[News] As US Considers Reoccupying Haiti, History Shows Occupation Is the Root Problem

[Anti-Imperialist News]

truthout.org
<https://truthout.org/articles/as-us-considers-reoccupying-haiti-history-shows-occupation-is-the-root-problem/>
As US Considers Reoccupying Haiti, History Shows Occupation Is the Root
Problem
Danny Shaw - June 5, 2023
------------------------------
[image: image.png]

The United States government is spearheading an effort to reinvade and
reoccupy Haiti. On May 4, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to
the United Nations, led
<https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230505-us-seeks-brazil-help-as-frustration-grows-on-haiti-force>
the latest diplomatic anti-Haitian assault traveling to Brasilia to try to
convince the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to again lead the
“multilateral effort.”

Bogged down in a proxy war in Ukraine to the tune of $113 billion
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/06/02/ukraine-war-us-aid-must-continue-but-monitored/70268552007/>,
the Biden administration has been searching for a Caribbean Community and
Common Market nation or another ally to deputize to carry out the unpopular
mission. Under the guise of humanitarianism, and as a potential prelude to
a full-scale invasion, Canada has been sending
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKkwte6i7xI> spy aircraft, ships and
military aid to the Haitian National Police. The unelected, Core Group
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t6RmBawvRCIY9VPYdv1ng_4fdEtor_zZp6njuzbBhlw/edit>/U.S.-backed
Haitian prime minister, Ariel Henry, has been calling for a foreign
intervention since October 7.

Is this the way forward for this nation of 11.5 million battling an ongoing
gang, gun
<https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1651099289177710592?s=46&t=c_cmhMYkUcCf9U0xgYdNhQ>
and hunger crisis? First, we must understand the history of a century-plus
of U.S. intervention in the Caribbean nation and the role of the Haitian
National Police, which shows why there can be no U.S. and no military
solution for Haiti. We must also understand, beyond the mainstream
misinformation, what is happening right now in Haiti, particularly
Port-au-Prince.
*Guns, Gangs and Hunger: Genocidal Symptoms of Neocolonialism*

Guns, gangs and genocidal attacks in the city of Port-au-Prince against
stable communities have made life even more difficult for millions of
Haitian families. Port-au-Prince is currently embroiled in a war that is
affecting every facet of life in the capital. *CNN* reports
<https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/26/world/haiti-crime-rate-doubles-intl/index.html>
that in the first three months of 2023, there have been 1,600 reported
rapes, kidnappings and murders. One could easily double these stats because
in the most oppressed *bidonvilles* (slums), such as Solino, Cite Militè or
Cite Solèy, the Western press, predictably, has done little to shed light
on the dire situation in the city of 2.7 million. Inflation is over 50
percent. There is no gasoline in the pumps and the cost on the black market
is $15 per gallon. Food is scarce. According to the World Food Program
<https://www.wfp.org/countries/haiti>, a total of 4.9 million Haitians —
nearly half the population – do not have enough to eat, and 1.8 million are
facing emergency levels of food insecurity.

Gang bosses, in touch with representatives of the “Gangsters with Ties
<https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1651712783753379841?s=20>,” far
up in the exclusive mountainside enclaves of Petyonvil, employ young “Gangsters
in Flip Flops
<https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1658660726435725312?s=20>” as
their foot soldiers in the slums of Port-au-Prince. The average “gang
banger” in Delma 6 (G-9 territory), in Granravin (G-Pèp territory) or
Kwadebouke (400 Mawozo territory) works and patrols with a $1,800 Israeli
IMI Galil <https://truegunvalue.com/rifle/galil/price-historical-value>
assault rifle. This same young “gangster” most often doesn’t have the 300
gouds ($2 dollars) necessary to eat lunch. The horizontal violence, no
different than in any U.S. city or neocolony, pits the gangs against one
another in competition for key turf to direct their operations, against the
people who are determined to survive and keep their communities safe, and
against the poorly paid and equipped police. There is ample proof that
these guns are made in the USA
<https://twitter.com/TheIntlMagz/status/1651671639216779264?s=20>.

