The History of American Intervention in Haiti Is Tied to the Current Political Instability

The United States government once again finds itself at the center of the political instability in Haiti, and it is still throwing its support behind the Kenyan-led effort to militarize the country on behalf of Western interests. In fact, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged $200 million to aid Kenya in its Haitian policies, at least half of which will be used to reimburse that country for the police force necessary to occupy the island nation. This announcement came in response to Haitian revolutionaries and a coalition of several gangs, commanded by Jimmy Cherizier (also called “Barbeque”), taking control of large portions of Port-au-Prince to demand that unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry, backed for years by the United States government, cede power to a president elected by the people. The Caribbean nations’ CARICOM has proposed a transitional presidential council, which would consist of citizens who will vow not to run for president when the next election is set, to take over in the interim, but it is unclear if this will be acceptable to the rebels.

While Henry was on a mission in Nairobi to secure Kenya’s assistance in bolstering his regime, the gangs blocked the prime minister’s ability to reenter the country (by taking control of the Toussaint Louverture Airport), and since the Dominican Republic disallowed the prime minister to fly into its country in order for him to be able to drive back into Haiti, Henry sought refuge in Puerto Rico. With the growing political instability and violence, including the release of 4,000 prisoners by the rebels and attacks on Port-au-Prince and its suburbs, and the deployment of United States Marines to provide security at the embassy and air lift unessential personnel out of the country, the Biden administration, which has provided the unelected leader’s regime with armored vehicles and noncombat troops to train Haiti’s National Police and local law enforcement, has now lost confidence in Henry and “urged” him to resign. Without Western support, the all-but dictator has no way to survive the political climate, and the so-called “gangs” (the media sometimes refers to them as “cannibals” without evidence) want to be included in any future government that is formed. According to Cherizier, “It’s the Haitian people who know what they’re going through. It’s the Haitian people who are going to take destiny into their own hands. Haitian people will choose who will govern them.”

Cherizier was also in the headlines about a year and a half ago when his Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies (FRG9) captured a fuel depot district in Port-au-Prince, thus preventing 10 million gallons of diesel and gasoline and 800,000 gallons of kerosene from distribution, in response to Henry’s removal of subsidies and increase in oil and gas prices. Even though Cherizier’s demands were that Henry step down and yield power back to the Haitian people and away from foreign actors, he was branded as a terrorist for putting people’s lives in danger because of skirmishes with police, gas stations closing, and hospitals and banks being limited in ability to operate.

This led to the United States and Canada placing economic sanctions against two Haitian Senate leaders, Joseph Lambert and Youri Latortue, accused of being associated with the gangs, and the UN, through pressure from the United States, sanctioned (including an account freeze and travel ban) Cherizier for his gangster deeds. The UN has also placed arms embargos on Haiti, and the United States has cracked down on gun smuggling into the country, but the irony is that many of the weapons going into the hands of Haitian “gangsters,” who American taxpayers have to then combat, come from the United States (whether this is intended chaos and another case of funding two sides of a conflict, we cannot be sure).

In addition, the United States charged seven gangsters for kidnapping Americans living in Haiti, leading to Secretary of State Antony Blinken stating, “The United States supports the efforts of our Haitian law enforcement partners seeking to enforce rule of law in Haiti and combat transnational organised crime, which continues to be a driving factor in worsening the humanitarian and security situation.” With the Biden administration’s backing, the situation in 2022 stabilized, but Cherizier’s insistence on having Henry held accountable for allegedly participating in the assassination of the former president has not subsided.  

It is currently unknown exactly what transpired during the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, but since Henry was named as prime minister right before the president’s death, it has raised concerns of a coup. Despite demands from the rebels for him to step down and hold an election, Henry has been reluctant to give up power (even pushing elections to August 2025), thus fueling the conspiracy theories around his culpability in the assassination.

Interestingly enough, there were connections between the coup plotters and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which raises concerns that this was yet another American-manipulated situation. In fact, two Haitian Americans (James Solages and Joseph Vincent) have been accused (and charged in the United States), along with twenty-six Colombians, of participating in the assassination, and the leader of the operation was an American doctor named Christian Emmanuel Sanon. Sanon conducted this maneuver through the Miami-based Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy (CTU), which was the same organization that conducted similar mercenary raids and a potential coup in Venezuela under President Donald Trump’s watch.

One of the suspects in the assassination plot was a former informant for the DEA, and while the incident was playing out, he even called the DEA for advice. Additionally, multiple suspects yelled, “DEA,” while carrying out the plot, and a few of the culprits were former informants for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Despite this peculiar connection to American agencies, the DEA claims that it was not involved (gee, shocker).

This would not be the first time that the United States interfered in Haiti, which was the second nation in the Americas to declare its independence from European powers. After Toussaint L’Ouverture (or François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture) led a slave rebellion against France in 1804 and threw off the chains of his colonizer, the United States refused to recognize Haiti as a country for fifty-eight years out of fear that American slaves would follow the precedent in that country and rise up in the southern states. Just like with neighboring Dominican Republic, the United States government threatened and sanctioned Haiti since 1905, and in 1915, it launched a full invasion of the country in an effort to stabilize it (Haitian President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated) and keep out foreign interests (particularly Germany). After the United States Marines captured the nation, an occupation followed (the American government stole $500,000 from the Haitian National Bank and kept it in New York City, and then, it took control over the country’s finances completely), and the Woodrow Wilson administration created the Marines-controlled Haitian Gendarmerie military (consisting of American and Haitian citizens) and manipulated the 1915 election in favor of American interests (under Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave and American pressure, the Haitian legislature was suspended until 1929, and the American-backed dictator implemented censorship, racial segregation, and forced labor policies). Finally, in 1929, after the Haitians began protesting and revolting against American occupation, the United States began the withdrawal process that lasted for the next five years (it took until 1934 to train favorable government officials to be in a position to take over, of course).

