From Port au Prince
The last Statement from the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS), on Haiti will undoubtedly be a case study in times to come, due to the forcefulness with which the hemispheric organization makes a devastating assessment of the last 20 years of “humanitarian interventionism”, considering it “one of the strongest and most manifest failures of the international community”. Even more: According to the OAS, it was in these last “20 years of erroneous political strategy”, and under the umbrella of the “international community” itself, that “the criminal gangs that today besiege the country germinated”, a phenomenon in which we will dwell below .
Dire results
But the curious thing about the matter is that, starting from an essentially correct diagnosis, Luis Almagro has defended, In an interview with the Miami Herald newspaperthe need to reoccupy the country, territory through which a dozen civilian, police, military and political missions have passed over the last 30 years, with dire results, if we consider the scandals of systematic sexual violence committed by the occupying troops; the repeated massacres committed in popular neighborhoods; and the introduction of the cholera epidemic that killed 9,000 people and infected nearly 800,000, as recognized by the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon.
The renewed interventionist recipe book is justified today in the complete security disaster that the Haitian nation is going through. Various analysts mention the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, which happened in July of last year, as the beginning of this spiral of violence. However, no matter what variable we take (the circulation of weapons, the number of gangs, their operational capacity and their territorial control, the kidnappings, the commission of massacres, the murders and rapes, the number of displaced persons, etc.) we will see that This is a longer-term trend that began to consolidate with the coming to power of the PHTK in 2010, a still ruling party that has already appointed three successive heads of state and/or government: Michel MartellyMoïse himself, and now ariel henry. It was not with the withdrawal of MINUSTAH troops that these dangerous security tendencies began to manifest themselves, but several years before, being deepened by the occupation itself.
paramilitarism
As can be deduced from the study of paramilitarism and organized crime, these social phenomena find their most propitious breeding ground in the vacuum generated by different factors: by the weakness or breakdown of state capacities, by acute economic crises, by phenomena of civil war. , due to occupations or international war conflicts, due to the occurrence of humanitarian catastrophes, etc. That is, for everything that breaks, weakens or retracts the social, state and/or community fabric. A fabric that, in Haiti, due to its extensive anti-colonial history and its absolutely sui generis of its society, historically had a particular unity and resilience.
But it was the “violent pacification” of the country attempted by MINUSTAH, which contributed to the current scenario. This, due to several factors: the process of substitution of state capacities operated by the “endless occupation”; the weakening of Haitian civil society thanks to the indiscriminate actions of more than 12 thousand non-governmental organizations that compete, demobilize and capture local human resources, especially since the post-earthquake of 2010; by the neoliberal economic policies that, since the 1980s, have destroyed the last traces of the country’s industrial, agro-industrial and agricultural capacity, generating phenomena such as rural exodus and urban overcrowding, triggering misery and unemployment; and above all due to the process of selective repression in some of the popular neighborhoods of the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, which generated the terrifying vacuum that criminal and paramilitary groups now come to fill.
Florida Arms
Regarding the origin of this phenomenon, some things must be pointed out. 1) Neither Haiti nor its insular neighbor, the Dominican Republic, produce weapons of any kind, so their origin is necessarily foreign. two) The United States is the largest producer and exporter of weapons. and ammunition -in addition to the closest- with 36 of the global market, a figure that has been increasing in the last decade. 3) In all known cases to date, arms smuggling occurred either through airports or through port terminals, from South Florida. This, even though an embargo on arms sales weighs on the country since 1991, partially relaxed in 2006.
The National Commission for Disarmament, Dismantling and Reintegration estimated in 2019 that there were some 500,000 illegal weapons in circulation in the country., an estimate that, unfortunately, has been greatly exceeded in recent years. The first and obvious way to cut the spiral of violence from its very roots would be to control and prevent this flow, which places large-caliber weapons every day in the hands of young people from the most impoverished populations of the metropolitan area, today a territory practically besieged by criminal gangs.
Considering the interventionist crusade of the OAS, the upcoming end of the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the open debates in the United States about what to do with its uncomfortable ally in the Caribbean Basin, concepts such as the “responsibility to protect”, the “principle of non-indifference” and other categories of narratives began to resonate more and more. interventionist coined in the post Cold War. Which, basically, deny or seek to suspend the legal pillars of the international order since the constitution of the United Nations: the rights of sovereignty and self-determination of nations.
Elections
Haiti’s security problem has specifically police and operational dimensions. But in its broader political dimension, territorial control of the country can never be retaken without an electoral process that enables a recomposition of political power into a legitimate authority, considering that Elections have not been held in the country for six years, and the judicial and legislative powers are virtually disjointed, as well as suspended or seriously weakened educational and health services. The permanent postponement of the elections will only further weaken the State and its political class, further reducing their ability to maneuver.
In addition, economic shock policies such as the recently decreed increase in fuel prices up to 100 percent It will not only be a coup de grace for the broad popular majorities that are struggling on the edge of survival, but it will give more and more oxygen to the expansion and territorial control of the armed gangs, deepening, perhaps irreversibly, the paramilitarization of the country.
*Sociologist, doctoral student in History from the UNLP and fellow and researcher at IdIHCS/CONICET.