The unfolding historical duel for Haiti’s self-determination between the
forces of submission and liberation has many moving parts. My other work
offers a deeper understanding of the guns, gangs and hybrid war unfolding
in Port-au-Prince. This article will focus on the possibility of yet
another foreign invasion.

Yes, there is a crisis. But do those forces responsible for the disease
truly have the cure?
*A Free Country or a Neocolony?*

>From 1915 until 1934, U.S. Marines occupied Haiti
<https://truthout.org/articles/military-intervention-will-birth-military-occupation-haitian-activist-warns/>
as the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge,
Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt contemplated how to best integrate
Caribbean nations into the U.S.’s imperial sphere of influence. The forces
of occupation and white supremacy relentlessly pursued the Cacos, a peasant
guerrilla army led by Charlemagne Péralte, labeling them bandits.

>From 1957 until 1971 the U.S. government worked through Francois “Papa Doc”
Duvalier and his private military force, the Tonton Makouts. Duvalier’s
security force murdered over 60,000 <https://www.coha.org/tonton-macoutes/>
Haitian leftists in the 14 years that “Papa Doc” was in power. These
merciless killers, who were officially called the Volunteers for National
Security, persecuted, disappeared, exiled, tortured and massacred a
generation of Haiti’s most courageous and brightest daughters and sons.

As long as there was no repeat of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the U.S.
foreign policy establishment was content to allow the 8,000-member militia
to maraud across Haiti, living off of corruption and terrorizing anyone who
dared speak out against the dictatorship. Even *Time* magazine openly
wondered in 1962 why the U.S. government had sent
<https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,870036,00.html>
the ruthless Papa Doc $1,100,000 in arms over the past two years to equip
Haiti’s regular army, air force and coast guard. Human Rights Watch called
out the U.S. for its support of Duvalier in 2004
<https://www.coha.org/tonton-macoutes/>.

In 1971, Francois Duvalier died from a heart attack but not before naming
his 19-year-old son Jean Claude Duvalier, “president for life.” At the
height of the Cold War, the U.S. put all their eggs in the Duvalier 2.0
basket. Any opponent of “Baby Doc” or his International Monetary Fund and
World Bank overlords was also exiled or executed, according to Paul
Farmer’s *The Uses of Haiti* and Elizabeth Abbott’s *Haiti: The First
Inside Account.*

Jeb Sprague’s* Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti*
outlines the U.S.’s later overt and covert support for multiple coup
attempts, two of which were successful in 1991 and 2004, against the twice
democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. After 1991, in
order to repress support for the exiled Aristide, the U.S. government
started working through the far-right paramilitary group, The Front for the
Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH). The top commanders of FRAPH,
Emmanuel “Toto” Constant openly
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AZFKDaGi5o> talked about his career
working clandestinely for the Central Intelligence Agency and Guy Philippe
was a known U.S. intelligence operative
<https://haitiliberte.com/the-real-crimes-of-guy-philippe/>. The FRAPH
assassinated an estimated 5,000 dissidents
<https://haitiliberte.com/the-real-crimes-of-guy-philippe/> during the 1991
to 1994 coup.

In the last century, when has Haiti ever been free of U.S. financial,
political, diplomatic, military, paramilitary and economic coercion? This
brief history of U.S. invasion and control proves that the current effort
to reoccupy Haiti didn’t come out of nowhere. Nor is this blood-curdling
brutality somehow part of Haitian genetics, as many of Haiti’s racist
detractors allege. This tragedy unfolding in Port-au-Prince is more a part
of the U.S.’s DNA than Haiti’s.
*Core Group Neocolonizers*

This brief sketch of Haiti’s history since the 20th century shows the
problem is not the lack of action of Western powers. A U.S. audience should
not fall for the crocodile tears of *CNN *or other mainstream anchors when
they speak of this dignified nation.