The United States government then supported the anti-Communist and anti-Castro dictatorship of father-son ruling heads François and Jean-Claude Duvalier (called “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc,” respectively) until a democratic wave hit the country and changed the political landscape. After a military junta, led by Raoul Cédras, overthrew the government of popular and democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and began raping, killing, and torturing Aristide supporters, the Bill Clinton administration invaded Haiti in 1994 with a 25,000-member force in “Operation Uphold Democracy” (despite a key member of the junta, Emmanuel Constant, working with the Central Intelligence Agency to gather information on the situation there, thus leading to funding of both sides of the conflict).

The second occupation of Haiti (lasting until 1997) was detrimental to Haitians, as the structural adjustment policies implemented by the American-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) forced much of Haiti’s food onto the international market and away from the citizens who needed it (capitalism is often blamed, but the reality is that governments intervening in a situation is the opposite of a free market). As a result of American intervention, Haiti remained poor and unable to break free of the control that the United States government, United Nations (UN), and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) had on the country, and corporations and politicians have benefited over the years from financially exploiting Haiti, including American farmers being aided at the expense of Haitian ones (one of Cherizier’s grievances in his takeover of parts of Haiti and “gangster” behavior has been that the West has destroyed his country and kept it from achieving success).

But, it did not end there. In fact, in 2004, the same Aristide that Bill Clinton had aided ten years prior was kidnapped by the Haitian National Intelligence Service and Haitian military and brought to the Central African Republic on an American aircraft (some will try to argue that he voluntarily boarded the plane). Although some will dispute the kidnapping charges, the George W. Bush administration was almost certainly involved in the coup, as State Department official Thomas Shannon and UN head of the military mission in Haiti Edmund Mulet were caught discussing how they wanted to keep Aristide in exile in South Africa and take legal action against him to prohibit his return to the national politics of Haiti (plus, we know that George H.W. Bush operated behind the scenes to destabilize Aristide and eliminate his influence). Additionally, President Barack Obama lobbied South African President Jacob Zuma and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to keep Aristide from returning to Haiti (on top of spending millions of American taxpayer dollars to go after Aristide in our politically-rigged court system).

American foreign aid continued in Haiti in 2010 with the earthquake relief efforts, and from the onset, American militarization attempted to keep Haitians from fleeing the island and protect Americans living there. Instead of supporting the Haitian people or government, many of the donations and government aid went to fund NGOs and corporations, which included the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) investing in Monsanto’s genetically-modified seeds and not providing Haitian farmers and rice producers with money to rebuild the economy (that the West helped to destroy) and feed themselves.

Then, of course, there was Hillary Clinton’s contributions to Haiti, and she was selected as a co-chairman for the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), which contributed only 9.6% of the donations to the Haitian government and 0.6% to local organizations. Do you have any guess as to where the remaining 90% of it went? Yes, she helped to bolster NGOs, corporations, the Clinton Foundation, international organizations, gold exploitation (revealed through Julian Assange’s Wikileaks), and the Department of Defense’s military operation to maintain order in Port-au-Prince (a neoliberal and crony capitalist venture). Clinton was potentially running a “pay-to-play” operation in Haiti in a corruption scandal that may have been a factor in costing her the 2016 election.

The United States, in conjunction with the Clinton Foundation, also supported eminent domain polices associated with building Caracol Industrial Park, which was located far from the earthquake-affected area, and instead of building housing near Port-au-Prince, residential areas were constructed in the north of the country to support the clothing industry. The textile park manufactured clothing for Old Navy, Walmart, and Target, thus proving that the primary purpose of the aid was to exploit Haiti for the betterment of corporations and American interests (after all, 55% of all money from USAID went toward American companies near Washington, D.C. and right back into the American economy).

The UN- and US-led disaster relief also came with a cholera outbreak (a disease that had been under control until the earthquake “relievers” moved in) that may have killed as many as 10,000 people, and the spreading of the bacterial disease likely originated from the UN workers (under UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, or MINUSTAH) dumping waste into rivers (while the organization simultaneously supported the police that was brutally maintaining “order” in the capital city). Haiti is still dealing with this cholera problem.

Additionally, the United States government, with the assistance of the Organization of American States (OAS), threatened to cut off earthquake aid if Clinton ally Michel Martelly did not ascend to the presidency over René Garcia Préval (rigging the election). There has been a long history of American interference in Haiti, and because Haitian citizens believed that the Biden administration had such influence on the country and expected that its former puppet Jovenel Moise would remain as president until 2022 (the American interpretation of the Haitian constitution), some of the assassins likely believed that they had to take matters into their own hands and determine their own political future. Thus, we have the political instability that we are seeing to this day in a country that is rich in gold, oil, natural gas, copper, limestone, marble, and bauxite.

As the headlines read that the United States is “prepared” to deploy troops when the moment calls for it (in what could be the third American invasion of Haiti), we must consider the possibility that Americans will once again be asked to sacrifice themselves on behalf of subjugating another country to adhere to a Western-backed government. Although the Biden administration is interested in saving face and not making it look like it is in the driver’s seat on this situation by letting Kenya take the wheel, do not be fooled by the fact that the United States government controls global governance (under the UN) and that Haiti is nothing more than just another vassal state of the American Empire. We may not like the tactics of Cherizier and his gangster friends, but at the end of the day, Haiti should be run by Haitians, not puppets of global institutions and foreign actors.

Thank you for reading, and please check out my book, The Global Bully, and website.