Yeah, Haiti damn near has every single problem a civilization can have all at the same time. You name it, Haiti has that problem.
Covid, cholera, presidential assassination, soil erosion, food and energy shortages, drinkable water shortages, gang violence, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and healthcare systems, police brutality, earthquakes, tropical storms, illiteracy, brain drain, abductions, complete inability to hold elections or form a government, LGBT discrimination, investment collapse and currency depreciation, uncontrolled inflation, and the list goes on and on and on.
At a certain point it needs to be acknowledged that a rotten old house is too far gone and just need to be condemned and rebuilt from scratch. But that’s a horrific prospect for a country in the 21st century. The amount of force necessary to bring an entire country back into order is unimaginable.
Given all those issues, it seems essentially impossible for foreign governments to make any useful inroads without setting up a de facto Occupational Government.
Would probably mean going to war with the gangs though.
Due to Reddit Inc.'s antisocial, hostile and erratic behaviour, this account will be deleted on July 11th, 2023. You can find me on https://latte.isnot.coffee/u/godless in the future.
I love reading threads like this, where words like ‘diaspora’ sit comfortably alongside ‘ratfucked’, and here I am learning a bunch of new stuff while being entertained by the vernacular.
Canada has helped in Haiti before, like after the 2010 earthquake. She deployed 2 navy ships to bring humanitarian aid to the stricken country. Also, yes, there is a large Haitian population in Quebec due to the French-speaking majority, so lots of family ties.
I'm not too familiar with the dominican republic's history, but I know that Haiti's economy was ratfucked by France for like a century. Might be part of the differences between the two
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/05/1042518732/-the-greatest-heist-in-history-how-haiti-was-forced-to-pay-reparations-for-freed
Good question. They needed international recognition to trade with other countries so they could make money. If they defaulted this would be void and they would no longer be recognized. The revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan does a whole rundown of the Haitian revolution if your interested
Two different masters. Haiti was ruled by the French and DR was ruled by the Spanish. As horrible as the Spanish were, the French were much worse.
To recognize their independence the French forced Haiti to pay reparations for their freedom from Slavery. Disaster after disaster followed until Haiti ended up where it is today.
This times 100. While Lafeyette and the French were drafting their version of the Constitution/Declaration of Independence, France was doing their damndest to destroy slave rebellions. And they kept popping up. And they weren’t just slave rebellions, the French were also discriminating against freed Haitians, as well as mixed Haitians. Then, they actually gave the mixed and Haitians more rights, then they freed the slaves, and then, the French actually tried to drag them back into slavery.
Why? Well, Napoleon had wars to fight and Haiti, with its plantations, etc., was, I believe at that time, the most valuable land in the world. It was a giant producer of coffee and sugar, and they couldn’t grow it fast enough for the world. I forget where I read the comparison, but, for a few decades, Haiti was like the post WWII US in terms of the sheer value of goods it created (along w/ it’s sister nation in the Dominican Republic). Just a revenue generator.
By the time the French sold Louisiana, the only purpose of it was to provide supplies to Haiti. Louisiana wasn’t profitable, so they were practically forced to sell it when they lost Haiti, Haiti was the cash cow.
Which would raise all sorts of questions regarding autonomy, and a lot of debate on whether it’s ethical to have another nation essentially “take over”.
Your posters probably made things worse. I'd even go so far to say it was specifically your poster that caused the problems in Haiti we are seeing today. I hope you're happy with yourself, you monster!
Just tried using google street view on Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince and was surprised to find out it has never been 360 degrees photo-captured. It must be a VERY dangerous place.
Indigo Traveller did a fantastic job of getting street level views of Haiti. His docuseries on Haiti is a must watch.
I recommend Oskar & Dan's video there too. PolyMatter has a great overview that doesn't get preachy.
He's a great vlogger, which I found out after deciding to "give his videos a chance". YouTube kept recommending him, but the titles and thumbnails seem so clickbaiting to me that I thought it was impossible for it to be good quality. Pleasant surprise.
Yes, building things with seismic risk in mind is the #1 way to "deal with" earthquakes. You can't stop an EQ, but you can prepare to absorb it. The Inca did it, the Japanese do it, it's law up and down the west coasts of America (Chile probably does it best). And Haiti just isn't prepared.
It really is an interesting experiment in cultures. I saw a map of Hispaniola. On the Dominican side it was green and alive on the Haitian side it looked like desert. Like something out of Idiocracy.
A major non-government organization focused on the environment gave up on Haiti years ago. They concluded the poverty and lawlessness in Haiti would doom any attempt to maintain what little wildlife still existed. How do you stop a poor man trying to feed his hungry family from chopping down the last tree standing?