Haiti’s challenge has been the opposite, the over-involvement, or complete
domination, by foreign powers of Haitian geopolitics. Only forces as
arrogant as the G7 heads of government would self-anoint themselves as “the
international community.” Haitians know them as the Core Group. Author Cécile
Accilien <https://truthout.org/authors/cecile-accilien/> explains the Core
Group as largely made up of white ambassadors from the U.S., Brazil,
Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and the European Union who are viewed by
many people inside and outside of Haiti as a secretive colonial and
imperialist alliance meddling in Haitian political affairs.

The Core Group, and the pro-intervention forces they finance, use
humanitarian rhetoric just as they did to justify their illegal invasions,
bombing campaigns and occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and beyond.
Keith Mines, director of the Latin America program at the paradoxically
named U.S. Institute of Peace writes
<https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/03/keith-mines-securing-haitis-political-future>,
“It’s pretty simple. No one wants to [invade Haiti]. There’s just no
country that right now feels either a responsibility or a compulsion to do
this.” After lauding how “effective on the ground Brazilian, Canadian and
Chilean forces have been,” referring to the 2004-2017 UN occupation, Mines
went on to claim, “We’re riding this wave of anti-nation building right now
which I think is very unfortunate.”

It’s important to educate a Western audience on why these neoliberal claims
are blatant lies. The Core Group has always been an anti-nation building
global gang. Their “responsibility and compulsion” never had anything to do
with noble, selfless motives as their corporate mouthpieces claim. They are
motivated by power and profits. It is well documented
<https://nyupress.org/9780853459910/open-veins-of-latin-america/> that for
over a century now the U.S. has coordinated the repression of Indigenous
leftists across Haiti and the Americas to then parachute down crumbs on the
populations in the form of charity programs led by missionaries and
nongovernmental organizations.
*The United Nations*

It is widely accepted in the Western world that the UN is a neutral,
“peace-keeping” actor on the international stage. Nowhere has this been
less true than in Haiti.

On February 29, 2004, President Aristide was surrounded by U.S. marines,
forced onto a U.S. military plane and flown to the Central African
Republic. This intimidated, diluted, beaten-down version of Aristide, in
comparison to the 1986 and 1991 Aristide, was still enough of a threat that
Roger Noriega, the assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere
affairs under George W. Bush, and the foreign policy establishment in D.C.,
acted again to instigate a coup and kidnap him
<https://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/1/exclusive_breaking_news_br_president_aristide>.


The Pentagon spun on a dime. The coordination was quick. Suddenly, Haiti’s
Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre was president. He petitioned
the UN Security Council to send an “international peacekeeping force.” The
Security Council authorized the mission. One-thousand U.S. marines embarked
on “Operation Secure Tomorrow.” They were in Haiti by nightfall. Canadian,
French and Chilean troops invaded a few hours later.

For 14 years, 2,366 military personnel and 2,533 police from Brazil, Chile,
Sri Lanka, and other UN countries occupied Haiti. This was not a peace
mission as the UN claimed; this was a mission of occupation, humiliation
and repression. I was in Port-au-Prince during the UN Stabilization Mission
and witnessed the disconnect between the foreign soldiers and Haitians.
What knowledge did these soldiers have of Haitian history, culture and
Kreyòl? Filmmaker Kevin Pina’s *Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits*
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RSZI3zUqkM&list=PLkk-N32TcBHKbB_ciwhfsCpSflyn7GqQl&index=2>
documents the human rights abuses and massacres carried out by occupying
troops in Cité Solèy, Fò Nasyonal, and other oppressed communities of
Port-au-Prince.

