Once Again in Haiti, Something Must Change

Change can come to Haiti in a hurry, but only when the United States decides it will. Pope John Paul II famously said that “something must change” in Haiti in 1983, during the rule of Jean-Claude Duvalier. But not until 1986, when the State Department decided to abandon Duvalier, did he finally leave the country that he and his father had worked to impoverish.

Yesterday, the United States seemed to make a similar break with Ariel Henry, the de facto prime minister whom Washington has supported—doggedly and against all sane advice—throughout the two and a half years of his dismal administration.

Mass demonstrations last year did not move the United States to stop insisting on Henry’s legitimacy. Under his rule, criminal gangs have gone largely unchecked, and in the past week, their murderous and disruptive activity has produced an unignorable security crisis. Only now has Washington appeared to accede to demands that Henry step aside—at a moment when prospects could hardly be less promising for a respectable, responsible democrat to ascend into the Haitian presidency, and when many armed criminals are at the ready.

On Friday, just before the opening of a hellish weekend of violence and turmoil in Port-au-Prince (Haitians describe the weekend as “très mouvementé,” or “very hectic”), Jimmy Chérizier, a former policeman and the charismatic head of G9, one of Haiti’s biggest and most powerful gangs, gave a short, tough speech directed at the Haitian National Police, basically asking them to abandon Henry.

At that moment, a scant five days ago, the police force—somewhat bedraggled and very much outgunned and outnumbered—was more or less all that stood between the government and the gangs’ total domination of the capital. The police force and, of course, the United States, the unseen actor always present.

Dressed in full black body armor that included a pair of pretty impressive gauntlets, and wielding an automatic weapon, Chérizier, whose nickname is, ominously, “Barbecue,” pointed out how badly Henry and his minimal government have neglected the police force and claimed that he and his gang have always taken better care of the wives and kids of policemen who fell in the line of duty. He seemed to be asking the police to join forces with G9 to topple the government (such as it was).

In fact, scores of young police officers have died brutal and unconscionable deaths at the hands of the gangs, including G9, in the past two years. I have seen some of these killings on gangsters’ video streams and have not yet been able to unsee them. More than Chérizier’s cynical arguments and revolutionary posturing, those deaths have persuaded police officers to reconsider their political positions. Rather than being lured into the gangs, some 1,000 police officers, out of an original force of about 9,000, have simply left the country in the past 18 months, taking advantage recently of President Joe Biden’s special immigration plan for Haiti.

By way of comparison, consider that anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 gang members are estimated to be working in roughly 200 gangs throughout the country. The best armed and biggest gangs now control at least 80 percent of the capital. Unlike the cops, they’re not leaving Haiti. Gang membership has been a good job, and more lucrative for many than working for the police. Just like a cop, you get a gun—and a more impressive one than most cops have—plus some of the proceeds from kidnap ransoms and robberies. You get a kind of respect in your neighborhood. You can also pursue your own crimes on a freelance basis. Not bad.

In the past few days, the biggest of the gangs have been warring to gain control over outlying areas of the capital, and on the weekend, a consortium of gangs, including Chérizier’s, overran the National Penitentiary and another large prison near Port-au-Prince, allowing the entire prison population of about 5,000 to escape. Though many of these prisoners were low-level offenders who’d been held for years without being charged, a few were capos in the gangs.

On Tuesday night, as I sat writing, friends in Haiti were texting me on WhatsApp. “Now the shooting is nonstop from Delmas,” a friend wrote, referring to a major avenue that extends from the top of Port-au-Prince almost to the Caribbean shore, and which gangs have been battling over for more than a year. “Heavy machine gun exchange,” he wrote again, a minute or so later.

Meanwhile, the hapless Ariel Henry had been scooting around the globe trying to secure a United Nations–structured multinational force to help his government regain control of the country. The prospect has met with little enthusiasm, even among those in the international community who have supported the idea: So far only $11 million has been provided to fund such a force.

One stop on Henry’s itinerary was Nairobi, where he signed a deal to bring 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti. (Several smaller countries were and maybe still are also planning to send support.) While he was in Kenya—looking tall and presidential in his business suit and going from government building to government building, signing agreements, and shaking hands with Kenyan President William Ruto—the gangs back in Port-au-Prince were blowing apart the remaining security and state infrastructure; and in Washington, the United States was coming to realize, finally, that Henry was a liability.

Over the weekend and on Monday, Haiti’s port, prisons, police headquarters, border security, police academy, and international airport came under fire. As for Henry, the AP and Reuters reported that his whereabouts were “unknown.”

He finally turned up in nearby Puerto Rico after a circuitous flight that was barred from landing in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island Haiti occupies. He seems now to be stuck in Puerto Rico without a ride home, no doubt wondering when and even if he will ever return.

[Read: The realist’s weapon in the fight for democracy]

He would do well to beware. He has never been a popular leader. Ariel ale, most of the handwritten signs held aloft during demonstrations have read: Get out, Ariel. Many Haitians saw him as at best weak, negligent, and silent in the face of abuses against his people. At worst, some speculated that his coterie was either complicit with or under the thumb of the gangs. He was never elected: He came to power in a provisional capacity, with the support of the United States, after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, and many Haitians have since seen him as a roadblock on the path to real electoral democracy. Until now, the United States has refused to support any effort to push forward without him, always demanding that politicians and groups hoping to move toward elections include Henry and his entourage in their talks to end the crisis.

Now no one wants Henry. Not the United States, which has all but asked him to resign. Not the gangs, which spent last night further damaging the airport. And not the Haitian people. Many would be happy never to give him another thought.

