I’ve long held that after Grenada in 1983, the next US-led military intervention in the Caribbean would most likely be in Haiti – and I’ve been proven right.
Take the following September 22 Reuters news item from New York, headlined ‘US pledges new aid for Haiti, urges UN to authorize security mission’, by Humeyra Pamuk and Michelle Nichols.
It reads (in great part): ‘The United States on Friday (September 22) unveiled US $65 million more in help for Haiti’s police and urged the U.N. Security Council to formally back the deployment of a multinational security mission to help the Caribbean country fight crippling gang violence.
‘Speaking at a meeting in New York to address the security situation in Haiti, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the mission, “led by Kenya”, could be deployed “within months.”
“We really have no time to lose,” Blinken said.
The article continues: ‘Haiti last year asked for help to combat violent gangs that have largely overrun the capital Port-au-Prince.
‘The (UN Security) council could vote as soon as next week, diplomats said, on a US-drafted resolution supporting a multinational police deployment.
‘While not providing any troops, Blinken said the Biden administration will work with the U.S. Congress to provide $100 million to back the multinational mission with logistical and financial assistance.
‘This could include intelligence support, airlift, communications and medical support,’ he said.
‘The $65 million will aim to bolster the Haitian police capacity to dismantle the gangs,’ Blinken added.
The article reported the U.S. was ‘also imposing new visa bans on former and current Haitian officials whom Blinken said were enabling the violence.’
It adds: ‘Washington supports Kenya’s vision for a three-part security mission that includes helping Haitian police, ensuring security for static installations and thoroughfares and strengthening law enforcement in the long term,’ Blinken said.
‘Kenyan President William Ruto, told the UN General Assembly on September 21: ‘We must not leave Haiti behind.’
The article continued, ‘Countries have been wary of supporting the unelected administration of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has said fair elections cannot be held with the current insecurity.’
It also noted that ‘Haiti has been without any elected representatives since January.
Henry told the General Assembly on September 22: ‘My interim government is determined to hold elections as soon as practically possible, adding that security in Haiti had deteriorated to a ‘critical point as ‘criminals feel that they are all powerful…’
Henry continued, ‘I am asking for help to allow Haitians to stay in their homes,’ and called ‘to bolster the national police of Haiti, so that it can truly respond to the challenges it faces’.
The unelected prime minister also called for the UN Security Council’s authorization for that help.’
The article said: ‘Haiti’s most powerful gang leader this week called for the armed overthrow of Henry, urging Haitians to take to the streets against the unelected government.’
It quoted U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a report to the Security Council last month, as saying that ‘A robust use of force’ by a multinational police deployment and the ‘use of military assets, were ‘needed to restore law and order in Haiti and disarm gangs.’
The article ended noting: ‘A multinational police deployment would not be a U.N. mission.’
The report reveals enough to support my original position, which still stands today, that the US has successfully repeated its age-old divide-and-rule argument of justification of an invasion by changing its name to a ‘Rescue Mission’.
Clearly, to all old-enough to remember, it’s all from the same-old, always-upgraded and never-discarded US Psychological Operations (Psy-Ops) playbook, the same guidelines being today as in the week between October 17 and the invasion on October 25.
Like back then, in the name of Rescuing Democracy and saving a defenseless population against armed killers needing to be urgently and violently-thwarted by use of overwhelming armed foreign force.
The accompanying propaganda blitz has painted the ‘armed gangs’ as assassins worthy of assassination in the name of ‘Protecting Democracy’, even though Haiti is everything but democratic, led by an unpopular and unelected prime minister, with no elected government and no national institutions, to ensure any safe return to democracy after the killing is over and the bodies are counted.
Like in Grenada, Haiti’s chapter started-off with Kenya agreeing to deploy 1,000 troops to Haiti, supposedly under a UN ‘Peacekeeping Force’, but which last weekend metamorphosed into a US-backed, funded and armed ‘UN-led Multinational Force’.
With pre-election pressures topping his agenda and now wanting to have to explain beaths of Americans returning from Haiti in body bags, President Biden has done like in Ukraine and is committing no us soldiers.
Instead (and like in Ukraine), Washington is dangling money — US $65 million more for Haiti and US $100 million ‘to support the effort’, but from a far distance.
Like in Grenada back 40 years ago next month, normally-progressive Caribbean political, press and academic personalities have already started toeing-the-line with amorphous and heavily-loaded statements like ‘Democracy is under threat’ and ‘Law and Order must be restored by all means necessary…’
Such positions unquestionably support yet-another external violent intervention in the long history of Western-led imperial and imperialist orchestrated coups and invasions of Haiti.
The West has long determined that the small Caribbean ‘half-island’ nation, whose Black leaders defeated Napoleon and the Europeans armies to establish the first Black Republic and to formally Abolish Slavery in 1804, must never-again be allowed its freedom.
Haiti was forced to pay virtually perpetual Reparations to France for the Revolution that started the struggle to end Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery.
Today, as if Black Lives no longer matter, the US is funding a clear Black-on-Black onslaught, using Caribbean and African soldiers to further legitimise an unpopular prime minister of a truly-failed state, to install yet another ‘transitional’ administration in Port-au-Prince, that will most-likely allow the Status Quo to continue – and lead to the next military coup.