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Any “modicum of stability” foreign intervention brings is at the expense of Haiti’s most vulnerable people.

On June 20th, Jovenel Moise made his first statement addressing the more recent round of fighting going on in Matisan/Fontamara after his trip to Turkey. In it, he said help is required from the international community, but was careful to say that he is not asking for foreign troops to return. Even then that statement was concerning. This prompted me to begin writing this essay, not knowing then that that was Jovenel Moise’s last press conference. 

The U.S. occupation which lasted from 1915 – 1934 was a systematic campaign of economic pillage and plunder imposed through violence, resulting in the deaths of fifteen thousand Haitians. US troops came again in 1994 to reinstate Aristide and briefly again after the coup d’etat in 2004.  More recently, UN peacekeeping forces have introduced Cholera to Haiti resulting in 10,000 people dead. There were countless credible allegations of rape by the UN soldiers and abandoned children. And this same UN intervention facilitated the propagation of armed gangs in Port-au-Prince and killed many civilians in the raids it waged against gangs, several of them women and children. UN missions don’t just fail in Haiti,  this is the case in other countries  as well. Often, the solutions implemented are not adapted to the realities on the ground and as the political landscape shifts so does the mission, dragging it out many years. UN missions become increasingly violent and interventionist, no longer only tasked with keeping the peace. 

Now that Jovenel Moise is dead, calls for foreign intervention have spiked in the public discourse reflected in the press, face to face conversations and across social media. In response, many Haitians have been vocal about why it’s important to guard against foreign intervention. 

We have learned that as of Sunday, the US is considering Claude Joseph’s request.  The proponents of foreign intervention for swift elections argue its merits to avoid chaos and for the sake of stability. We know that when disaster strikes, the assumption is that Black people will descend into senseless violence and pillaging. This was the assumption after the earthquake in 2010.  However, like after the earthquake, Haitians have largely stayed home following the assassination. As of Friday, businesses were open again and Saturday evening Haitians excitedly watched a beautiful football match. 

The reality is the source of chaos is the international community backed PHTK party. Structurally, the Haitian economy and public institutions are being held hostage by economic and political kingmakers. Under PHTK, Haitian institutions which were already weak have accelerated to a stand still. The Ministry of Social Affairs has not functioned in many months, the courts were shut down due to a strike, the health system was in tatters even before Corona hit. The Cour des Comptes’ power has been gutted. Haitian’s purchasing power has dropped under PHTK and 4 million people are in dire need of food. According to economist Fritz Jean, Haitians lose $45 million from remittances from the diaspora due to the gap between the BRH’s exchange rate and how much people actually receive when they need dollars. 

The security situation was already untenable under Moise. We experienced over 1000 kidnappings in 2020, and now witness them together in a collective morbid watch party on social media. Politically motivated massacres have become commonplace and the tragic failed operation by the police in Vilaj Dedye laid bare the PNH’s limits to protect Haitian people and its own police. 

This situation of chaos caused by the PHTK form of governance brought the public institutions to a halt, offering the government a chance to shore up its power and forge ahead with a referendum for a new constitution that makes the president and ministers above the law during and after their terms. This is the chaos which a foreign intervention would seal into place, because we know PHTK is not able to conduct a free and fair elections. 

Questioning these knee-jerk proposals by observing the reality of Haitian lives under PHTK over the past decade also defends against discourse that eulogizes Jovenel Moise and make him a martyr. The haste with which such calls for boots on the ground does not give Haitians the time to figure out what really happened with Moise’s death and what political settlement could be formed. That is going to take time. Instead, Haitians have found ourselves being rushed by the international community while conflicting ambitions for power abound; a consensus is unlikely. 

Professor Joy James explains that discourse on liberation movements that is grounded in the actual material wellbeing of the people and concrete resistance to state violence meets opposition in places where knowledge is produced (academia, the media etc). This is because these institutions are propped up by state and private capital. This is why calls for occupation are so shortsighted, like in a recent disappointing Washington Post editorial. The liberation and agency of the Haitian people are abstractions that do not matter and well worth the pains endured for a “modicum of stability.”

We can discuss the damage this death means for the presidency just as the other branches have been systematically dismantled by Jovenel.  But the grievances against Moise and PHTK were based on real suffering, corruption, kidnapping, food insecurity and gang violence. There is an aim to keep people from thinking critically to maintain the status quo. Given all that we know about previous foreign intervention, we understand that this “modicum of stability” comes at the expense of Haiti’s most vulnerable people. Let us not repeat the same mistakes.

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feature image via haitiliberte.com