Last night, friends forwarded me some of the warnings that had circulated on WhatsApp during the day and evening. “Rue de Juvenat: Cadavres signalés,” corpses on Rue de Juvenat—read the bright blue alert, accompanied by what is apparently the international symbol for dead bodies in the streets, two figures lying flat next to each other, like police body outlines. And more of the same: “Carrefour de Drouillard: Cadavres signalés.” For the past few days, whole neighborhoods have been fleeing as gangs descended on their homes. A photo I saw early Tuesday morning showed five corpses, seemingly a fleeing family, lying on a curb in a pool of blood. The next alert I received delved further into the level of brutality that has become commonplace: “Rue Catalpa; Zone Fragneauvil: Cadavre calciné,” corpse burned to ashes. This particular international symbol consists of a single body silhouette with flames and tires covering the lower limbs.

All day long, messages marked “URGENT” flashed around WhatsApp, reporting gang attacks on the remaining infrastructure. Into the night, the Kraze Barye gang (the name means “Break Down the Barriers,” and it’s not metaphorical) continued barraging the National Police Academy with heavy fire. Hundreds of young officers were training there.

The Haitians I’m in touch with are asking themselves and one another a lot of questions right now. They can’t know exactly what they are seeing, as so many actors are operating behind the scenes. Maybe this is the grand finale of a slow coup d’état, after which some version of the gangs will manage to take power. Such an outcome would be extraordinary. But then, Haiti has a history of singular events—including the world’s only slave revolt that ended in the establishment of a state by the formerly enslaved.

And some gang leaders do seem to be angling for a role in politics. Chérizier has recently renamed his G9 gang Viv Ansanm, which means “Live Together,” and promised to release all of the gang’s current hostages without demanding ransom (how generous!). Guy Philippe, who helped oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 and was later convicted and imprisoned in the U.S. for money laundering, is back in Haiti and issuing very official-looking position papers. He’s formed his own gang from an armed state-run environmental-protection force—and issued a paper on the way forward to democracy, pompously calling for a presidential council to replace Henry and naming himself and his friends to that council, from which a prime minister would be chosen.

If the past is any guide, the U.S. may try to defuse the situation by selecting and backing a new prime minister. But not only would Washington have to choose a very special, well-known, credible person to take that hot seat and succeed; it would be doing so while the gangs continue to rule with impunity in the streets.

[Read: A stark choice for America]

“Right now, the focus has got to be on getting that multinational security element in there,” John Kirby, the White House national-security communications adviser, said on Tuesday. But with whom, exactly, can the international community work on such a plan when there is no longer, without Henry, even a puppet remaining in power who can pretend to represent the Haitian people?

The streets of Port-au-Prince normally bustle in the mornings with markets, students, street vendors, snarled traffic, and people on their way to work or out looking for day jobs. This week those streets have turned ghostly. Yesterday, people barely noticed any gunfire. But people still shut their doors tightly when darkness falls, instead of walking around to spend time with friends, visit neighborhood chicken joints or corner ladies frying up street delicacies, play street dominoes or soccer, braid hair or study under streetlights, or enjoy the night market and music at the Champs de Mars.

Who but a patriot or a madman would want to be president right now? Henry’s finance minister, Patrick Boivert, is currently running the government and has declared a 72-hour state of emergency, the response to which was basically a national eye roll. Everyone already knew there was an emergency. Haitians like to say that they don’t have post-traumatic stress disorder—they have plain old traumatic stress disorder. Now the country is waiting nervously for its next chapter.

Of the 5,000 prisoners recently released, most are trying to flee to family in the calmer countryside, but plenty will stay in the capital to join up with their old gangs. The state university hospital has closed because of continual threats, as well as a shortage of supplies and personnel. The weekend’s violence alone displaced an estimated 15,000 people, according to the UN’s humanitarian-affairs office; that’s in addition to the more than 300,000 who were already internally displaced. Schools and businesses are largely closed, financial transactions are at a standstill, the airport is not functioning, and barely anything is coming in through the ports or the border with the DR. Tomorrow, the gangs’ battles may start up again, state of emergency or not.

The United States has finally given Haiti what it has been looking for over the past two years: a possible route around the problem of Henry. But another problem remains: the United States itself, which, along with a broader group of institutions and countries that for the most part follow the Americans’ lead on Haiti policy, has made too many bad choices for Haiti in the past to inspire confidence.

State Department spokespeople said yesterday that the U.S. is not pressuring Henry to resign, but simply hopes to “expedite the transition to an empowered and inclusive governance structure.” Effectively however, this means stepping aside. Will Haitians be able to push forward an interim government acceptable to both the Haitian people and the international community? Will the gangs be involved in these decisions? Chérizier and Kraze Barye could credibly demand a seat at the table because their actions this past weekend and since January have lit the fires that finally seem to be smoking Henry out. In any case, some way will have to be found to deal with the gangs and to reintegrate their members back into a peaceable society that includes jobs.

With Henry out of the picture, both Americans and the Haitians who have been trying to work for democratic change and good government might have a chance to show the people of Haiti that their hopes and expectations for the country and their children are valid and should be respected. Yesterday, Doctors Without Borders reopened the Port-au-Prince emergency facility that it had shut down in December for security reasons—a sign that perhaps things will begin to improve for the average Haitian.

As Maryse Pénette-Kedar, a businesswoman in Port-au-Prince, told me, “Now what we need is a government of managers who can do their job with transparency and competence.”