It’s about to happen. That’s the outlook for the arrival of foreign intervention in Haiti to deal with the out-of-control gangs that are causing in all sectors of society death and desolation. The gang-killing Thursday of three American missionaries and a Haitian associate in a neighborhood north of Port-au-Prince underlines the crisis. 

The young American missionary couple, Davy and Nathalie Lloyd, arrived in Haiti from Missouri in 2022. They were gunned down by gangs, who also killed two others: David Lloyd III, a son of the organization’s founder, and Jude Montis, the Haitian director of Missions in Haiti, to which all of them belong. The organization has a good reputation for its work with orphans through its HOPE orphanage at Lizon. 

The latest murders of the missionaries happened as Kenya’s president, William Ruto, was in Washington on a state visit with his wife. The agenda of the heads of state, offered by President Ruto months ago, is for 1,000 Kenyan policemen to lead a force to clear up the gangs. The United Nations Security Council approved deployment of that force something like seven months ago. Some contingents were to land in Haiti as their president was being received in Washington. Last minute hitches caused a delay. 

Nathalie Lloyd, one of the victims last week, is the daughter of Congressman Ben Baker of Missouri. He issued on Facebook a heart-breaking statement on his daughter’s death: “I’ve never felt this kind of pain.” That pain has been shared by thousands in Haiti since the gangs have been operating, even before the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, the Haitian president, on July 7, 2021, in the bedroom of his secured residence, in a secluded neighborhood in the hills above the upscale Port-au-Prince suburb of Petion-Ville.  

The precursors of the current gangs were called Chimères, meaning ghosts, and were organized by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on his return to power in Haiti on October 15, 1994. That was on orders of President Bill Clinton, who dispatched 24,000 American troops for his protection. In January 1995, with support from the international community and with America in the lead, Mr. Aristide disbanded the Haitian Armed Forces, blaming them for the coup d’état of September 30, 1991 that cut short his presidency.

Instead of reforming the army by getting rid of the rotten oranges, he threw out the whole basket of fruits. Aristide Chimères were more like the Tontons-Macoute thugs of the dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who used them to keep power for life. When he died after 14 years, he transferred power to his 19-year-old son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who remained 15 more years, until the Haitian people rose up and threw him out on February 7, 1986.

The same international patrons who brought Aristide back to power in 1994 came to ease him out of power on February 29, 2004. His private out-of-control gangs were causing much harm in Haiti. So the era of foreign intervention began. For, the National Police, established, in 1994, by Aristide to replace Haiti’s FAd’H, as the armed forces were known, were no match for the gangs. Since 2004, we’ve witnessed the various foreign armies and police, under the sponsorship of the United Nations.

These begin with the U.N. Mission to Stabilize Haiti, known as MINUSTHA, which remained some 13 years, during which Haiti became more destabilized. The U.N. Mission for Justice Support in Haiti MINUJUSTH stayed from 2017 to 2019, and Haiti’s justice system has been dysfunctional ever since. Then came the turn of the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti, BINUH by its French acronym. And in June 2020, Jimmy Chérizier, alias Barbecue, who headed the gang “G9 Family and Allies,” inaugurated the “Gang Federation,” facilitated by then President Moïse.

Ruth Meagher La Lime, the American diplomat who represented United Nations Secretary General in Haiti and headed BINUH, had words of praise for President Moïse regarding the Gang Federation. Currently, Barbecue, a former police officer, has put together the “Viv Ansanm” (Living Together) Alliance of most of the gangs around Port-au-Prince, ready to face the foreigners.

I contend that any military foreign presence in Haiti to combat the gangs should also have the ultimate mission to train soldiers for a full remobilization of the Haitian Armed Forces that will operate under good governance in a democratic state. 

In its time, the FAd’H kept order in the land through its vast intelligence network into all of Haiti’s cities, towns, and countryside, via the Rural Police and their auxiliaries, the soukèt lawouze, in Creole and, in English, the dew shakers, who were up early each day checking all around for any untoward movement. 

I rest my case.