When a Nation State Completely Fails

 

         

Jimmy Cherizier, leader of Fòs Revolisyonè G9 an fanmi e alye

When a Nation State Completely Fails

Ukraine was attacked from the outside; Haiti is being attacked from within.

The flying distance from Miami to Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, is 709 miles. But if you take the trip and see what’s there, it seems as if you have traveled to another, ultra-violent planet. Haiti may have been the first country to ban slavery (in 1804), but it continued to make reparations to its former colonial master, France, for those lost slaves until 1947. And yes, the United States supported France. Wracked by hurricanes and earthquakes, rattled by political assassinations and effectively without a viable and functioning government, super-impoverished Haiti (the poorest in the Western hemisphere), particularly Port-au-Prince, may just be the closest to hell on earth imaginable. Despite the stiff competition from Yemen, Ukraine, and the Sudan.

The Haitian government, devoid of leadership, has long since lost control of most of the country. Gangs rule violently over their well-defended turf. Food, medicine and tolerable housing are a distant memory for most residents. But gang leadership just may be the closest force capable of a semblance of government. Slaughter is a way of life (death?) for gang members and those remaining Haitian forces and police left. Since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, the nation has unraveled into unparallel violence and chaos.

As Associated Press journalists, writing on February 2nd, Megan Janetsky and Pierre Richard Luxama single out one particular Port-au-Prince shot-caller: “Jimmy Cherizier [pictured above] zips through Haiti’s capital on the back of a motorcycle, flanked by young men wielding black and leopard print masks and automatic weapons… As the pack of bikes flies by graffiti reading ‘Mafia boss’ in Creole, street vendors selling vegetables, meats and old clothes on the curb cast their eyes to the ground or peer curiously.

“Cherizier, best known by his childhood nickname Barbecue, has become the most recognized name in Haiti… And here in his territory, surrounded by the tin-roofed homes and bustling streets of the informal settlement La Saline, he is the law… Internationally, he’s known as Haiti’s most powerful and feared gang leader, sanctioned by the United Nations for ‘serious human rights abuses,’ and the man behind a fuel blockade that brought the Caribbean nation to its knees late last year.

“But if you ask the former police officer with gun tattoos running up his arm, he’s a ‘revolutionary’ advocating against a corrupt government that has left a nation of 12 million people in the dust… ‘I’m not a thief. I’m not involved in kidnapping. I’m not a rapist. I’m just carrying out a social fight,’ Cherizier, leader of the ‘G9 Family and Allies’ [in French above] federation of nine gangs, told the Associated Press while sitting in a chair in the middle of an empty road near a home with windows shattered by bullets. ‘I’m a threat to the system.’…”

The litany of extreme poverty, the legacy of voodoo and torture from the Duvalier regime that was overthrown in 1986, the enormous government corruption, the horrific January 2010, October 2018 and August of 2021 earthquakes, interspersed and followed by massive hurricanes, a cholera epidemic plus the COVID pandemic and the 2021 Moise assassination have created a massively failed state on our doorstep. A quarter of all Haitians live in the capital city, and “In December, the U.N. estimated that gangs controlled 60% of Haiti’s capital, but nowadays most on the streets of Port-au-Prince say that number is closer to 100%.

“‘There is, democratically speaking, little to no legitimacy’ for Haiti’s government, said Jeremy McDermott, a head of InSight Crime, a research center focused on organized crime. ‘This gives the gangs a stronger political voice and more justification to their claims to be the true representatives of the communities.’… It’s something that conflict victims, politicians, analysts, aid organizations, security forces and international observers fear will only get worse. Civilians, they worry, will bear the brunt of the consequences…

“What is clear, said McDermott… is that gangs are reaping rewards from the political chaos… InSight Crime estimates that before the killing of the president, Cherizier’s federation of gangs, G9, got half of its money from the government, 30% from kidnappings and 20% from extortions. After the killing, government funding dipped significantly, according to the organization… Yet his gangs have significantly grown in power after the group blocked the distribution of fuel from Port-au-Prince’s key fuel terminal for two months late last year… The blockade paralyzed the country in the midst of a cholera outbreak and gave other gangs footholds to expand. Cherizier claimed the blockade was in protest of rising inflation, government corruption and deepening inequality in Haiti…

“In October, the U.N. imposed sanctions against Cherizier, which included an arms embargo, an asset freeze and a travel ban… The world body accused him of carrying out a bloody massacre in La Saline, economically paralyzing the country and using armed violence and rape to threaten ‘the peace, security and stability of Haiti.’…

“At the same time, despite not being elected into power and his mandate timing out, [Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who “took over” after Moise’s assassination], whose administration declined a request for comment, has continued at the helm of a skeleton government. He has pledged for a year and a half to hold general elections but has failed to do so… In early January, the country lost its final democratically elected institution when the 10 senators symbolically holding office ended their terms… It has turned Haiti into a de facto ‘dictatorship,’ said Patrice Dumont, one of the senators… He said even if the current government was willing to hold elections, he doesn’t know whether it would be possible due to gangs’ firm grip on the city.” AP.

Is there a possible “fix” that rest of the world can support? The scope of the failure and devastation is so massive that any reasonable form of international focus and support seems exceptionally unlikely. As the world focuses on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Haiti and her people are relegated to occasional stories in the back pages of international news reports.

I’m Peter Dekom, and impoverished Haiti is getting poorer, dangerous Haiti is getting much more dangerous, devasted Haiti is falling further apart, and hope has left the country.