Haiti’s unelected prime minister, Ariel Henry, said on Monday he would step down following the appointment of a transitional council and interim prime minister after leading the Caribbean country since the assassination of its last president in 2021.
Under Henry’s rule, armed gangs have greatly increased their wealth, influence and territory, leading to the establishment of a United Nations-backed security mission led by Kenya.
Last week, Henry travelled to Kenya to seek support. But the conflict escalated dramatically in his absence, leaving the 74-year-old neurosurgeon prime minister stranded in the US territory of Puerto Rico.
“My government will resign as soon as a (transitional) council is formed. I want to thank the Haitian people for this opportunity,” Henry said in a late-night video address.
Haitians celebrated in the streets after Henry’s statement went viral on social media, urging all Haitians to remain calm and do everything in their power to restore peace and stability as quickly as possible.
Henry’s resignation agreed with the US in Puerto Rico
Reuters quoted a senior US official as saying that Henry was free to stay in Puerto Rico or travel elsewhere, but that security in Haiti needed to improve before he could return home. The official said the resignation was agreed on Friday, revealing US involvement in the process.
Henry will be replaced by a Presidential Council of seven voting members, including two observers and representatives of various political coalitions, business, civil society and a religious community.
The council has been tasked with quickly appointing an interim prime minister; no one who wants to run in Haiti’s next elections will be able to do so.
The country has been without elected representatives since early 2023, and the next elections will be the first since 2016. Henry, who is seen by many Haitians as corrupt, has repeatedly postponed the elections, saying that security must first be restored.
The US brings the countries of the region together
Regional leaders met in nearby Jamaica on Monday to discuss the framework for the political transition process, which the US last week called for to be ‘accelerated’ as armed gangs try to overthrow the government.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that the council would be tasked with addressing the ‘immediate needs’ of Haitians, ensuring the deployment of the security mission and creating the security conditions necessary for free elections.
Henry’s resignation comes amid regional talks on his request to join an international force to help police fight gangs whose brutal turf wars have fuelled the humanitarian crisis, cut off food supplies and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes.
Uncertainty of transfer in financing of ‘aid’ to Haiti
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that the US would provide $100 million for the force and $33 million in humanitarian aid, bringing the total US commitment to the force to $300 million.
But it was unclear how long it would take for the funds to be approved by lawmakers and transferred. A UN spokesman said that as of Monday, less than $11 million had been paid into the UN’s special trust fund and that no new contributions had been made since Haiti declared a state of emergency on 3 March.
Mexico’s foreign minister added that the country had contributed an unspecified amount of funds and called for further action to stop arms trafficking to Haiti.
Many Haitians inside and outside Haiti are wary of international intervention after previous UN missions left behind a devastating cholera epidemic and sexual abuse scandals that have never been resolved.
Gangs’ weapons come from the US
The UN believes Haitian gangs have amassed large arsenals, much of it made up of weapons smuggled from the United States.
A state of emergency was declared in Haiti earlier this month after Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier, the leader of an alliance of armed groups, said they would unite and overthrow Henry, as clashes damaged communications and led to two prison breaks.
The UN estimates that more than 362,000 people, half of them children, have been internally displaced and thousands have been killed in the conflict since 2021, with widespread rape, torture and kidnapping for ransom.
The Financial Times writes that many of the country’s gangs are believed to receive significant support from Haiti’s elite. According to InSight Crime, which investigates criminal networks in Latin America, G-9 received half of its income from the government of President Moïse before he was assassinated in 2021.
Gang leader’s ‘bloody revolution’ statement
Cherizier, the leader of the G-9 gang in Haiti and a former policeman, threatened to go after hotel owners who hid politicians or collaborated with Henry.
Barbecue’ also demanded that the country’s next leader be elected by the people and live in Haiti with his family. Many influential Haitian politicians live abroad.
“We are not in a peaceful revolution. We are in a bloody revolution in the country because this system is an apartheid system, a bad system,” he said.
According to the FT, in the vast slums under Cherizier’s control, where there are no state services such as sewers, electricity or running water, there are murals depicting him as the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara.
Who is the leader of the ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier gang?
A Guardian correspondent makes a similar observation. The gang leader, who claims to present himself in interviews as a “God-fearing Caribbean Robin Hood”, has paid tribute to freedom fighters such as Fidel Castro, Thomas Sankara and Malcolm X. When they met last year, he told New Yorker reporter Jon Lee Anderson: “I like Martin Luther King too. But he didn’t like to fight with guns, and I fight with guns.
In an interview with Vice in 2022, Chérizier described his favela army as ‘a socio-political structure and a force that fights for the defenceless’.
For some time now, ‘Barbecue’ has frequently taken Western media organisations into the areas under his control and given interviews.
Cherizier, the youngest of eight children whose father died when he was five, has said he was inspired by François Duvalier, the brutal dictator who ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1971. But ‘Barbecue’ claims he would ‘never slaughter’ people of the same social class as himself.
According to the UN, gangs like the G-9 now control about 80 per cent of the capital, Port-au-Prince. They extort money from businesses and kidnap residents, rich and poor, for ransom, while fighting each other for territory. With only 9,000 members, the police force is understrength.
Despite his efforts to portray himself as a pro-people politician, Cherizier is accused by the UN of taking part in several massacres, some of which took place while he was still a police officer. In one of them, more than 71 people were killed, 400 houses set on fire and at least seven women raped by gangs in the Port-au-Prince slum of La Saline in 2018.
As well as Cherizier and the G-9 gang, Johnson Andrï, known as ‘Izo’, and the 5 Seconds gang have also made a name for themselves. There are an estimated 200 gangs in Haiti, 23 of which are believed to operate in the Port-au-Prince area.
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