The Biden administration’s top diplomat at the United Nations arrived in a crisis-wrecked Haiti on Monday, where the effort to restore stability and put an elected president and parliament in office by February 2026 is not going as quickly — or as smoothly — as some political observers had hoped.
Linda Thomas-Greenfied’s visit to Port-au-Prince comes a week after the latest contingent of a U.S.-backed international mission landed from Kenya, and nearly three years to the date, July 23, when she and other members of a U.S. presidential delegation hastily left the funeral of assassinated President Jovenel Moïse after they heard gunshots outside the venue in the city of Cap-Haïtien.
Since the short visit, the security situation in Haiti has worsened, along with the country’s humanitarian and economic outlook, while the politics continue to be mired in uncertainty and personality conflicts. Criminal gangs, which launched an armed insurgency in late February, have freed more than 4,000 inmates from the two largest prisons; attacked police stations; forced a months-long shutdown of the main airport and seaport, and created a shortage of medicines and medical care after pharmacies and hospitals were burned, looted and shuttered.
Hoping to find a path out of the chaos, in March the Biden administration ended its support for Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who was in Kenya finalizing the police deployment, and demanded he resign. They then brokered a deal with the 15-member Caribbean Community regional bloc, known as CARICOM, along with Haiti’s leaders to put in place a presidential council to lead the country. The council was tasked with readying Haiti for the arrival of the Kenya force and finding a replacement for Henry. The council has since named former Haitian prime minister Garry Conille to the post.
Although Conille enjoys support among individual council members, his relationship with them as a group has been described as strained. They have bumped heads over who is in charge of running the government day to day. They were also at odds over his recent trip to Washington, where Conille met with members of Congress, the State Department and officials from financial institutions.
Those tensions became evident Thursday when a dinner being hosted by Presidential Council member Dr. Louis Gérald Gilles erupted into a near fight between Conille and the head of one of the sectors represented on the council, Claude Joseph, a former foreign minister and former prime minister. Joseph was an early supporter of Conille.
Several sources told the Miami Herald that Conille and Joseph got into a profanity-laced argument after Joseph expressed frustrations about recent government appointments, the security situation and other matters. He warned Conille that if the situation were to continue, he would be out of a job.
Conille challenged Joseph to make good on his threats. On Friday, the prime minister’s office, which has not publicly commented on the altercation, announced Conille had started his day with his “security close to him.”
Thomas-Greenfield, who landed before 9:30 is being accompanied by Brian A. Nichols, the assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Both U.S. diplomats were welcomed by Haiti’s new foreign minister Dominque Dupuy at the airport, and will meet with the presidential council and Conille separately.
Thomas-Greenfield plans to encourage the council “to continue to make progress towards democratic transition, including free and fair elections,” the administration official said.
Though the presidential council has started the process of forming a nine-member Provisional Electoral Council, there has been conflict and criticism already over how the members will be chosen.
The issues with the electoral entity are the latest facing a council already dogged by allegations of corruption over appointments.
During her visit, Thomas-Greenfield will also highlight the dire human rights situation. Gang violence has displaced more than 578,000 Haitians from their homes and rapes of women and girls remains rampant. Meanwhile, hunger is growing. Nearly five million people—almost half of the country’s population — are struggling to feed themselves, according to a U. N. analysis.
Late last year, Thomas-Greenfield spearheaded the effort, along with her counterpart from Ecuador, to get the U.N. Security Council to approve the mandate authorizing the Kenya-led force. The first contingent of 200 police officers finally arrived last month. While in Haiti, she plans to meet with members of the mission. The U.S., the biggest financial and logistical contributor to the force, has been asking other countries to support the armed mission with either funding or equipment.
Kenya, which promised to deploy 1,000 police officers, has so far provided the lion’s share of the personnel. As of now, it has about 400 police officers in the country. A contingent from Jamaica is expected to deploy soon.
“They’re obviously going to arrive as soon as possible,” another senior administration official said about the members of the Jamaica Defense Force. “We are certainly confident that all of these countries who are going to be participating are going to try to do this as quickly as possible.”
Another official also declined to discuss the pace of the arrival of the additional 600 police officers from Kenya. The official noted that, contrary to reports suggesting the Kenyans have been involved in joint operation with the Haitian police, the two “have not yet begun those formal joint operations.”
Kenyan police, he said, are working together with the Haitian force, “which is the very purpose of their mission, to train and to familiarize themselves with doing operations,” the senior administration official said. “As with any complex multinational mission, there are some first steps that need to take place to establish command and control.”
Last week, Conille said he had asked the Haitian police, along with the country’s small armed forces and the Kenyans to target gang-controlled areas. On Sunday, the communications office of the Haiti National Police issued a release saying they had thwarted an attack by armed gangs that tried to set fire to a police station at Ganthier, east of Port-au-Prince. Video shared by the 400 Mawozo gang shows that police station was burned during the gang’s attack of the city in which two people were also killed, according to local media.
The Haitian police statement mentioned the involvement of the Haitian police and Armed Forces of Haiti in the anti-gang operation, but no Kenyans.
Also on the agenda for Thomas-Greenfield are meetings with the head of the U.N. political office in Haiti, which just had its mandate renewed by the Security Council for a year, and members of Haiti’s civil society. At both she will hear about the ongoing concerns about the escalation in violence frustrations over the lack of clarity about how the Kenyan-led mission will help dismantle gangs.
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Publish date : 2024-07-22 10:05:47
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