Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

The Kenyan Intervention in Haiti: Another Wave of “Diplomatic” Terrorism
Kevin Edmonds
03 Jul 2024
Kenyan police arrive in Haiti
Kenyan police arrive in Haiti

The invasion of Haiti that has just begun with the arrival of Kenyan police, was long in the making. It is the end result of a long imperialist war of destabilization and propaganda against the country. Kenya's involvement is said to be a better solution than previous interventions, but it is just a cover for the goals of western imperialist machinations.

As we witness the arrival of Kenyan troops into Haiti, many might wonder how we got to this point, and perhaps believe that the Kenyans are there to do some good in terms of bringing peace and stability to the country. This is understandable as a great deal of time, energy and resources have gone into the propaganda pushed by the CORE Group (led by the U.S. and Canada) to justify this latest violation of Haitian sovereignty and self-determination.

The idea that Haiti needs to be saved from criminal and rebellious elements within its society has been a constant, even before the Bwa Caiman meeting that launched the Haitian Revolution in 1791. In 1915, the United States invaded Haiti in order to fight “the bandits.” This occupation lasted until 1934 and resulted in the creation of the Haitian military – a force that would become infamous for terrorizing the people's political organizations that challenged the parasitic Haitian elite and the Duvalier dictatorship that followed. The paramilitary organizations of the dictatorship were only removed by an uprising of the people, the dechoukaj, but many of these individuals never really went away. Many became the new political leaders in the country.

When Aristide was overthrown in 2004, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was argued as being necessary in order to save the country from being overrun by gangs. At that time, the narrative was that Aristide was using gangs and that they threatened the political stability of the country. Nevermind that a dictatorship aligned paramilitary organization had helped to set the stage for a military intervention that would overthrow Aristide.

When MINUSTAH entered Haiti in 2004, it was headed by the Brazilians, and they were regarded as the best fit given their left of centre political leadership – under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva -– and the experience of the Brazilian military and police fighting gangs in the favelas. Clearly experience and success are two different things. The Brazilians failed because the gangs aren't the main problem in Haiti.

The poor, young and often desperate men are an easy target; their political and economic bosses who live in gated compounds, fly on private jets, and own private ports are not. However, the gangs are a symptom of Haiti's crisis which is much greater - which no military can fix - whether they be from the United States, Jamaica or Kenya.

When we break it down, Haiti has once again been targeted by perhaps one of the most undemocratic interventions one can imagine, given that both Haitian and Kenyan leaders based this intervention upon the total disregard of domestic political institutions in their respective countries. In Haiti, you had a widely unpopular, unelected, foreign-installed politician in Ariel Henry (via a CORE Group tweet), who, at the time, ruled over a nation with ZERO elected representatives. This was due to more than a decade of Henry’s predecessors, Michel Martelly and Jovenel Moïse, who respectively came to power with deeply flawed U.S.-backed elections that saw the lowest, and second lowest turnouts in Haitian history, resulting in an incredibly weak, almost non-existent mandate to rule. 

After the 2010 earthquake, Martelly was muscled into the election’s second round by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the United Nations Special Envoy and co-chair of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) Bill Clinton. The gravity of this political moment is reflected in the fact that Hillary Clinton flew back from Egypt in the midst of the Arab Spring to pressure then president Rene Preval to accept the fact that the US, working with representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS), changed results of the elections.  Preval was threatened with removal from both the presidency as well as Haiti, by MINUSTAH head Edmond Mulet. Preval eventually conceded, setting the stage for the kleptocratic, criminal Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PTHK) to take power and lead Haiti into a downward spiral.

According to the Haitian Constitution, Martelly was not eligible to run for president, as he had not lived in Haiti for the preceding five years, as mandated by the constitution. Martelly moved to Haiti in 2007 when his friend, the also undemocratically appointed heir to the incredibly violent 2004 coup, Gérard Latortue, concluded his appointment of Prime Minister. Breaking with the Haitian constitution a "council of the wise" was set up by the CORE Group to choose a new Prime Minister. Gerard Latortue was selected by the Council and appointed head of the interim government while still living in the United States – a process that would be repeated with the selection of Michel Martelly.