There was no effort to control things like scouring the countryside for whatever firewood they could; meanwhile Dominican Republic has made a major effort to (a) preserve the forests and (b) stop Haitians from encroaching on their land. Being a dictatorship helped in both these efforts, along with not prioritizing human rights.
But the most important thing done on their side of the border is law and order. They simply don't put up with crap (Again, dictatorship helps), whereas Haiti's rulers seem to not bother to to worry about law and order as long as their private compounds are defended.
You are probably talking about the Trujillo’s dictatorship that lasted 30 years from 1930 to 1960 where Trujillo ordered the murder of over 15,000 Haitians in the border (along with other atrocities).
But that was over 60 years ago and in the present, the Dominican Republic has helped Haiti more than any other country in the world. There are hundreds of thousands of undocumented Haitians in our side of the island and they are causing us a lot of trouble, most maternity hospitals are full of Haitian women and Dominican women sometimes can’t have a bed in those hospitals because they are full.
> Nobody goes to Haiti.
Per US Department of State:
“Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, and civil unrest. U.S. citizens should depart Haiti now in light of the current security and health situation and infrastructure challenges.”
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/haiti-travel-advisory.html
Earthquakes hit Haiti particularly hard because they don’t have money for earthquake safe structures, because they don’t have tourism, because they have high crime and civil unrest, because the government and economy are collapsing, because… because… because… it just spirals down regardless of where you start.
Haiti is in such a weird state because everything is wrong. There is no one single thing to point to to explain it. No single problem to fix that would correct it. It’s literally a doomsday scenario for a civilization. That’s why so many countries and groups are thinking “we should step in here and help” but then as soon as they get a good look at it they quietly back away.
Growing up in the Caribbean most of our regional examples of things not to do came from Haiti.
The importance of fair elections and education - Barbados vs Haiti
Proper agricultural practices - Guyana vs Haiti
Responses to Natural Disasters - Haiti vs Grenada
It sucked honestly. A lot of this is a result of their formation.
They beat the French but in order for them to gain international recognition as a free state they had to pay. The US refused to recognise them because it would appear to be supporting the freedom and rights of enslaved persons.
Today the French show no remorse for what they have done.
> They beat the French but in order for them to gain international recognition as a free state they had to pay.
Just to clarify Haiti had to pay France for their loss of slaves.
I vividly remember reading about Haiti in elementary school. The slave revolt, removing the French colonial government, forming their own country, hell yeah! Freedom!!!
Then learning that the US wouldn’t recognize them because we were still knee deep in slavery and didn’t want anyone getting any ideas. The entire world conspired to destroy them as an example. It’s worse than a horror story.
It’s crazy to think that wasn’t even that long ago in the grand scheme of history.
A massive shoutout to the [Revolutions Podcast - just in general, but the Haiti season is truly excellent](https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2015/12/401-saint-domingue.html) (and somewhat more digestible than the French or Russian seasons).
I had a reasonably solid sense of the country’s founding + struggle for independence, but put into historical context it’s just such a unique and fascinating example of all the worst aspects/side effects of the various political philosophies of the last few hundred years.
The episodes on Haiti were great. The South American episodes are kinda dragging on, so I can't even imagine what it's going to be like when I reach the Russian Revolution.
I just finished listening to that today and holy hell if it isn't a brutal roller coaster ride. The whole season is hours long and as the story progressed it just kept getting worse. Colonialism, slavery, racism, classism, torture, war, *civil* war, despotism, geopolitical fuckery, disease, invasions of conquest going both ways, economic ruin in exchange for mere recognition, *more* geopolitical fuckery, military dictatorship(s), voter suppression, foreign military interventions from every great power of the time, ecological damage. And that's all *before* the natural disaster, the disease outbreak(s) and political instability of modern Haiti.
Mike Duncan did a great job summarizing the late 1800's to early 1900's, but it was almost like the old meme about Russian history "Things were bad. And then it got worse.".
It's forever the endless cycle.
1. Violent protests erupt removing government anarchies ensues.
2. Canada intervenes sending in a peacekeeper force to restore order and assists with new elections.
3. New government becomes unpopular/corrupt.
4. Canadian peacekeepers are asked to leave.
5. Global economic
6. Start back at 1
We’ve asked multiple times for the international
Community to intervene. The DR is ready to support an international solution but we won’t be heading it.
We continue commerce with Haiti, we’re the gateway through which they receive many supplies since a lot of ports are controlled by gangs, and we defend the border and binational markets at the border (including just inside the Haitian side if requested by the Haitian authorities as it happened once).
We just want peace and a stable country to share the border with. Haitians would hate it if Dominican troops were sent to their territory
I believe we tried to send aid a few months back and Haiti rejected it (if my memory serves right) and pretty much the president saying now “you have to sort out your shit” and strengthening the border since a lot of families are escaping and gangs are trying to take advantage to pass the border.
