During a discussion about U.S. migration policies in January 2018, President Donald Trump exploded with anger at lawmakers who were seeking to extend immigration protections to Haitians, Salvadorans, and Africans at risk of deportation.
“Why are we having all these people from sh*thole countries come here?” Trump asked the politicians in the room. The comments caused a major controversy at the time, with Democrats pointing to them as clear evidence of Trump’s racial bias.
Yet, as inappropriate as those comments were at the time, it is difficult to look at some of these countries seven years later and not come away with a feeling of dread. Perhaps the most depressing of all is Haiti, a nation whose entire history has been defined by repeated trials and tribulations, horrendous weather events, systemic corruption, government-imposed repression, and, periodically, absences of authority. Trump was wrong to typecast Haiti itself as unworthy. But his impolitic label is an apt description for Haiti’s political elites, who are often more interested in fighting each other for power than they are in meeting the needs of the people they are supposed to represent.
The history of Haiti since the 20th century is one of U.S. occupation, brutal dictatorship, dashed hopes, foreign intervention, and gang warfare. In 1915, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent U.S. Marines into Haiti to protect U.S. assets in the country and restore order after the assassination of Haiti’s President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. For nearly 20 years, the United States would treat Haiti as its own personal social-science experiment by rigging elections, tilting the scales in favor of pro-American politicians, and compelling the Haitian government to dissolve the legislature when anti-American legislation was put on the table. When the United States eventually pulled its troops back, it left Haiti in pretty much the same position it was in before the Marines deployed there: in a state of insecurity.
Political instability persisted into the 1940s. Élie Lescot, the despotic Haitian president, was overthrown in 1946. After two successive governments, the father-son Duvalier family dictatorship took hold and turned Haiti into an authoritarian state, where laws were only as valid as François and Jean-Claude’s moods at the time. François (“Papa Doc”), the father, built a classic personality-driven autocracy. He consolidated his power at the expense of an independent legislative branch, killing anyone who opposed him and establishing a system of regime-supporting gangs, the Tontons Macoutes, that frightened and killed anyone who dared to criticize the regime. When François passed away, his son, Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”), took over at the ripe age of 19, spending lavishly as his people were living below the poverty line. He leaned on repression just as his old man did and eventually fled the country with tens of millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts after he was deposed in 1986.
The early 1990s, post-Duvalier, was supposed to be a new age for Haiti, one in which personalist dictatorships were abolished in favor of democracy. In 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a priest from the slums, was elected in overwhelming fashion in what the New York Times labeled Haiti’s first democratic contest. But hopes were quickly iced out as the Haitian military overthrew Aristide and took power for itself, leading to three years of tension between Washington and Port-au-Prince. It took a U.S. economic embargo, threats of a U.S. invasion, and promises of amnesty for the senior coup plotters to agree to hand power back to Aristide in 1994. Bill Clinton, the U.S. president at the time, celebrated the outcome as a victory for democracy in the Western Hemisphere and a visible demonstration of Washington’s resolve in ensuring bad actors are thwarted.
“Today, on the eve of President Aristide’s return to his beloved nation, we mark the end of one stage of the long and difficult journey and the beginning of a new era of hope for the people of Haiti,” Clinton said during an October 14, 1994 speech, with Aristide standing beside him.
Again, the hope proved misplaced. Aristide may have won an election fair and square, but his strategy rested on the divide-and-conquer tactics of the past. Because Aristide could not count on the support of the Haitian security services, segments of which were still hostile to his rule after being cut down to size, he leaned on the same paramilitary-like structures that Haitians would have recognized during the Duvalier era. The prevalence of gangs consisting of unemployed youth who pledged fealty to Aristide, known as chimères, not only further divided Haitian society but bolstered claims among his detractors that the man who returned on the deck of an American aircraft carrier was an autocrat in democratic clothing. In 2004, the priest-turned-president wound up being pushed into exile by the George W. Bush administration as anti-Aristide militias came dangerously close to the capital.
By and large, presidents who have come after Aristide have not been much better. In fact, one could make the case that each Haitian government that has come to power has been more incompetent than the last. Through it all, the United Nations, often with the United States in the lead, has organized several foreign interventions to clamp down on disorder, guide Haitian officials toward getting their politics back on track, and provide the Haitian state, such as it was, with the time and resources to become self-sufficient. With the exception of the 1994 U.S. intervention that reinstated Aristide to power—one that was nullified in part by Aristide’s turn toward autocracy during the later stages of his presidency—those interventions have been catastrophic. The 15-year UN peacekeeping mission that ended in 2019 proved to be a complete and utter disaster; UN troops were accused of sexual assault and and a cholera epidemic broke out, killing around 10,000 people.
