A Brutal History of Foreign Meddling in Haiti is Responsible for its Ongoing Crises

The assassination plot 

While much uncertainty still surrounds the July 7 assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, it is now known that a mercenary squad comprised of 26 Colombians and two Haitian-Americans carried out the hired killing on behalf of Florida-based company CTU Security. At least seven of the Colombian mercenaries received U.S. military training between 2001 and 2015, including retired military officer Francisco Eladio Uribe, who was being investigated for his role in the Colombian “false positive” massacres overseen by former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe between 2002 and 2008. The owner of CTU Security Antonio Emmanuel Intriago Valera, who is currently under investigation for his role in the assassination, has ties with current Colombian president, protégé of Alvaro Uribe, and close U.S. ally, Iván Duque.

Joseph Gertand Vincent, one of the Haitian-Americans involved in the assassination, worked as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, while the other Haitian-American, James Solages, was employed as a security guard for prominent Haitian opposition leader Reginald Boulos. According to journalist Kim Ives, there is a growing popular consensus in Haiti that Boulos was behind the assassination as part of a power grab from rival elites. Boulos had hired a prominent D.C. lobbyist two days before the assassination to help “encourage President Biden to support an interim Haitian government,” presumably one that included his party’s leadership. Haitian authorities have since assigned Judge Mathieu Chanlatte to lead the investigation into Moïse’s assasination. Critics question Chanlatte’s objectivity, pointing to his dubious handling of a past corruption probe into Jovenel Moïse’s wife Martine.    

However, the complex web of foreign meddling in Haitian politics extends far beyond the recent assassination. Unceasing Western interference, including under the guise of humanitarianism, has destroyed Haitian political sovereignty and crushed the Haitian masses under a neo-liberalized economic system.

A brief history of Western intervention in Haiti

Since the end of the Haitian Revolution, the world’s only successful nationwide slave revolt, Haiti has been the target of vengeful Western imperial aggression. In 1825, after two centuries of brutal exploitation of both people and land, France saddled Haiti with an absurd debt of 150 million francs to compensate French colonists for their lost revenues from slavery. France has never issued restitution to Haiti for its past crimes.

Following the last assassination of a Haitian president in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson immediately ordered the invasion and subsequent 19-year occupation of Haiti to “restore order” and “maintain political and economic stability in the Caribbean.” Apparently, the restoration of order required the murder and rape of thousands of Haitians and the looting of the Haitian National Bank, whose funds were used as a corporate kickback for Wall Street.  

Despite the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Haiti in 1934, the United States continued to control Haitian political and economic policy through decades of support for Haitian dictators “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son “Baby Doc”, whose death squads murdered more than 60,000 Haitians. Less than a year after the first democratic elections in Haitian history in 1990, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed in a CIA-orchestrated coup.

Bill Clinton’s 1994 invasion to reinstate Aristide was a quid pro quo for the adaptation of neoliberal economic policies. These policies included the 1995 imposed IMF and World Bank structural adjustment program that slashed import tariffs on rice, dooming Haitian agricultural production and transforming Haiti into the fifth-largest importer of American rice. (Most of Haiti’s rice comes from Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s home state.)

In 2004, the Bush administration continued the destruction of Haitian democracy by ousting Aristide for a second time in a joint U.S., French, and Canadian operation. After U.S. Special Forces kidnapped Aristide and dropped him off in the Central African Republic, President Bush announced the deployment of U.S. troops to Haiti to “help stabilize the country,” which was followed by a 15-year UN peace-keeping military occupation.     

While the UN Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH) introduced a cholera epidemic and engaged in mass rape, the chaotic aftermath of the 2010 earthquake gave U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the perfect opportunity to unilaterally select Michel Martelly as the next Haitian president. This further undermined Haiti’s already tenuous political sovereignty and imposed further neoliberal economic measures benefitting foreign investors to the detriment of the Haitian masses. Clinton’s State Department even went as far as to assist U.S. corporations with factories in Haiti in blocking an already-approved minimum wage increase.

Handpicked by Martelly, Jovenel Moïse was elected in 2017 with just 5 percent of the Haitian vote in an election in which only 21 percent of the population voted. In 2018, massive popular protests erupted following the PetroCaribe scandal, in which government officials embezzled billions of dollars in public investment financing provided by Venezuela. In the face of continued protests, Moïse governed by decree from January 2020 until his assassination, unilaterally replacing judges on the supreme court and attempting to push through a referendum that would have expanded his executive powers.

Maintaining the status quo through “humanitarian intervention”

For decades, Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has been used by the U.S. and NATO to justify the use of military force to secure regional interests and extract wealth. In response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Department of Defense’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) launched Operation Unified Response. The operation’s relief phase included the deployment of troops “to mitigate near-term human suffering in support of USAID/OFDA efforts.” However, USAID’s disclosed relief and reconstruction fund data revealed that 77.46 percent of all funds were awarded to firms located within the Beltway (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) raising questions as to the efficacy of this “relief” strategy.    

The aftermath of the most recent earthquake has been catastrophic. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million people have been affected including 1,400 reported deaths and 7,000 injured. While humanitarian assistance and international solidarity with the Haitian people is desperately needed, a foreign military intervention would only inflame tensions and inevitably lead to more violence and suffering. 

On August 15, SOUTHCOM established a joint task force to conduct U.S. military operations in Haiti. Roughly 200 Marines deployed to Haiti from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina will provide security for the task force. In the midst of an ongoing popular revolt against the ruling elite and the further destabilization caused by the assassination and earthquake, any foreign presence used to consolidate the status quo will be met with hostility by the Haitian masses. 

(Part 1/2)