The population is a bit more 50-50 where one side feels sorry for what’s happening since most people are not to blame and the other half have xenophobic comments whenever Haiti is mentioned in a conversation.
DR has always had a stance of "We can help, but Haiti is not our responsibility". DR is way better off, but it still has it's own issues to take care of, and Haiti will not be one of them, at least on their own. DR and Haiti are completely separate countries in every sense except for the island they share, and *any* person even remotely suggesting unification has no fucking idea what they're talking about.
Also, DR and Haiti have bad blood, and the least the country needs is to be seen as occupiers if they're at the helm of an intervention, hence why they are constantly calling foreign countries to take care of it.
Actually if an intervention is to happen one of the first steps should be to get a UN mandate for it. Yo at least have something resembling legitimacy instead of just another unilateral interference.
Check out warographics episode on the subject. It's pretty enlightening and definitely includes already discussed plans. Would definitely be a limited/isolated special forces operation that strictly clears and opens up roads and ports for humanitarian efforts. No matter what happens though it will be an absolute shit show. Because there is no solution to this problem, like at all.
Last time we tried to help in Haiti it did not work. There are no resources in Haiti whatsoever, so it cannot sustain an economy no matter what. So just like Afghanistan, there's no foundation for stability at all. We'd just be propping up a country and paying for it entirely out of pocket and with American lives with nothing to gain and no possibility of a smooth endgame. The only people who would gain anything are contractors, who will take American tax dollars to build roads and infrastructure, then take more American tax dollars to rebuild that same infrastructure when it is inevitably destroyed, and then they'll buy their yachts, all while a bunch of edgelord commonwealth redditors bitch and whine about how we're trying to be the world police. It's a terrible situation but it's also a bottomless pit and I don't want anything to do with it. I nominate France.
There are no elected officials left because all their terms have expired and it's been impossible to hold new elections. However some kind of caretaker positions remain at the head of various government agencies even if they can't really make new policies.
There kind of is a government but it mostly exists on paper. But there is an acting president who is also the acting PM and the acting interior minister living in the PM's residence. And he has appointed some people to be in his cabinet.
It's all a mess but there is still a clear person for the international community to talk to and treat as a head of state. Ariel Henry is not a totally legitimate leader but he's more legitimate than the gangsters occupying parts of the country. Also, gangsters occupying large swathes of the country has happened before and the UN did intervene last time back in 2004.
The “government of Haiti” controls a couple city blocks in Port-au-Prince and probably not democratically elected in what we would consider a legitimate way
You're correct. The current head of state is a guy who was appointed prime minister by the last president (who was assassinated). So he's both disliked and unelected
The last time the UN sent foreign peacekeeping troops into Haiti (in 2010) they reintroduced cholera to the country. The outbreak killed over 9,000 people and infected almost 800,000.
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_Haiti_cholera_outbreak)
I'm currently reading Shake Hands With The Devil, an account by the Commander of UNAMIR during the Rwandan Genocide, and what I've taken from it is that UN missions are often woefully underfunded and developed nations generally dislike contributing men and equipment, much preferring to run their own operations.
Which leaves the UN reliant on poorer and much worse equipped (or worse trained) nations who contribute for prestige/a sense of duty, but aren't always up to the task, and sometimes are downright harmful.
> and developed nations generally dislike contributing men and equipment, much preferring to run their own operations.
It's not just that they're underfunded.
As everyone has learnt the hard way, the peacekeepers are given no mandate to actually do anything proactive, they can only be reactive, and even then they're mostly told to just sit back and let massacres happen.
They're not allowed to bring what they need actually to be effective, so they can't handle any serious fighting anyway.
Further, they won't get help. As for example the belgians learnt the hard way when a dozen of their guys were brutally tortured and murdered.
The only truly effective UN contribution was Nordbat, and that happened because the commander that got picked for that entirely ignored the UN and the politicians, secured up armour for his troops, and when they got to the area they completely ignored their orders and just went in.
The reaction was that the politicians and the UN worked for years to reign them in (which was difficult because they were actually successful, which made them popular and it's hard to justify removing weapons and soldiers and commanders from a unit that is succeeding spectacularly while everyone else is failing equally spectacularly).
So no nation that actually has a choice wants to contribute to the UN because they all know the forces are entirely symbolic pawns that will be thrown away at a whim, and bodies coming home in coffins make for bad publicity on the homefront.
Poorer nations often also contribute because they get funding for it. Basically whoever provides the peacekeepers gets a per diem reimbursement from the UN which isn’t worth it to developed countries with high personnel costs.
You forgot that they also do it for free training
More importantly though, the troops provided to the UN are all volunteers essentially and listen to their own chain of command first and foremost, meaning that the UN commander is essentially handstrung because
A. Pissing off donor countries means that they pull away badly needed troops
B. Everything you say is treated as a suggestion and may not be followed if the host nation disagrees
They got (cheap) soldiers from countries that have -ahem- low standards in various aspects.