To bring it to the present day, after Haiti had been marching for months
against Washington bullets to remove the petty, mediocre Core
Group-sponsored tyrant, President Jovenel Moise, the recent release of phone
records shows
<https://cepr.net/exclusive-how-haitis-assassination-plot-unraveled-minute-by-minute-and-text-by-text/>
that the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and Miami-based private security firm Counter Terrorist Unit
Federal Academy had links to the July 7, 2021, assassination of Moise.
Hypotheses abound across Haiti as to why the State Department took out the
unpopular Moise. Some say Moise was shutting down private airports being
used by drug and arms traffickers. Others say he was pivoting toward the
U.S.’s main geopolitical rival
<https://haitiliberte.com/is-the-u-s-covering-up-its-role-in-moises-murder/>,
Russia. Regardless of the exact reasons, few question who is ultimately
responsible
<https://jacobin.com/2021/07/haiti-assassination-president-moise-petrocaribe>
for the gruesome murder.
*The Haitian National Police*

The Haitian National Police (PNH) officially has 9,000 officers
<https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2023/02/03/haiti-in-2023-political-abyss-and-vicious-gangs/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%201%2C200%20kidnappings%20were,least%20280%20in%20November%20alone.>.
As the above history shows, the state has never been on the side of the
Haitian people. Thoroughly corrupt and guilty of egregious human rights
violations, the Haitian police have always been on the opposite side of the
barricades. This has never prevented a U.S. presidency from supporting the
PNH.

The Trump administration quadrupled
<https://therealnews.com/us-state-department-gave-money-to-firm-tied-to-haitian-police>
U.S. support for the PNH from $2.8 million in 2016 to more than $12.4
million in 2019. That same year the State Department
<https://cepr.net/state-department-awarded-contract-to-politically-connected-security-firm/>
awarded a $73,000 contract to a private security firm to quell potential
riots which were in fact peaceful demonstrations against the lackey
Moise. Canada
and the U.S.
<https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/16/canada-haiti-trudeau-national-police-00083377>
continue to support the police. The film *Haiti Betrayed*
<https://haitibetrayedfilm.com/> reveals that Canada has never been the
“good cop” in Haiti but has rather been an uncritical junior partner of the
U.S., joining in the ongoing pillaging of the nation.

Another word on the police is important here. Port-au-Prince is embroiled
in war. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced. Gangs burn, rape,
pillage, extort, kidnap, murder and massacre at will. Never before have
families and communities been so paralyzed in Port-au-Prince. In Vilaj de
Die, the stronghold of the banned YouTube artist Izo, when the police
attempted to apprehend gangsters, they were slaughtered. Given the
intensity of this historical moment, there are new debates underway in the
ghettos of Haiti about how to characterize and relate to the police. This
recent demonstration
<https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1658171236814315539?s=20> in
Solino ghetto called for “the marriage of the people and the police.” It
may be the first-time Haitian progressives have ever applauded the police
and sought to support them in the nation’s history. This shows how many
residents consider the gangs to be their principal enemy.
*Haitian-Led Solutions*

Not once has *CNN*, *The New York Times* or *Fox* asked the grassroots
Haitian leadership what they want. In my conversations and meetings with
dozens of social organizations, including Radyo Resistanz
<https://www.facebook.com/people/Radyo-Rezistans/100063586673547/>, MOLEGHAF
<https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1575835462379646976?s=20> and SOFA
<https://sofahaiti.org/> there are several proposals that come up again and
again:

   1. *True International Solidarity*: The Haitian people distrust the
   Troika of Evil, the U.S., France and Canada, along with their junior
   partners, the UN and Organization of American States. Grassroots
   organizations desire working relationships with their anti-imperialist
   counterparts in South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, and other nations and
   struggling peoples across the Global South. Haitians demand to be left
   alone by the Core Group and are fighting for greater integration into
   multipolar organizations, such as the Southern Common Market (UNASUR), the
   regional BRICS economies, Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our
   America and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. Haitian leadership is not
   looking to Washington, D.C. or Miami. There are deep ancestral connections
   to Caracas, Havana, Durban, Lima, Savannah, and beyond.
   2. *The International Division of Labor*: As long as there is such deep
   inequality between the Western exploiter countries and the Global South,
   hundreds of millions of families will have no choice but to immigrate in
   order to eat and survive. A simple comparison of economic possibilities
   <https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/minimum-wage-by-country>
   in the U.S. and Haiti shows why migration continues to be inevitable under
   a neocolonial system. In the U.S., the average worker toils for 40 hours
   per week at $7.25 and makes an annual income of $15,080. A Haitian worker
   averages 48 hours of labor per week at $0.41 cents per hour to make a
   salary of $1,014. Economic, political, diplomatic and military inequality
   are part and parcel of this international system. We have no choice but to
   build a new system based on mutually beneficial trade and economic
   cooperation.
   3. *Reparations*: The former colonizers and present-day exploiters have
   a debt with Haiti. Haiti did not arrive at this particular moment isolated
   from world politics. Quite the opposite. Haiti has not ceased to be in the
   crosshairs of imperial ambitions and plunder. In 2001, President Aristide
   ordered a 21-gun salute at his inauguration for the $21 billion France owes
   Haiti. A thorough review by the Haitian people of the decades and centuries
   of rape and plunder will determine how much each colonial and neocolonial
   entity owes.
   4. *Bring State Services to the Ghetto*: Gangs are not just bloody
   groups of murderers. Some gang leaders see themselves as war lords; others
   see themselves as anti-bourgeois Robin Hoods. But what about the strongest
   gang, a small clique of oligarchs who work with their neocolonial
   overlords. Haiti has the highest rate of millionaires
   <https://newint.org/features/1999/09/05/profile> of any country in the
   Americas. In an interview
   <https://mronline.org/2021/07/20/haitian-ruling-families-create-and-kill-monsters/>
   entitled “Haitian Ruling Families Create and Kill Monsters,” longtime
   Haitian author, analyst and activist Jafrik Ayiti takes a closer look at a
   dozen or so light-skinned oligarchs who control the central economic and
   political arteries of the Caribbean nation. All of the media attention when
   it comes to the “gang crisis” has been on the most cast-off members of
   Port-au-Prince’s lumpenproletariat who wield guns and violence in a bid to
   control ever-increasing swaths of the city. We must take a closer look
   at some of these tycoons
   <https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1654314323156631552?s=20>, the
   economic and political power they hold and their role in this crisis. The
   Brookings Institute discusses
   <https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/1205_latin_america_slums_felbabbrown.pdf>
   governmental strategies that have pushed a social agenda into the most
   violent, anti-social communities. Though the Brookings Institute heavily
   favors state repression, it also discusses land reform, infrastructure
   projects and the building up of legal economic opportunities as a way to
   peacefully demobilize gang members.
   5. *The Bwa Kale Movement:* This movement exploded into Haitian parlance
   on April 24
   <https://haitiantimes.com/2023/05/01/in-haiti-bwa-kale-vigilantes-turn-tables-against-suspected-gangs/>.
   Residents of Kanape Vè intercepted a police vehicle carrying Ti Makak gang
   members from Laboul who were trying to expand into their neighborhood. The
   spontaneous crowd stoned and burned the alleged gang leaders. Like the 1986
   *dechoukaj*, or uprooting of the Tonton Makouts, this ignited a new
   ghetto-vigilante movement vowing to defend themselves and their homes
   against gangs by any means necessary. *Bwa Kale* (vulgar slang for
   erection) is a catchphrase for a new, widespread and spontaneous
   phenomenon, again showing how desperate the ghettos are to rid themselves
   of the latest arsonists, racketeers, rapists and thieves. Community
   organizers have worked to erect barricades
   <https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article274777746.html>,
   file down 100,000 machetes and distribute them. Many warn of the vigilante
   tactics because others can use them for opportunistic reasons, such as
   allowing the settling of personal scores.

The Haitian people who carrying the legacy of the 1804 revolution of
self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in their blood have
overcome the greatest of foes and challenges. They are confident they will
again bury another.
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