Things have gotten noticeably worse since U.N blue helmets packed up and left. Jovenel Moïse came into office in February 2017 after a disputed election that was so riddled with fraud that Haitian electoral authorities had to redo the first round of voting, originally held in October 2015. His tenure was marred by large-scale protests, intrafactional political disputes, and allegations of autocratic behavior. With the Haitian legislature dormant, Moïse ruled by decree, which allowed him to sidestep whatever opposition he may have received from lawmakers outside his party. In a move that the Duvalier family would have surely approved of, MoïseMoise gave himself the power to expand states of emergency, which could be used to snuff out protests against his government. And like the Duvaliers and Aristide before him, Moïse used gangs to attack bastions of antigovernment sentiment, hoping to scare his opponents into submission. In the summer of 2021, Moïse would end up being assassinated in his home in the middle of the night by mercenaries whose motives remain unknown to this day.
None of this sordid history, however, compares to the challenges Haiti confronts today. There is no beating around the bush: Haiti for all intents and purposes is a failed state where the government’s remit is pathetically small. An assortment of gangs rule the roost in Port-au-Prince. Jimmy Chérizier, the former Haitian police officer–turned–gang leader, is now more powerful than the state itself. Indeed, in what can only be compared to a real-life version of Frankenstein, the very gangs that previous Haitian governments used to rely on as extraconstitutional security forces have grown too powerful for the state to handle. In March 2024, Prime Minister Ariel Henry could not even travel back to Haiti after an overseas trip to Africa; the gangs who ransacked the country and burned police stations during a 10-day offensive essentially closed down the main airport. Henry, a widely unpopular figure who was not even elected in his own right, chose to resign rather than fight.
The formation of a Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) in April 2024, which is mandated to govern the country in the lead-up to new elections next February, has done little to prevent Haiti from devolving further into the abyss. The council is led by a group of nine insular figures who are often at war with themselves; three have been accused of corruption. The political crisis has exacerbated the security crisis. The Haitian police remain under-equipped and outgunned by the gangs they’re supposed to fight. Approximately 90 percent of Port au-Prince is now under gang control; nearly 1.4 million people are internally displaced, a 36 percent increase from last year; the security situation has gotten so bad that local self-defense groups have formed to protect their neighborhoods. Those antigang groups are becoming gangs in and of themselves. Even Erik Prince of Blackwater fame is getting in on the action, signing a secret security agreement with the TPC and leading a secretive unit that uses armed drones to kill senior gang leaders.
The Trump administration is looking at all of this with a hint of despair. As a practical matter, Haiti means very little to U.S. national security; the United States will preserve its dominant status in the Western Hemisphere regardless of whether Haiti is a functioning democracy, a gang-infested wasteland, or something in between. Yet for the White House, Haiti is still a glaring problem because it is a big source of outward migration into the United States. The last thing Trump wants is a Haitian version of the Mariel or Balsero crisis, in which tens of thousands of helpless people take to small boats in a panic. The Trump administration is therefore looking at Haiti as a problem that needs to be managed, not necessarily to bring the country back on the road to democracy but to provide Haitians with a reason to stay where they are.
To state the obvious, this goal is incredibly hard to accomplish when the state itself is nigh defunct, institutions are falling apart, there is no economic opportunity to speak of, the politicians are overwhelmed or altogether incompetent, and ordinary people can’t walk down the street without risk of getting killed or abducted for ransom. And, while Trump loathes nation-building and actually campaigned against it, the whole effort to solve the Haiti problem sounds awfully like an attempt to craft a nation from scratch.
In the interim, the Trump administration has settled on a security-first paradigm: in other words, only by defeating and demobilizing the gangs will Haitians be able to rebuild their political system and hold elections scheduled for next year. Despite successive foreign interventions failing in abysmal fashion, the world is preparing for yet another. On September 30, the UN Security Council approved a U.S.-led initiative called the Gang Suppression Force (GSF), a quasi-military body that will assist the Haitian National Police in degrading the constellation of gangs that has sunk Haiti into misery. The GSF, which is set to replace the Multilateral Security Support (MSS) mission led by Kenya, will be staffed by around 5,500 personnel and have the authority to conduct anti-gang operations independent of the Haitian security forces. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Michael Waltz, who has led the charge for the force from his new perch in New York, called the Security Council vote a signal of hope for the country.
“With this vote to transform the Multinational Security Support mission to the new Gang Suppression Force…the international community is sharing the burden. It is living up to its promise to help Haiti turn the tide,” Waltz said immediately after the vote. “It offers Haiti the chance to reassume responsibility for its own security.”
