Antony Blinken swoops into a violent hotspot close to home

ANTONY BLINKEN has spent much of his time in office managing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the rivalry with China. On September 5th America’s secretary of state turned to a crisis just a few hundred miles from home when he visited Haiti for the first time.

Mr Blinken spent only a few hours in the capital, Port-au-Prince, much of which is controlled by armed gangs. His armoured convoy snaked between fortified zones. Though brief, his visit aimed to show that normality is returning to a country that is tormented by natural disasters and human violence. “This is a moment of great challenge but also a moment of hope for Haiti,” Mr Blinken declared as he greeted the country’s interim leaders at the American residence, a colonial-era villa still deemed too insecure for diplomats to sleep in.

Mr Blinken hopes to quicken a virtuous circle in which “success breeds success”. In June and July, 400-odd police officers from Kenya arrived in Port-au-Prince as part of a UN-authorised effort to restore order. The idea is that this international force will eventually grow to around 2,500 officers; that they and Haitian forces will reclaim from the gangs more of the capital and the country’s main roads; and that this will allow elections next year that will see a democratic government replace Haiti’s transitional administration in 2026.

In reality, the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti (MSS) has made a slow start. It is short of money and staff. And uncertainty surrounds its mandate, which must be renewed before it expires in early October. Many Haitians think the foreign police are ineffective. “Did they come as tourists?” wonders Berthony Narcisse, a 47-year-old father of two.

There has been some progress—and not just in posher neighbourhoods such as Petionville, where happy hours are back with a bang. The airport and seaport, which reopened in May, before the MSS arrived, have not had to close again. The Haitian police are conducting patrols in areas of the capital that a few months ago they rarely set foot in, thanks to new American-supplied equipment such as hulking armoured vehicles that were designed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the MSS’s arrival has not yet dealt a meaningful blow to the gangs. Some predicted they would retreat and shed members, particularly the many children in their ranks. Instead, gang leaders have adapted, with hit-and-run attacks and expansion into new areas of the country. Murders have crept upwards since the MSS arrived (see chart). They may rise further as the forces battle, warns Mercy Corps, an NGO.

In July one of Haiti’s most powerful gangs, 400 Mawozo, attacked Ganthier, a town east of the capital, twice in a few days. The Haitian police, backed by the MSS, fought back. But the gangs returned when they left, setting fire to the police station and forcing the mayor to flee. Joseph Wilson, 400 Mawozo’s leader—for whose capture the United States has offered $1m—taunted the government in a video. Garry Conille, Haiti’s interim prime minister, says he has no way to prosecute or jail captured gang members. Gangs destroyed two prisons in February; thousands of inmates escaped. In August more broke out of a prison north of the capital.

The slow progress is unsurprising to Haiti-watchers. The violence is entrenched. From its very conception the MSS has moved at a snail’s pace. The UN Security Council did not bless the intervention until October 2023, a year after Haiti’s government first asked for an international security mission. It took another eight months for the first foreign police to show up. Jamaica is expected to send additional officers, and El Salvador a medevac team. The mission needs cash. William O’Neill, a rights expert at the UN, compares efforts to fund it to “a beggar running around with a cup”. In August Kenyan police in Haiti said they had not had their full salaries for two months in a row.

Mr Blinken hopes to convene a special meeting this month in New York, when the UN General Assembly holds its annual summit, to drum up more support. But his ambition of turning the MSS mission into a full-fledged UN peacekeeping operation with more reliable funding seems unlikely to be realised. Russia and China would probably oppose it. And many others at the UN are reluctant to get drawn back in, given that the last peacekeeping mission to Haiti, in 2004-17, was blamed for bringing sexual abuse and a cholera epidemic.

At this rate few see how Haiti can be made safe enough to meet the objective of holding elections in November 2025. The country desperately needs a legitimate government: even before President Jovenel Moïse was killed in July 2021, triggering Haiti’s current collapse, its parliament was short of members. In February 2024 gangs went on the rampage while the prime minister at the time, Ariel Henry, was out of the country. International backers, including the United States and Caribbean countries, forced Mr Henry to resign and make way for a stand-in government.

Haitians are not just sceptical of the MSS but of the transitional government, too. It has so far failed to deliver a promised “national dialogue” on the crisis, notes Jake Johnston of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, a think-tank in Washington, DC. Three members of the transitional council have been accused of asking the director of a state-owned bank to pay $760,000 in order to keep his job. The United States has a history of backing politicians who turn out to be dodgy: witness sanctions it imposed this month on Haiti’s former president, Michel Martelly, for drug-trafficking.

The humanitarian cost is rising. Five children are killed or injured every week, according to Save the Children, an NGO. The government has delayed the start of the academic year because schools are being used to shelter some of the 600,000 families who have been forced to leave their homes. If and when the MSS does take on the gangs face-to-face, things will get worse before they get better. ■

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