What is the purpose of Ottawa establishing, from the neighboring Dominican Republic, an aid coordination office for the Haitian National Police (PNH)? Added to the fact that Minister Mélanie Joly made the announcement last Friday without apparently having tied all the strings with Santo Domingo, the installation of this remote office provoked doubtful reactions from many Haitians, given the nameless chaos into which the island is sinking. By promising to open it during the summer, the Trudeau government rather gave the impression of not knowing what to do, while Haiti, in the grip of bloody gang violence, requires urgent attention.
However, the gangs, which today control most of the Port-au-Prince region, are an evil with deep roots. When it comes to being useful to Haitian society and bringing it to safety, there is obviously no simple solution, especially since its problems of development and democratic transition touch on causes that go back to the Duvalierist dictatorship and the harmful decisions taken and repeated long ago by the “international community”, including Canada.
This is the current situation: criminal violence and the breakdown of the state, if indeed one can still speak of a state, is combined with an “irreparable humanitarian catastrophe” that the UN continues to report. Published at the end of May, a report by the FAO and the WFP placed Haiti “at the highest levels of concern” in terms of food insecurity – along with Mali, Burkina Faso and Sudan.
The priority in the emergency being to handcuff the armed groups, Ottawa resists those – Washington and the UN Secretary General – who ask it to take the head of a hypothetical international military force whose Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry demands intervention. The Trudeau government is right not to want to put its finger in this gear. No military intervention in Haiti without consensus, repeated Justin Trudeau several times. However, there is no consensus, and for good reason.
Holding power since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, Mr. Henry is without legitimacy, a man who many consider to be a politician embroiled in all kinds of shenanigans. Few Haitians approve of his decision to call for help from a foreign force that would actually help entrench his power and the prevailing culture of impunity. The past being, moreover, a guarantor of the future, the Haitians have lost all confidence in the blue helmets whose successive missions have gone very badly.
There is, however, a consensus around the idea that part of the solution involves strengthening the PNH which, without being immune to corruption, is about the only institution in the country that still has a some integrity with the public. Ottawa has already announced an investment of some $100 million in strengthening the police. Many, including those in opposition to the Henry government, are now expecting concrete and immediate support from Ottawa and other governments in terms of equipment and tactical support. Failing this, the international coordination unit announced by Mrme Joly will never be more than a “cosmetic” measure masking the inaction of the federal government, according to opponent Wilner Cayo and other personalities in the pages of the news writer of Port-au-Prince.
However, the situation could hardly be more deleterious, Port-au-Prince becoming a theater of urban guerrilla warfare, where gangs now face citizen self-defense brigades, operating in concert with the PNH. The key: more than 150 public lynchings of suspected bandits.
The challenge, that said, is all the greater in that it is a question of reducing violence and insecurity whose ramifications are not only local, since they are linked to issues of arms and drug trafficking. that irrigate all of the Americas. Haiti has been a crossroads for the trafficking of Colombian cocaine and Jamaican marijuana since the 1990s. It was therefore time for Ottawa to impose sanctions on political and economic figures suspected of having links with these gangs. . To date, twenty-one people have been sanctioned by Ottawa, including former President Michel Martelly. As it was time for Ottawa — since the issues have a regional dimension — to make the effort to involve the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
If Ottawa’s mobilization on the Haitian question remains indecisive, it would be tragic. And that he continues to support bogus electoral processes and illegitimate governments would be no less so. Haiti presents to the Trudeau government, in foreign policy, a major test of autonomy and coherence.