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In Haiti, the toxic effects of apathy and naiveté

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13.03.2024

Follow this authorLee Hockstader's opinions

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The U.N. Security Council approved such a force about five months ago, to be led by an undermanned, undertrained and underequipped force of 1,000 Kenyan police, supplemented by smaller forces from smaller countries. But even that doomed-to-fail contingent hasn’t materialized, blocked by a Kenyan court and left in limbo by the indifference of much of the international community. Kenya now says the deployment is on hold following Henry’s announcement that he would resign.

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In fact, it is the lethal combination of indifference, compounded by naiveté, that set the stage for Haiti’s collapse, which was entirely predictable and predicted. The outside powers that exercise influence in Haiti, led by the United States, elevated Henry, wanting little more than someone to maintain calm after the country’s President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021.

At the same time, many of Haiti’s so-called friends in the United States and Europe, including activists and do-gooder nongovernmental organizations, railed against the prospect of international intervention, insisting that Haitians on their own could prevent a slide into anarchy.

That stance was understandable given the toxic legacy of past foreign missions, including the most recent one, a 13-year U.N. stabilization force that ended in 2017 amid evidence that troops had sexually exploited Haitian girls and women, and caused one of the world’s most deadly recent outbreaks of cholera. Yet the opposition to outside intervention overlooked the fact that the U.N. mission also enabled a period of relative stability in a nation where that has been the scarcest commodity.

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The combined effect of the international community’s apathy and reluctance to intercede was to leave Haiti in a state of suspended animation. Since Moïse’s death, the country has had no legitimate government and no prospect of new elections, not to mention an anemic police force outgunned by gangs affiliated with a powerful business elite. The last time Haitians went to the polls was eight years ago, and the terms of every official elected then have expired.

The inevitable upshot is that Haiti’s florid disorder has slid into pandemonium. Hundreds........

© Washington Post


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