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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">As US Considers Reoccupying Haiti, History Shows Occupation Is the Root Problem</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Danny Shaw - June 5, 2023<br></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_limd69090" alt="image.png" width="392" height="261"><br><p>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, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230505-us-seeks-brazil-help-as-frustration-grows-on-haiti-force">led</a>
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.”</p>
<p>Bogged down in a proxy war in Ukraine <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/06/02/ukraine-war-us-aid-must-continue-but-monitored/70268552007/">to the tune of $113 billion</a>,
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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKkwte6i7xI">sending</a> spy aircraft, ships and military aid to the Haitian National Police. The unelected, <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t6RmBawvRCIY9VPYdv1ng_4fdEtor_zZp6njuzbBhlw/edit">Core Group</a>/U.S.-backed Haitian prime minister, Ariel Henry, has been calling for a foreign intervention since October 7.</p>
<p>Is this the way forward for this nation of 11.5 million battling an ongoing gang, <a href="https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1651099289177710592?s=46&t=c_cmhMYkUcCf9U0xgYdNhQ">gun</a>
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. </p>
<h2><strong>Guns, Gangs and Hunger: Genocidal Symptoms of Neocolonialism</strong></h2>
<p>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. <em>CNN</em> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/26/world/haiti-crime-rate-doubles-intl/index.html">reports</a>
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 <em>bidonvilles</em> (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 <a href="https://www.wfp.org/countries/haiti">World Food Program</a>,
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. </p>
<p>Gang bosses, in touch with representatives of the “<a href="https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1651712783753379841?s=20">Gangsters with Ties</a>,” far up in the exclusive mountainside enclaves of Petyonvil, employ young “<a href="https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1658660726435725312?s=20">Gangsters in Flip Flops</a>”
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 <a href="https://truegunvalue.com/rifle/galil/price-historical-value">Galil</a>
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 <a href="https://twitter.com/TheIntlMagz/status/1651671639216779264?s=20">guns are made in the USA</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Yes, there is a crisis. But do those forces responsible for the disease truly have the cure?</p>
<h2><strong>A Free Country or a Neocolony?</strong></h2>
<p>From 1915 until 1934, U.S. Marines <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/military-intervention-will-birth-military-occupation-haitian-activist-warns/">occupied Haiti</a>
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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.coha.org/tonton-macoutes/">60,000</a>
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.</p>
<p>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 <em>Time</em> magazine openly wondered in 1962 <a href="https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,870036,00.html">why the U.S. government had sent</a>
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 <a href="https://www.coha.org/tonton-macoutes/">2004</a>.</p>
<p>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 <em>The Uses of Haiti</em> and Elizabeth Abbott’s <em>Haiti: The First Inside Account.</em></p>
<p>Jeb Sprague’s<em> Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti</em>
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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AZFKDaGi5o">openly</a> talked about his career working clandestinely for the Central Intelligence Agency and Guy Philippe was a known <a href="https://haitiliberte.com/the-real-crimes-of-guy-philippe/">U.S. intelligence operative</a>. The FRAPH assassinated <a href="https://haitiliberte.com/the-real-crimes-of-guy-philippe/">an estimated 5,000 dissidents</a> during the 1991 to 1994 coup. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2><strong>Core Group Neocolonizers</strong></h2>
<p>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 <em>CNN </em>or other mainstream anchors when they speak of this dignified nation.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://truthout.org/authors/cecile-accilien/">Cécile Accilien</a>
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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/03/keith-mines-securing-haitis-political-future">U.S. Institute of Peace writes</a>,
“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.” </p>
<p>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. <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780853459910/open-veins-of-latin-america/">It is well documented</a>
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.</p>
<h2><strong>The United Nations</strong></h2>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/1/exclusive_breaking_news_br_president_aristide">coup and kidnap him</a>. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RSZI3zUqkM&list=PLkk-N32TcBHKbB_ciwhfsCpSflyn7GqQl&index=2"><em>Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits</em></a>
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. </p>
<p>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 <a href="https://cepr.net/exclusive-how-haitis-assassination-plot-unraveled-minute-by-minute-and-text-by-text/">phone records shows</a>
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 <a href="https://haitiliberte.com/is-the-u-s-covering-up-its-role-in-moises-murder/">pivoting toward the U.S.’s main geopolitical rival</a>, Russia. Regardless of the exact reasons, <a href="https://jacobin.com/2021/07/haiti-assassination-president-moise-petrocaribe">few question who is ultimately responsible</a> for the gruesome murder.</p>
<h2><strong>The Haitian National Police</strong></h2>
<p>The Haitian National Police (PNH) officially has <a href="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.">9,000 officers</a>.
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.</p>
<p>The Trump administration <a href="https://therealnews.com/us-state-department-gave-money-to-firm-tied-to-haitian-police">quadrupled</a> U.S. support for the PNH from $2.8 million in 2016 to more than $12.4 million in 2019. That same year <a href="https://cepr.net/state-department-awarded-contract-to-politically-connected-security-firm/">the State Department</a>
awarded a $73,000 contract to a private security firm to quell
potential riots which were in fact peaceful demonstrations against the
lackey Moise. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/16/canada-haiti-trudeau-national-police-00083377">Canada and the U.S.</a> continue to support the police. The film <a href="https://haitibetrayedfilm.com/"><em>Haiti Betrayed</em></a>
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. </p>
<p>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. <a href="https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1658171236814315539?s=20">This recent demonstration</a>
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. </p>
<h2><strong>Haitian-Led Solutions</strong></h2>
<p>Not once has <em>CNN</em>, <em>The New York Times</em> or <em>Fox</em>
asked the grassroots Haitian leadership what they want. In my
conversations and meetings with dozens of social organizations,
including <a href="https://www.facebook.com/people/Radyo-Rezistans/100063586673547/">Radyo Resistanz</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1575835462379646976?s=20">MOLEGHAF</a> and <a href="https://sofahaiti.org/">SOFA</a> there are several proposals that come up again and again:</p>
<ol><li><strong>True International Solidarity</strong>: 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. </li><li><strong>The International Division of Labor</strong>: 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 <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/minimum-wage-by-country">economic possibilities</a>
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. </li><li><strong>Reparations</strong>: 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.</li><li><strong>Bring State Services to the Ghetto</strong>: 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 <a href="https://newint.org/features/1999/09/05/profile">millionaires</a> of any country in the Americas. In an <a href="https://mronline.org/2021/07/20/haitian-ruling-families-create-and-kill-monsters/">interview</a>
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 href="https://twitter.com/dannyshawcuny/status/1654314323156631552?s=20">a closer look at some of these tycoons</a>, the economic and political power they hold and their role in this crisis. <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/1205_latin_america_slums_felbabbrown.pdf">The Brookings Institute discusses</a>
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. </li><li><strong>The Bwa Kale Movement:</strong> This movement exploded into Haitian parlance on<a href="https://haitiantimes.com/2023/05/01/in-haiti-bwa-kale-vigilantes-turn-tables-against-suspected-gangs/"> April 24</a>.
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 <em>dechoukaj</em>, 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. <em>Bwa Kale</em>
(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 <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article274777746.html">to erect barricades</a>,
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.</li></ol>
<p>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.</p>
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