What To Do About Haiti? | Opinion

China's Xi Jinping isn't the only head of state traveling this week to visit a friend. On March 23, President Joe Biden will do some traveling of his own, making a brief two-day stop in Ottawa to meet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And ironically, one of the biggest items on the agenda doesn't have to do with the U.S. or Canada.

Haiti may not officially be at war, but the poverty-stricken, struggling country to the south certainly looks like a war zone. The situation has gotten so bad over the last year and a half that it may be too generous to use the word "country" to describe Haiti. "Country," after all, suggests there is a degree of law, order, and authority over the population. None of that presently exists in Haiti, where gangs rule over 60 percent of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's politicians are either ineffectual or predatory, an average person can be killed or kidnapped at a moment's notice, and the national police are overworked, underpaid or in league with the criminals they're supposed to be fighting. As one Haitian in Port-au-Prince told USA Today on March 11, ordinary citizens are living in a constant state of fear. "When you do go out you are so aware of everything – a car behind you, a motorcycle behind you," they said. "You never know if a vehicle just wants to pass you, or pass you and force you to stop for a kidnapping because it happens so often."

Official statistics and reports back the anecdote. The latest report from the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti paints a gloomy picture, where gangs are more powerful than the police and Haiti's political system is imploding under the weight of corruption, violence, and gridlock. Homicides increased by 35 percent last year; kidnappings rose by 104 percent during the same period. The Haitian National Police only has about 9,000 officers, a totally inadequate figure when one considers the fact that Haiti could have as many as 200 different gangs. The police couldn't do much even if they tried. "Despite their determined efforts to curb crime and fight gangs, the overstretched, understaffed and underresourced police force has not been able ... to deter the alarming rise in gang violence," the U.S. report stated.

The security problem makes the other problems in Haiti, like food insecurity and poverty, even worse. Nearly 5 million people, almost half of the population, doesn't have reliable food supplies. Up until recently, hospitals in the capital were running at far less than full-capacity after one gang, the G9 (which is led by a former police officer), refused to allow fuel to enter the city to pressure the current interim prime minister to resign. Politically, Haiti no longer has a single elected lawmaker or official in office. Ariel Henry, the interim prime minister who took over after Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in the summer of 2021, is highly unpopular.

U.S., Canadian, and U.N. officials have been watching the crisis in Haiti with a similar sense of doom. Everyone recognizes that the Caribbean nation, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, is going through an especially violent, anarchic period in its history. But no one really knows what to do about it.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for the establishment of an international security force to help the Haitian police restore order and take back neighborhoods from gangs. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights advocated for the same thing this week. The Biden administration, concerned the dysfunction in Haiti will push more migrants to make the journey toward the U.S., introduced a draft U.N. Security Council Resolution in October authorizing a "rapid action force." But the resolution died before it even got off the ground. President Joe Biden is adamant that the U.S. will not lead the force or even contribute personnel.

That's where Canada comes in. The White House has spent months trying to convince Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to take responsibility and lead the deployment. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters in January that "Canada itself has expressed interest in taking on a leadership role," although the Canadian government continues to stress that intervention would only be possible if the Haitian political elite supported it. In the interim, Canada is using non-military tools, like sanctions, to penalize gang members and former Haitian politicians who use the criminal groups for their own personal means.

While Washington's urge to pressure Trudeau into a decision is understandable given the humanitarian catastrophe Haiti represents, it's also understandable that Trudeau is skeptical such an intervention would work. It's not like deploying foreign troops to Haiti hasn't been tried before. The U.S. occupied the country between 1915-1934, ousted the Haitian military junta in 1994 and sent in the marines in 2004 after Haiti's then-president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forced into exile. U.N. peacekeepers eventually took over to transition Haiti back into a functioning democracy, only to stay there for 13 years. By the time those peacekeepers left, the U.N.'s legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of Haitians was sundered, with peacekeepers introducing cholera and some engaging in sexual abuse.

Every intervention in Haiti started as a moral crusade to address its many problems. Yet every single one of those interventions left Haiti in an even worse predicament. President Biden knows this, which is why he doesn't want to take charge of a hypothetical peace enforcement mission. Prime Minister Trudeau knows it too.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.