A brand-new American shit-show in Haiti

Haiti hasn't had a real government in several years. So the United States (with our allies and proxies through CARICOM) decided to install an unelected Transitional Council to usher in a new election. To enforce their authority the U.S. bribed Kenya to send a 2,500 man police force there.

The head of the Kenyan support mission in Haiti is refuting allegations that his forces had to be rescued by Haitian police after armed gangs fired on them during a recent joint operation to protect a city 28 miles east of Port-au-Prince from being overtaken.

As you may have guessed, this hasn't gone very well.

On April 30, four of its seven voting members chose Fritz Bélizaire to replace the interim prime minister, Michel Patrick Boisvert, without consulting the rest of the council—let alone holding a formal vote—on the grounds that it had a majority. A little-known official, Bélizaire served as Haiti’s sports minister during the second presidency of René Préval from 2006 to 2011.

That was not a good start, but it gets worse.

The alleged shakedown unfolded over 30 minutes inside room 408 in Pétion-Ville’s Royal Oasis Hotel east of Port-au-Prince, where an elevator takes guests to a presidential suite and a rooftop overlooks a brightly colored mountainside shantytown.

There, on a sweltering May afternoon, three members of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council — tasked with lifting the country out of its deepening crisis and prepare for elections — met with the director of one of the country’s state-owned commercial banks and allegedly asked him to pay 100 million Haitian gourdes, about $758,000, if he wanted to keep his job.

When Raoul Pierre-Louis, chairman of the board of the National Bank of Credit, BNC, said he didn’t have that kind of cash, he says he was told by one of the council members, “You’re the president of a bank. Figure it out.” The council member, Louis Gérald Gilles, then invited himself and fellow council member Smith Augustin to dinner at Pierre-Louis’ house the following Saturday, where the pressure continued.

I can't see how this will end up well, unless the people of Haiti can regain their sovereignty.

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kenyan police

The 400 police troops sent in have yet to advance through the capital of Port-au-Prince to clear out armed gangs, and the only two major clashes so far have both resulted in setbacks.

The Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission remains underfunded, lacking the resources and necessary forces to bring Haiti back to normalcy, which has put pressure on the international community, along with the operation’s main sponsor, the U.S., to increase financial support.

Fatton said the eventual battles would be difficult, involving intense urban warfare. A strong Haitian government to support and boost the HNP and root out corruption would also be necessary, he added, pointing to allegations that some members of a transitional government in Haiti were involved in a bribery scheme.

“Adding 1,500 more troops, that might help. It might prevent further advances from the gangs, but the more you wait, the less legitimate is the government,” Fatton said. “The prime minister has promised all kinds of things, [but] his promises [have] not materialized at all.

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Cassiodorus's picture

He's a nice guy. Right?

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"If genocide is not a deal-breaker for you, there is something wrong with you." - Nick Cruse