Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up a one-day visit to Port-au-Prince on Thursday by announcing an additional $45 million in humanitarian aid for the crisis-wracked country and reiterating the United States’ push for putting for elections and restoring security.
“The United States appreciates Haiti’s leaders putting aside their differences, working together to put the country on the path to free and fair elections,” Blinken said at a press conference, before flying to the neighboring Dominican Republic where he will spend the night and meet with President Luis Abinader on Friday.
Washington, the Secretary added, was looking forward to Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council “swiftly naming a provisional electoral council to organize those elections. That is the critical next step.”
Gangs currently control more than 85% of metropolitan Port-au-Prince and large swaths of the neighboring Artibonite region. The Artibonite and the West region, where the capital is located, represented an estimated 57% to 60% of the country’s electorate the last time— 2016 — Haitians went to the polls to elect a president.
Haiti hasn’t had an elected president ever since Jovenel Moïse was gunned-down inside his home more than three years ago on July 7, 2021. Since then, the country has been in a free-fall with no elected leaders, and armed gangs expanding their control over new territories by the day.
READ MORE: Gangs fled a Haitian town as Kenya force moved in. But only for a day
In March, Blinken joined Caribbean leaders in Jamaica to help Haiti’s leaders forge a path forward after gangs united and launched a broad assault on the then government. But five months into the transition, the process has been hobbled by corruption allegations involving three members of the presidential panel, infighting among the sectors over who to name on the electoral commission, and a struggling international effort to restore security.
Blinken only touched on the corruption scandal in his closing remarks, saying that “the United States welcomes Haitian efforts to address corruption allegations, promote transparency and accountability. These are essential for this transition government to maintain the trust of the Haitian people.”
Then, he issued a warning, reminding Haitians of the U.S.’s recent economic sanctions against former Haitian President Michel Martelly: “We will use every tool that we have to hold accountable those who facilitate violence, drug trafficking, instability.”
Blinken began his visit by meeting with Edgard Leblanc Fils, the current head of the Transitional Presidential Council, who in a press conference after the meeting said he discussed the general situation with the Secretary. He then met with Prime Minister Garry Conille and Foreign Minister Dominique Dupuy.
He also met with nine Haitian leaders whose political parties and civil society organizations are currently part of the transition. During the meeting at the U.S. embassy in Tabarre, the U.S. delegation sat on one side of a long conference table, while the Haitian invitees sat across on the other side. Haitian leaders expressed both their disappointment with the slow progress of the Kenya-led mission, as well as their concerns about the corruption scandal embroiling the ruling presidential panel.
Blinken acknowledged that progress hasn’t happened as quickly as many would like, but sought to assure the room of Washington’s commitment.
Despite his efforts to paint a positive portrait of the security situation, recent decision and events say otherwise. Ahead of Blinken’s visit, Haitian authorities expanded a state of emergency from 14 cities to the entire country. In another troubling reminder of the precarious security situation, the Haitian National Police Union, SYNAPOHA, on Thursday reported that a police officer, Wisly Villefranche, had been short by armed gunmen during an operation in the Magloire Ambroise neighborhood of the capital.
He was the second police officer killed in a week. Last week, officer Nathanielle Médjine Michel was killed when her police car received 13 bullets as she drove to work. Two others police officers, who were later visited by Conille and Haiti National Police Chief Rameau Normil, were injured in an anti-gang operation.
“As this political process has moved forward in parallel, so, too, is the necessary efforts to provide a strong security foundation, and in particular the Multinational Security Support authorized by the United Nations last year has move forward,” he later said during his closing press conference.
Rather than focus on the mission’s shortcomings, he touted what he deemed are its successes.
“This is hard stuff, but we’ve already seen, thanks to the work of the MSS, supporting the HNP, the Haitian national police, the airport taken back and reopened, the main hospital in Port-au-Prince taken back, some neighborhoods where there’s now economic activity,” Blinken said. “What I’ve heard today, talking to the leaders of the Haitian national police and the MSS is a clear path for what they’ll do next.”
‘THE MISSION ITSELF NEEDS TO BE RENEWED’
Even still, while trying to bolster support for the mission ahead of a U.N. Security Council vote on Sept. 30 about the end of its one-year-mandate, the U.S. is also trying to get support to transfer the mission into a formal U.N. peacekeeping operation.
“The mission itself needs to be renewed,” Blinken said. “But we also want to make sure that we have something that is reliable, that’s sustainable, and we’ll look at every option to do that. So peacekeeping operationally is one such option. I think there are others. We just want to make sure that we have a way to first renewing the mission and then making sure we have a way to make it sustainable for the future, because this is going to take some time.”
Such an arrangement would provide the mission with stabilized funding and personnel. Washington, however, will need to get the authorization of the U.N. Security Council, where both Russia and China have veto powers. The two have been critical of both the U.S. intervention in Haiti and past U.N. peacekeeping operations.
In addition to convincing Russia, U.S. officials would also need to secure the support of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, a critic of peacekeeping operations.
Asked on Thursday if Guterres’ thinking has evolved on the matter, his spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters in New York, “I’m not sure of how much the Secretary-General’s thinking has evolved on this matter from what he said publicly.”
Dujarric also said “I’m not aware or have not been made aware of any discussions that have been taking place here in this building with our peacekeeping colleagues on” the U.S.’s desire to transform the mission into a formal peacekeeping operation.
Dujarric said it is not for the secretary-general to grade the impact of the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support mission.
“The fact that it managed to deploy, led by Kenya with the support of many others, I think, is a tremendous step forward. It’s very helpful to the Haitian authorities as they try to lead a government of transition,” he said. “The force could, of course, use more funding.”
The United States remains the largest funder of the mission. It has provided more than $300 to support the security mission, which has gone into providing more than two dozen armored vehicles, radios, night goggles and standing up the base of operations that is currently housing the more than 380 Kenyan police officers in the country. More assistance is also en route the secretary said, noting that Jamaica is sending personnel and El Salvador is providing a helicopter medivac team to assist.
“As we’re projecting out, as we’re looking at growing the MSS mission itself, we also have to figure out what’s going to be required to pay for that, and I think we’re going to need more funding to do that,” Blinken said. “That’s exactly why I’m bringing together colleagues at the UN General Assembly on the margins of that, just to make sure that we are properly resourced.”
Despite the mission’s presence attacks against police stations and neighborhoods by gangs have continued. One need not look further than a few miles east of the U.S. embassy where 6,000 people were forced to flee their homes as of July when the community of Ganthier fell under the control of the 400 Mawozo gang after residents lost a two-year fight to push them back.
The gang, which has been threatening to also attack neighboring Fond Parisien, recently began building a wall along National Road #8 in the area of Croix-des-Bouquets, which includes Ganthier.
Meanwhile, to the south of Port-au-Prince, gangs have forced more than 44,000 residents of Gressier to seek refuge in neighboring Léogâne where many are sleeping in mud without as much a tarp to protect them from the elements.
In addition to funding Haiti’s security efforts, the U.S. is also a leading contributor on the humanitarian side. With nearly 600,000 Haitians internally displaced by the gang violence and more than 5 million in humanitarian need, the additional $45 million “means more food, water or sanitation or health and support services for one and a half million more Haitians in the long term,” Blinken said.
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Publish date : 2024-09-05 22:00:00
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