Haiti’s Prime Minister Unable to Return as Gang Violence Escalates

Haiti continues to be on the verge of a coup or possibly even a civil war. Earlier this week the government declared a state of emergency after a group of gangs escalated violence and demanded the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. 

Henry is backed by the US but as I pointed out Monday, he is not a sympathetic character. He has been linked to the assassination of the previous Prime Minister and has been delaying new elections until the security situation is resolved, always a moving target. 

Meanwhile, the leader of a loose coalition of gangs, a former policeman known as Barbecue, says civil war is coming if Henry doesn’t resign. Barbecue presents himself as a freedom fighter but the gangs have been terrorizing the country, making money by kidnapping and ransoming regular people. So there’s no reason to think Haiti will be better off with Barbecue effectively in charge.

Last month, PM Henry left the country for a summit in Guyana where he reportedly promised to hold elections in mid-2025. From there, Henry flew to Africa where he signed an agreement with Kenya to have a peace-keeping force of Kenyans deployed to Haiti.

Kenya and Haiti signed agreements Friday to try to salvage a plan for the African country to deploy 1,000 police officers to the troubled Caribbean nation to help combat gang violence that has surged to unprecedented levels.

Kenya agreed in October to lead a U.N.-authorized international police force to Haiti, but the Kenyan High Court in January ruled the plan unconstitutional, in part because of a lack of reciprocal agreements between the two countries.

Kenya’s President William Ruto said in a statement that he and Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry witnessed the signing of the reciprocal agreements between the two countries on Friday.

Henry was supposed to return to Haiti this week by flying into the Dominican Republic but because of the escalating violence, some of which was happening near the airport, his plane was redirected to Puerto Rico. At this point there’s no telling when or if Henry will be able to fly home.

Mr. Henry, after landing instead in Puerto Rico on Tuesday, has not made any public statements about his whereabouts or plans to return to Haiti. In the meantime, as scenes of looting and disarray have many people in Port-au-Prince on edge, gang leaders have rushed to fill a power vacuum.

“If Ariel Henry doesn’t resign, if the international community continues to support him, we’re heading straight for a civil war,” Jimmy Chérizier, a top gang leader and former police officer known more widely as Barbecue, told reporters in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday.

All of this puts the US in a difficult situation because we backed Henry after the assassination of the previous PM and because we offered to put up $200 million to pay for the Kenyan peacekeeping force, the arrival of which now seems uncertain.

“That agreement was signed by someone with no legitimacy,” said Monique Clesca, a Haitian democracy activist and former United Nations official, emphasizing that Haiti’s parliament, which is currently not functioning, and possibly its future leader, would need to approve the agreement for the mission to move forward.

Still, others in Haiti contend the Kenyan plan is still on the table. “It’s a fait accompli,” said Claude Joseph, a former prime minister and a leader of one of the political parties in discussions aimed at replacing Mr. Henry. “We need to move forward with the plan. We need it, as soon as possible. We need a strong police with international support.”

At this point, regular people don’t care where the help is coming from, they just want an end to the gang violence and the killing. But there are a lot more gang members than potential peacekeepers and they clearly reject the idea of an outside force coming in to take them down on behalf of PM Henry. So attempts to fly in planeloads of Kenyan police might just escalate the current crisis into something like civil war. The fact that even the Prime Minister can’t fly home suggests how dangerous this plan really is.