This is an example of how the Core Group does not govern Haiti directly; instead, its members exercise influence through the power of their “diplomatic” missions. This is how the Core Group maintains control of all major political decisions in the country, which recently included the decision as to appoint Henry by tweet, the selection of Martelly to be the de-facto leader and hatchet man after the 2004 coup, and rubber stamp the pillaging that would take place during the reconstruction in 2010.

Martelly was a self-admitted former gangster, who was part of the Ton Ton Macoutes, a Duvalier sponsored paramilitary organization that terrorized the Haitian people in his teens. He was a staunch supporter of the Duvalier dictatorship, opposed the prosecution of Jean Claude Duvalier, and even welcomed his son, Francois Nicolas Duvalier, into his administration as a consultant. Both Martelly and Moïse allowed the terms of elected politicians to expire so that they could rule by decree and faced no consequences from their international backers (the CORE Group).  A major reason elections had been repeatedly postponed is that a functioning democratic system in Haiti would allow for Martelly, his administration and his immediate family to be held accountable for the numerous accusations and allegations of fraud, financial mismanagement and political repression.

In May 2019, Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes alleged that Moïse and other officials (including Martelly) embezzled an estimated $3.8 billion dollars. The court’s 656-page report alleges that the Martelly administration contracted a company then led by Moïse to carry out infrastructure projects that it never completed, largely using PetroCaribe funds. Moïse and the company denied the allegations. When Moïse was assassinated on July 7, 2021, Martelly was living lavishly in Florida with the stolen money, and the institutional breakdown initiated by Moïse and Martelly, with no elected politicians, led to a power vacuum with several competitors. With no clear constitutional way forward due to the collapse of all relevant political institutions, the CORE Group settled the power struggle through its appointment of Ariel Henry by a tweet.

Haitian community protests against Henry were a constant from 2021, especially as his regime followed IMF dictates to remove fuel subsidies, causing an immediate rise in inflation, and making the lives of already impoverished Haitians more difficult. In response to these protests, Henry blamed “gangs,” and the US and Core Group also intervened, working, since 2022, to send a military force to uphold the power of its puppet government. The US, with the help of Mexico, drafted the document for a “Multinational Security Support Mission” and presented it to the UN Security Council (UNSC). After three tries, the UNSC approved the mission, though insisted that it was not a UN mission, only sanctioned by the UN. And, after failing to get Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and the Caribbean Community to “lead” the mission, the U.S. was finally able to convince the Kenyan government with a promise of $300,000 million. However, the Kenyan Supreme Court – after protests by local groups – blocked the deployment of its police to Haiti.

It is within this context that the US arranged Henry’s travel to Kenya to fulfill the Kenyan Supreme Court’s request for a signed bilateral agreement between the two countries. On his way back to Haiti, Henry was denied entry into the country presumably by the armed groups and his plane was forced to land in Puerto Rico. It is then that the US abandoned Henry and forced him to promise to resign once they (the US) put in place a “transitional government in Haiti). Henry had done his work, with the signing of a Haiti-Kenya security agreement that would provide some questionable legal backing to the intervention. He could now be cast aside.

The President of Kenya, William Ruto has a very controversial record himself, as he is currently accused of numerous human rights violations (including the widespread extrajudicial murders of citizens within numerous shantytowns), the overruling of his own constitution in order to approve the military intervention, and, most recently,for violently putting down nationwide protests against his IMF backed austerity and tax reforms. Largely because of these actions, whereby Ruto sided with the CORE Group, Kenya has now been designated as a Major Non-NATO Ally in return for putting Kenyan bodies in the line of fire for crumbs.

Wanting to join in on this dumpster fire of “diplomatic” imperialism is CARICOM. The Caribbean Community is a supposed self-declared “zone of peace,” with non-intervention as one of its cherished principles. Yet several of its members have promised to contribute military and police forces to Haiti. All to be funded by the U.S. and Canada, with CARICOM leaders getting increased access to funding and loans.