But how true are these words given the history of internationally-imposed solutions to Haitian problems? Take that history into account and it becomes clear that the celebrations are grossly premature. As much as the Trump administration might like to think Haiti is turning a corner, the GSF is no closer to panacea status than prior interventions. In fact, critical questions remain about how the GSF will function and operate, who will pay for the troops, how long the mission will last and what metrics will be used to determine success or failure. Moreover, the fundamental issue that will make or break the entire endeavor—whether or not the Haitian government has the interest or capacity to engage in systemic reform—is not even within its control.
Of course, the architects of the GSF know all of this already. But while the international community’s next adventure into Haiti is driven by good intentions, the practical impediments to success are steep and shouldn’t be brushed under the carpet. The first issue is size. The Trump administration pushed for a revamped security mechanism because the Kenyan-led MSS was insufficiently manned, which hampered its effectiveness and limited the scope of its operations. The Security Council agreed; a force that should have consisted of 2,500 police officers only reached 1,000. The officers who were deployed to the country—the majority came from Kenya—only had a short-term impact in certain neighborhoods of the capital city. It was difficult for observers to notice much of a change on the ground. Even Kenya’s Moses Kuria, a senior advisor to the president and leading proponent of Kenyan involvement, eventually tired of the mission, calling it a “misadventure” and harping at the international community for neglecting to provide his troops with enough equipment to do the job.
Will the GSF be any different? This depends on two immediate issues: First, which states are contributing forces, and second, who is going to pay for it? The Security Council resolution authorizing the new mission didn’t provide answers to these very basic questions, which means Haiti’s transitional government might have to wait months as possible contributors negotiate among themselves over troop quotas, roles, responsibilities and command structure. These discussions are likely to be highly technical and could take longer than expected, giving the gangs more time to expand their positions and prepare defenses. This is not a hypothetical scenario; the MSS only officially deployed in June 2024, nearly two years after the Haitian prime minister at the time first requested foreign support.
The debate over funding will also be intense. Since the GSF isn’t an official U.N. peacekeeping mission, the Security Council will be looking for voluntary contributions from its member states. Canada is likely to play a big role on the financing side as it has in the past—in 2023, Canada announced $100 million in security support for the Haitian National Police—and the White House has agreed to pay its share of the cost as well. Yet it’s hard to determine how high those costs will go since the overall price-tag is still to be determined. And any price-tag that is worked up could easily rise further if the UN determines that more personnel are needed. There is also a possibility that Trump will grow tired of the entire effort and pull the plug, leaving other contributors with two options: increase their own share to make up for Washington’s absence or throw up the white flag of defeat. These discussions could get messy, and if the Caribbean community doesn’t step up to Trump’s expectations, the entire mission could be compromised before it gets off the ground.
These technical issues, however, aren’t merely as important as tackling the political, economic, and social problems the gangs have exploited for their own ends. This is where it gets particularly tricky, for while troops, guns and bullets can neutralize gangsters, retake territory, and capture key infrastructure, they won’t be able to force Haiti into turning the page on a status quo that has worked for its politicians but not its people. Unless the GSF and its international backers are willing to occupy Haiti for the foreseeable future, which is neither advisable nor practical, foreign actors don’t have the capacity, patience, or attention-span to fix Haiti’s political issues. Only Haitians have the power to do this.
Unfortunately, enacting political reform is going to take a long time. It is bound to hit multiple roadblocks along the way as spoilers try to obstruct the process and requires the kinds of comprehensive institution-building that could instigate another round of violence from constituencies whose interests are better served by perpetuating the old system. This is an arduous task for any country attempting to transition towards a more equitable governing system, but will be especially grueling for Haiti, where the political elite has encouraged the proliferation of gangs and used them as weapons to maintain an advantage against their political opponents, coerce voters during election season, and deter ordinary people from acting on their antigovernment sentiment. Those links will need to be severed, a recommendation long-time observers of Haiti’s politics stressed a long time ago. This is obviously easier said than done, but that makes it no less vital. If those connections are not nipped, the gang-suppression force might as well stay home.
Right now, Haiti is a state in name only. Its judicial system is in shambles, elections haven’t been held in nearly a decade, and the TPC holds no popular legitimacy. The Haitian National Police aren’t any more competent today than they were before the security crisis escalated. According to UN monitors, some police officers are selling ammunition to the gangs for a hefty profit.
Institutional reform is therefore a necessity. The UN and donor countries can do their part to support Haiti’s efforts in this respect, most specifically by ensuring that bad actors attempting to block progress or engaging in weapons trafficking are ostracized from the global financial system. But ultimately, no amount of foreign involvement will be enough if Haiti’s decisionmakers don’t get their act together by weeding out corrupt actors, penalizing politicians and security officials who violate the law, and holding themselves to high standards. If there is any lesson we can take from the last 30 years of Haiti’s history, it is that foreign interloping can’t substitute for self-help.
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