364 -- Another Task for Trump: Ending Gang Rule in Haiti
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If Washington can bomb Iran, and claim to have ended Iran's nuclear weapons aspirations, surely the U.S. can decisively end the anomic violence in a much smaller country much closer to home? For a fraction of the cost expended on blasting Iran's underground centrifuging fortresses, a detachment of U. S. marines should be able to eradicate this hemisphere's largest threat to stability and prosperity.
Twenty or more gangs run by warlords and loosely organized as a confederation of bandits now control Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital city, and much of the surrounding towns, villages, and terrain in central Haiti. The gangs allegedly control 85 percent of the capital and nearby peri-urban centers. For four years they have terrorized and intimidated Haitians, overpowered first the out-gunned local police, the country's tiny army, and for almost a year the American-funded Kenyan and Caribbean police forces that were supposed to restore order and sanity to Haiti.
Instead, the gangs have grown more powerful using AK-47s and AR-38s smuggled easily from Miami. The Kenyans and a Blackwaters mercenary force from the U.S. have attempted with little success to counter the gangs.
Indeed, the gangs continue to extort, kidnap for ransom, kill randomly, and spread havoc in the Hemisphere's already poorest and most troubled entity. At least 5,500 Haitians have been killed this year by the gangs. More than 1.3 million Haitians have been displaced from their homes. Nearly 6 million Haitians go hungry every day, some acutely. Years ago, Haitians could flee to the U.S. with much impunity. But Trump has closed that escape route and has even begun deporting Haitians back to Haiti who benefited from their status as temporarily protected persons.
Haiti is the size of Maryland, but without good soils. Haiti long ago saw its fertile lands literally washed by heavy hurricane rains into the Gulf of Gonave and what Trump now tries to call the Gulf of Mexico. Haiti's ability to feed its people from its own farms is limited. It has little industry to speak of and the fabled sugar plantations that made Haiti the richest colony in the world in the eighteenth century are no more. Coffee growing has largely ceased, too, and the bauxite reserves that were once important are now exhausted.
Haitians have long been resilient and resourceful, but they are now largely dependent on remittances -- worth $4 billion in 2024 s---from the prosperous Haitian diaspora in the U. S. and Canada. Remittances total four times more than Haitian exports, in dollars, 100 times more than incoming foreign investment totals, and about 20 percent of GDP.
The country's future now depends almost completely on reducing the gang menace. If the gangs could be contained, Haitians could go about their regular business and the government could resume employing the civil servants and officials who ran the state. There no longer is a state or a government. A transitional government ostensibly has some authority, but the last elected president was assassinated in 2021 and his interim successor was sent into exile two years later. There is no store, and no one really minding it with any authority or strength. Instead, Haiti is wild gangster country.
Trump could send in the marines. They would be welcomed even if the previous arrival of marines in 1915 led to nineteen segregationist inspired lost years of American rule, followed by another twenty-four of local elite rule supported by Washington. Only when Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier came to power in 1958 and his hapless son Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier succeeded him in 1971-- supported by a rough vigilante militia called Tonton Macoutes -- could Haiti argue that oversight from Washington was finished. In a sense, the macoutes were officially sponsored gangs; the Duvaliers were despotic, dictatorial, and kleptocratic.
After Papa Doc's death in 1971 (I interviewed him for seven hours in 1968), Baby Doc and the Macoutes ran the country corruptly until 1986. Haitians revolted against his cruel rule and forced him to flee to France.
Haiti still remained a failed state even after President Clinton helped to install Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a charismatic Jesuit priest, in 1990. By then, Haiti was a key drug transshipment point in the Caribbean and Aristide and his successors profited (as the gangs do) from helping Columbian drug cartels to deliver their nefarious goods to Florida via stopovers in Haiti.
Marines would have the firepower and the discipline to subdue the gangs, imprison their leaders, and begin a lengthy process of rebuilding and re-energizing Haiti and the Haitian people. Nothing in this hemisphere is more in need of help than Haiti. Compared to Iran, Gaza, and Ukraine it is an easy and near-by project that someone who like Trump -- who delights in being macho and displaying his power -- should really enjoy. And no one would claim that he was abusing the War Powers Act. If Trump wants to gain credit for cleaning up the hemisphere, this is his appointed task.
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