So when we hear that the Kenyan military mission is needed in Haiti to restore stability and democratic norms, we must ask what stability or democracy? The “democratic” norms of the “international community” (a narrowly defined group that includes the US, France, and Canada) repeatedly prove that there is nothing “rules based” about them. The “international community” is instead parasitic, inherently violent, racist, and hypocritical. The so-called “rules based international order” needs to end. It is based on the rule of might of the imperialists who are currently going to great lengths and all four corners of the earth in order to assemble and fund a coalition of Black and Brown peoples to ensure Haiti’s neck remains under their boots.  

This is the neocolonialism that Kwame Nkrumah warned us about – imperialism in Blackface. But the Haitian people are not fooled.

Kevin Edmonds (@kevin_edmonds) is a member of the Toronto-based Caribbean Solidarity Network  (CSN), an organization committed to the principles of Caribbean Liberation and Unity across the region as well as throughout the Diaspora. He is also an assistant professor in the Caribbean Studies Program at the University of Toronto.

Kenya
Haiti
CORE Group
Haiti Occupation

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Mildred Trouilot Aristide
Haiti And The Global Movement For Reparations
16 April 2025
Haiti Action Committee is honored to share the keynote address given by Haiti’s former First Lady Mildred Aristide
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
Remembering Mario Joseph, BAI Managing Attorney
09 April 2025
The world has lost a champion of justice with the passing of Mario Joseph, a Haitian human rights lawyer who spent nearly three decades fightin
Clau O'Brien Moscoso , Austin Cole
The Struggle for a Zone of Peace Continues!: A Conversation with Austin Cole
26 February 2025
The newly launched U.S./NATO Out of the Americas Network activates local grassroots organizations across the region in an effort to make this h
Kit Klarenberg
USAID Exported CIA Balkan Terror to Haiti
26 February 2025
/*-->*/ /*-->*/
Nato Koury
Guantánamo Bay’s forgotten history of detaining Haitian migrants
19 February 2025
The threats by the Trump administration to detain migrants in Guantanamo Bay will not be the first time the United States has used the facility
Jake Johnston
Where Does the Money Go? A Look at USAID Spending in Haiti
12 February 2025
The Trump administration is dismantling USAID, intending to absorb its mission into the State Department. USAID's engagement with Haiti demonst
Clau O'Brien Moscoso
Combatting Imperialism, Defending Sovereignty: Zone of Peace in Haiti and the Americas
22 January 2025
On Sunday, January 19th, 2025, the Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for
Travis Ross
How Aristide’s Lavalas Family Party Has Lurched to the Right
22 January 2025
Fanmi Lavalas has fallen far from its roots as a popular progressive movement and is now nothing more than a servant of imperialism.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
INTERVIEW: The Problem of Haiti is the Same as Latin America: Gerard Pierre-Charles, 1983
15 January 2025
Despite selling out Haiti, former Haitian leftist Gerard Pierre-Charles’s 1
Business Ghana
Haiti, Africa, And the Unfinished Project Of Black Sovereignty
15 January 2025
In excerpts from a speech given in Accra, Ghana, BAR editor and contributor Dr.

More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio May 9, 2025
    09 May 2025
    In this week’s segment, we discuss the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe in World War II, and the disinformation that centers on the U.S.'s role and dismisses the pivotal Soviet role in that…
  • Book: The Rebirth of the African Phoenix
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Rebirth of the African Phoenix: A View from Babylon
    09 May 2025
    Roger McKenzie is the international editor of the UK-based Morning Star, the only English-language socialist daily newspaper in the world. He joins us from Oxford to discuss his new book, “The…
  • ww2
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Bruce Dixon: US Fake History of World War II Underlies Permanent Bipartisan Hostility Toward Russia
    09 May 2025
    The late Bruce Dixon was a co-founder and managing editor of Black Agenda Report. In 2018, he provided this commentary entitled, "US Fake History of World War II Underlies Permanent Bipartisan…
  • Nakba
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Meaning of Nakba Day
    09 May 2025
    Nadiah Alyafai is a member of the US Palestinian Community Network chapter in Chicago and she joins us to discuss why the public must be aware of the Nakba and the continuity of Palestinian…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Ryan Coogler, Shedeur Sanders, Karmelo Anthony, and Rodney Hinton, Jr
    07 May 2025
    Black people who are among the rich and famous garner praise and love, and so do those who are in distress. But concerns for the masses of people and their struggles are often missing.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us