It is not just the issues of language and culture that set Haiti apart from the rest of the Carib-bean Community (CARICOM). There are, as well, Haiti’s historic proclivity for a condition of near permanent civil instability and for attendant violence. Haiti, as well, has a reputation for breeding powerful, thoroughly ruthless criminal gangs that compete with the state for a monopoly of force. Part of the reason for this has to do with Haiti’s historic misfortune of throwing up shockingly weak political administrations that quickly come to terms with the reality that they must cede a fair measure of authority to the warlords and their ‘soldiers’ recruited from the country’s poor communities, if the legitimate government is to be assured of its own survival.
Over time, the warlords and their ‘armies’ accumulate reputations that derive from their demonstrable capacity for shocking, ruthless violence. They thrive on their ability to accumulate ‘soldiers’ from amongst the enduringly disgruntled poor who, inevitably, become ‘constituencies’ to the warlords that present themselves as protectors. Nowhere else in CARICOM is there a ‘governance formula’ that even remotely resembles that which obtains in Haiti.
Haiti became the Caribbean Community’s newest member state on 2 July 2002, some four years after it had secured provisional membership. Unsurprisingly, the development became a regional talking point if only for the reason that outside of the accident of geography, much of what was known about Haiti in the English-speaking Caribbean had to do with its tumultuous history. The region’s 2002 ‘embrace’ of Haiti as a ‘sister CARICOM country’ was attended by an unfussiness that had everything to do with the fact that Haiti had never really come to be seen, as, in its broadest sense, part of what we refer to as the Caribbean family.
How much that has changed is debatable. That said, there can be no ignoring the dictates of the Treaty of Chaguaramas.
We cannot, however, ignore the real world. Haiti may be ‘on the books,’ so to speak, as a CARICOM member country, though whether the travails of the country have ever been an enduring preoccupation of the rest of the regional movement is an altogether different matter. CARICOM may have had little choice but to embrace Haiti as a member of the geographic Caribbean family. That said, the shocking historic experiences of the former French colony have, unquestionably, set it apart. In effect, in embracing Haiti, CARICOM acknowledged the reality of geography, setting aside the reality that the country’s uproarious history could not be diluted through membership of the regional movement. Two decades later after welcoming Haiti into the regional movement CARICOM was to be traumatized by the brutal, grisly murder of the country’s President, Jovenel Moise reportedly inside his residence. The killing left the region in a condition of shock. The region’s response to the Haitian President’s killing was as much a formal expression of condolence as it was a declaration of shock over the fact that the Head of Government of a CARICOM member country could be brutally murdered in his home.
External intervention has, historically, manifestly, changed little in Haiti. The successive failures of both the United States, and afterwards, the United Nations, through peacekeeping and humanitarian sorties, bear witness to that reality. In both instances the intervening parties did little more than attract external criticism associated with allegations of mistreatment of native Haitians.
These days, it is the warlords and their constituencies that appear to make the most waves, ‘locking down’ impoverished neighbours and romping with the government from behind ramparts ‘manned’ by the poor and the dispossessed. Days ago, a report from the country’s capital stated that government’s intervention to provide some poor communities with resources intended to stave off “catastrophic hunger” was violently vetoed by a criminal gang that moved to blockade a strategically important “fuel terminal.” The UN says that “more than four million people” in a condition of “acute hunger.” are currently being affected by the standoff.
Nor can there be any mistaking the reality that the rest of CARICOM can do sorry little, in practical terms, to afford Haiti the level of attention and relief that the country requires. When, just over a week ago, Haiti’s Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry dispatched a letter to CARICOM Heads calling for “solidarity and requesting assistance to alleviate the deepening humanitarian, security, political, and economic crises in Haiti,” on account of what the Haitian leader reportedly described as “the actions of criminal gangs,” CARICOM could do no more than “condemn the callous and inhumane actions of the armed gangs” and “call upon all stakeholders in Haiti to come together with urgency at this critical juncture in the country’s history to bring an end to the protracted political stalemate in the interest of the people of the country and choose nation above self-interest” – diplomatic prattle at its best. From their respective vantage points inside the conflict-torn CARICOM member country the respective parties to the confrontation – the Haitian political administration and the criminal gangs, may both have been more than a little bemused by the CARICOM’s response to Haiti’s seemingly unending travails.
