PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The Biden administration is committed to supporting Haiti’s interim leaders as they attempt to restore stability here and hold elections, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday in an unusual attempt to boost the nation as a U.S.-backed international policing mission has so far failed to make a significant impact against the gangs that have seized most of the capital.
The visit came three months after interim prime minister Garry Conille took office following his predecessor’s effective ouster by the paramilitary groups who control about 80 percent of the city and key infrastructure elsewhere in the country.
The top U.S. diplomat is no stranger to flying into crises, but more often travels to regions where tough negotiations are necessary, such as in the Mideast, or to bolster U.S. interests through friendly dialogue. A visit to Haiti has a less clear upside amid uncertain prospects for both the policing mission and the interim leaders themselves. But the one-day visit was intended to deliver a shot in the arm to Conille, a mild-mannered physician who spent much of his career outside of the country.
The limits on U.S. trust in the Haitian government were on clear display during the trip, with Blinken’s entourage confined to armored vehicles and taking meetings only in places that were under the full security control of the U.S. government: the heavily fortified U.S. embassy and the ambassador’s residence nestled in the hills above the winding streets of the capital. Blinken also toured the base for the Kenya-led, U.S.-funded policing mission, which finally got underway in July nearly two years after Haitian leaders first requested it and remains well short of its goal of 2,500 personnel.
“The United States appreciates Haiti’s leaders putting aside their differences working together to put the country on a path for free and fair elections,” Blinken told reporters after a day of meetings in the capital. “We’re very clear-eyed about what’s required to address Haiti’s challenges. There’s an enormous amount of work to be done.”
He announced an additional $45 million in humanitarian aid for the country.
Haiti has struggled since a massive 2010 earthquake leveled significant portions of the country. But its recovery was derailed after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, throwing the country’s already weak institutions into disarray and opening the door to armed gangs to take over increasingly large parts of Port-au-Prince, ports and other critical areas inside the country. Earlier this year, they shut down the country’s main airport for weeks while then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry was on a diplomatic trip abroad, eventually forcing his resignation.
“The task ahead, as was pointed out, is extremely complex, but we feel quite confident that if our partners bear with us, commit to working with us, we will achieve our goals. The progress we’ve achieved so far is actually quite remarkable,” Conille said alongside Blinken.
Some Haitians have criticized Conille for overpromising, underdelivering and being slightly aloof in his first months in office, and when asked in French by a Haitian journalist after his English-language remarks whether he would like to deliver some words to the Haitian public, he walked away without comment.
Coming two months ahead of the U.S. presidential election, the trip is a gamble for Blinken, who, though he steers clear of domestic politics, risks calling attention to an unresolved international challenge that, if mismanaged, could lead to a flood of migration. Elections have not been held in the Caribbean nation of 12 million since 2016. About 578,000 people, roughly 5 percent of the population, have been displaced by violence, according to the United Nations. In the first half of the year, at least 3,884 Haitians were killed or injured in the fighting, the United Nations said.
But with Haiti just 800 miles south of Florida, Washington can scarcely afford to ignore the crisis here even as most of the Biden administration’s diplomatic bandwidth has been consumed by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
“The fragility of the country, you can’t exaggerate it. And the incapacity of the government to do anything of significance to change the situation is unfortunately very high,” said Robert Fatton, a Haitian-born scholar of Haitian politics at the University of Virginia. “I don’t know what is going to be the result of the trip except that the U.S. will show that it supports Conille and money will be given, but that is still kind of a containment strategy.”
Blinken is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Haiti since one of his predecessors, John F. Kerry, traveled to the country in 2015. The diplomat plans to travel later Thursday to the neighboring Dominican Republic, where the newly reelected government recently allowed the U.S. government to seize the plane of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The United States has a long and tortured record of interventions in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. It retains significant political influence in Haiti, but its history also shadows any effort to bolster security here. President Joe Biden has ruled out any deployment of U.S. troops.
Instead, his administration led an effort to build an international policing mission after Haitian leaders requested assistance in October 2022, but it has struggled to get countries to sign on. About 380 Kenyan police officers finally deployed in July and are expected soon to be joined by Jamaican police forces.
The Biden administration has pledged $360 million toward the mission, including equipment such as armored MRAP vehicles initially developed for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Blinken on Thursday reviewed an honor guard of the Kenyan police forces and spoke to Kenyan officers who are driving the massive vehicles in their deployment around the country. Parked next to the MRAPs was an armored Haitian national police vehicle that appeared to have sustained at least two hits to its bulletproof windshield. The deployment has been controversial in Kenya, where citizens have questioned why their country should be sending its forces in harm’s way in a faraway deployment. Kenyan police forces have also been accused of human rights abuses at home.
The initial deployment of Kenyan forces has so far failed to quell the violence, observers say, amid concerns that many of the African officers speak neither French nor Creole and a growing perception among Haitians that they are unwilling to put themselves at risk to push back on the gangs.
“There’s a perception that they’re not doing anything,” said James Beltis, an activist and one of the founders of an anti-corruption group, “Nou pap dòmi,” or “We aren’t sleeping.”
Public confidence in Haiti’s interim leaders was also shaken in recent weeks following corruption allegations that three of the nine members of the transitional presidential council demanded a bribe from the then-director of a state-owned bank in exchange for allowing him to keep his job.
Haitian leaders say their goal is to hold elections next year and to hand over power by early 2026. Skeptics say that based on current progress, that is unlikely to happen as there is no up-to-date list of eligible voters and the steps to assemble one are formidable.
U.S. and Haitian officials have in recent days indicated an openness to seeking U.N. approval for a peacekeeping mission — though many Haitians have bad memories of a U.N. mission that ran from 2004 to 2017 and was linked to sexual violence and a cholera epidemic that killed 10,000 people. Blinken indicated openness to a peacekeeping mission but said his focus was on renewing the existing policing mission.
Some critics of the policing effort say that it has not been accompanied by enough focus on fostering political stability that would give Haitian citizens deeper confidence in the institutions of their country and eventually the opportunity to vote.
“For me, there’s really little chance of a security force providing lasting stability in Haiti absent significant political changes in the country,” said Jake Johnston, a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank, who focuses on Haiti. “And so far we haven’t seen those latter things happening.”
