a bird in flight framed on the wall. Her eyes followed mine and when I said I loved it.
“It used to be my grandfather’s,” she told me. “Of course it’s beautiful — the bird is free.”
Unexpectedly, Aseel’s mother gifted me a Sprite bottle full of olive oil beholding the sweet hues of its intact health, which I would later ship secretly from Bethlehem all the way to Boston. And then Aseel came to me with a gift, too: a necklace that spoke succinctly about the right to return and live on this earth. Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry was held together with intricate calligraphy carved in the shape of Palestine’s landscape, and I was completely overwhelmed.
“You are in Palestine, my dear,” she had smiled. “And you are now my family. This is your country, this is your second home, really.”
When I ask her about what brings her hope these days, Aseel tells me about her eight-year-old nephew.
He wanted to eat two meals. I told him that in Gaza they don’t have food. He was complaining about the food, and I told him, they don’t have water. And he heard me because he said, “today, we will only have one meal.”
I’m amazed at how mature he is. He even said, “We won’t make a special cake on Eid because of the Gazans.” For me, this is a lesson to be learned. He is only eight years old, but he knows.
We have lost a lot of people in Gaza, but here in the West Bank, we are succeeding because our new generation knows a lot. Ben Gurion would not be happy. He said of Palestinians, “the old will die and the young will forget.” No, the young ask even more questions. The new generation brings us hope. Hope is the new generation.
/sp
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Damilola Banjo
Damilola Banjo is a reporter for PassBlue. She has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. in communications and language arts from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She has worked as a producer for NPR’s WAFE station in Charlotte, N.C.; for the BBC as an investigative journalist; and as a staff investigative reporter for Sahara Reporters Media.