(Français)
In recent years, the United States, France, and Canada have provided massive amounts of military and police aid to Haiti, while, since last June, foreign troops continue to arrive in the country as part of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS). This “support” is not given to resolve Haiti’s security problems but rather to strengthen the control and repressive apparatus of the Western imperialist countries in a key neo-colony at this time of crisis in the world capitalist system.
Haiti’s strife and chaos are in large part the result of a profound popular uprising by Haiti’s ever-growing lumpen-proletariat, led by an array of “ghetto” armed groups with different histories, ethics, levels of discipline, ideological outlooks, leadership styles, and survival strategies. But they all now agree (at least in principle) that Haiti’s “system” must change, and they are not willing to surrender the power that they now wield to the corrupt political class and its local bourgeois and foreign masters that once used them as pawns.
The imperialists are determined to crush this autonomous popular power, which could become even more dangerous if it learns, develops, embraces, and articulates more clearly a scientific, revolutionary, and consciously anti-imperialist and socialist outlook and programme in the near future.
In Washington’s eyes, this would be, in effect, the frightening emergence of another Cuba (only 50 miles away to the west) and that revolutionary virus could also “infect” the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola and is home to many Haitian migrants and Dominicans with Haitian parentage or family.
Such a development could also threaten the security, from the U.S. perspective, of the Windward Passage, a critical commercial maritime route between Haiti and Cuba for goods from the U.S. Eastern seaboard to the Panama Canal.
So the imperialist trio have stepped up their support to the Haitian National Police (PNH) and their MSS proxies so as to avoid their own direct military intervention (as in 1994 and 2004) and getting their hands and boots dirty. Furthermore, they are militarily and financially overextended with the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.
Having failed to convince China and Russia to convert the MSS into a genuine UN “peace-keeping” operation, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres gave up on sending “blue helmets” to Haiti and is settling instead for continuation of the anemic MSS.
Thus the UN is trying to raise $908 million to pay for another year of MSS deployment in Haiti to install an “elected” government that will sign a bilateral 10-year military and economic pact with Washington called the Global Fragility Act (GFA), which we at Haïti Liberté have repeatedly warned about. The new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made it clear that this is still Washington’s goal, despite the wrecking ball that the new Trump administration has taken to many institutions of the “deep state,” like the soft-power juggernaut USAID, which was to be one of the GFA’s pillars.
Already from 2021 through 2024, Washington has done a lot. Just in the past year, the U.S. gave Haiti 10 all-terrain armored jeeps on May 19, 2024, and then it delivered 24 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) MaxxPro vehicles on Aug. 23, 2024. Washington’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) provided the PNH with 10 armored personnel carriers (APCs) from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3, 2024. On Feb. 14, 2025, the INL again delivered 20 Roshel Captain armored vehicles to Haiti.
the neocolonial masters are not satisfied with the PNH’s repressive capacity, so they now have close to 1,000 foreign troops as a back-up in the form of the MSS.
The U.S. and Canada had also delivered a number of Canadian-made INKAS armored cars to Haiti in October 2022. On Feb. 15, 2020, Haiti purchased 15 INKAS armored vehicles from Canada, received by President Jovenel Moïse and Prime Minister Jean Michel Lapin.
France also gave the PNH four armored vehicles worth one million euros on Dec. 7, 2024. Meanwhile, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Canada handed over 42 all-terrain vehicles, out of 59 to be given, to the PNH on Feb. 6, 2025.
Even the United Arab Emirates (UAE) gave the PNH 20 armored vehicles on Aug. 23, 2024.
Despite all these vehicles given, the neocolonial masters are not satisfied with nor trusting of the PNH’s repressive capacity, so they now have close to 1,000 foreign troops as a back-up in the form of the MSS. But they have to keep them equipped.
So on Feb. 10, Le Nouvelliste explained how Washington had given the PNH plenty of “Weapons, Ammunition, and Vehicles” including “nine vehicles, two trucks, two backhoe loaders, two wheel loaders, and a lowboy.” Among the weapons delivered were 600 rifles and an unspecified amount of ammo.
“This is a donation valued at six million dollars,” then President Leslie Voltaire declared at the ceremony to receive it from the INL. “All the equipment is armored. It will strengthen the police’s operational capacity in the fight against armed gangs.”
In addition to all this, the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) increased the PNH’s budget to 28.6 billion gourdes ($218 million) and that of the Haitian Armed Forces to 8.8 billion gourdes ($67 million), or 37.4 billion gourdes ($285 million) for the Haitian state’s two armed institutions. (With a budget of $30.57 billion in 2025, spending on national security represents only 0.93% of GDP, but that may change with the new President Fritz Alphonse Jean.)
Despite everything, the armed groups have gained territory and intercepted and burned half a dozen armored vehicles in working-class neighborhoods. State universities are almost no longer functioning in the metropolitan area, schools are closed in the areas held by armed groups, and the underprivileged masses’ informal commercial activities are at a standstill. The masses’ living conditions are becoming untenable, car traffic is slowing down, and the displaced population has reached over 500,000.
The TPC authorities appear to be carefree and only focussed on their personal interests. Their emoluments and expenses are exorbitant in a country where the popular masses and the proletarian layers live in deplorable and unacceptable conditions; Political quarrels over the sharing of power complicate any resolution of the crisis.
This entire bloated military and police arsenal is useless. Haiti’s security problem is a result of the popular masses’ living conditions, to the level of exploitation of the oppressed, and to the impunity associated with corruption.
Progressives must insist on building an autonomous tool for the popular masses to fully emancipate themselves from exploitation and domination. The masses cannot count on the traditional politicians, who are merely pawns of the Western imperialist powers. On the contrary, in the face of the generalized insecurity, the national liberation struggle’s vanguard must take advantage of technological advances to discern and define a theory for Haiti’s national liberation struggle, inspired by Marxism-Leninism, and maintain a presence on social networks for the work of raising awareness among the popular masses. This can bring a permanent mobilization to thwart the imperialist countries’ neocolonial plundering and the waste of the state’s meager resources through orchestrated corruption, nepotism, and overbilling.
It is imperative to destroy the repressive apparatus (army, police, militia, multinational force) and ideological apparatus (school, church, university, and media) of the neoliberal capitalist state in Haiti (which only serves Western powers) to build a socialist society.
No to the military occupation of Haiti.
No to the renewal of the mandate of the MSS in Haiti.
Progressive Haitians, let us unite to struggle for Haiti’s national liberation.
Freedom or Death! Homeland or Death!