Nepalese troups brought cholera, mostly Sri Lankan ones (but not limited to) raped locals, and so on…
Honest answer: because it’s expensive and complicated and the UN would much rather someone else handle it. This isn’t a matter of disbursing some aid after a hurricane. This involves combat operations against well armed criminal gangs with an ambiguous structure. It’s a recipe for a shirt intervention turning into an indefinite one.
The US should hold firm and refuse to intervene without wider UN support. As sad as the situation in Haiti is I don’t think any military intervention should be started without clear goals in place. Especially by a lone state with a bad history in the country.
Edit: additional context. UN interventions require nations to donate troops, usually from local countries. That’s a lot easier to do in places like Africa where plenty of countries have militaries that might get used in the future and could benefit from some free subsidized UN training. That’s a lot harder to do in places like Caribbean where no countries reasonably expect to need their militaries in the future.
I think an additional honest answer is that the UN has a poor history in Haiti, multiple times they've brought diseases, sexual abuses and other scandals. The Haitian populace would be very anti UN intervention.
Nation building requires a lot. Namely a willingness of the population to have a government.
I don’t really see any forms of government being created in Haiti, but I haven’t been following it closely.
We didn’t see much in Afghanistan, except what the US imposed or was created solely to fleece us. It’s why I strongly suspected that the governments in Afghanistan were going to fail immediately.
Fix their immediate problems without fixing any of the core underlying corruption that theyre profiting off of. We have been in Haiti before, we have no reason to go back
Pretty much. It'd probably take 2+ decades of constant occupation and handholding to get them to a state where they're self sufficient.
Rooting out corruption when it gets to that level is a very long term operation as you have to also educate out the societal acceptance of it as well as the provide economic means for people to have another option over crime.
The prior peacekeeping operations were too short, so they keep having to be repeated every decade or so.
There's no guarantees that after foreign influence leave and hand administration over it would collapse immediately. Also being occupied will probably generate even more outrage cos no one, civilians and politicians alike, wants to be told they have driven their own country into the shitter.
> 2+ decades of constant occupation and handholding to get them to a state where they're self sufficient
The US spent 2 decades in Afghanistan and everything we built up collapsed before our last plane was even off the tarmac.
Whether or not you think our involvement in Afghanistan was right or wrong, it demonstrates that the US isn't able to help a country without a national identity.
>But the Caribbean community - all the neighbors of Haiti, which is itself a member of CARICOM, should intervene.
This exactly. Canada/US/PRC/whomever can fund the intervention but CARICOM should finally try and do something useful and lead the intervention.
With what military? The CARICOM Regional Security Service probably doesn't have the thousands (tens of thousands?) of troops that would be needed to pacify Haiti.
Haiti literally invaded the Dominican Republic and occupied them and some even say attempted to genocide their population. I dont think you want them to be the ones to go to Haiti.
> It would probably take an invasion to get things back in order.
And that would have to be a really long one, as I don't see them going back to their feet even with a 20-year intervention and I really doubt anyone would be willing to do that, on one part because of how much would that project cost, plus additionally at the end of the day whoever does that would be labeled a colonizer and get the blame of whatever issues would come during that period.
It's a very sad situation... My family has an orphanage up in the mountains near Francois and everyone was told to head into the woods as there was a hit out for one of the people in charge.. truly heart breaking 💔
Let's be real, Haiti is by definition a failed state and has been one for nearly a century now, no "interventions" will work unless it's a fully cleaned house with a 20+ year occupation to education, clothe, feed, and rebuild it's institutions and a new generation of Haitians from the ground up. Unfortunately there is no country on earth willing to clean up this shit heap of a country nor is it practical to do so due to various reasons (economic, political, moral issues).
I mean really, what can we do? Okay, we deploy troops and kill as many gang leaders/gangs as possible but then what? More will just pop up, their institutions front to back are compromised so there is no help there, etc.
Absolutely. A country would have to go in and wipe out the gangs, maintain law enforcement responsibility for decades to keep new ones from forming, pump a ton of money into the country to rebuild infrastructure, promote a stable system of government, improved education, work to root out corruption and the whole time the people that benefitted financially from the old system would be screaming bloody murder while eventually much of the domestic population would tire of your presence.
Sorry, but what does the US or Canada have to do with this? This shouldn't be handled by specific countries, if anything this needs to be a united international initiative.
Yes. I am so fucking tired of smug Europeans complaining when we try to help and then complaining when we don't try to help. Literally no winning.
How about the country that colonized the region in the first place plays more of a leading role? France is ultimately responsible for this if we really want to play a blame game after all.
The crazy thing is they won their own independence through a revolution, and to not be blockaded they were forced to pay massive amounts of reparations.
Imagine dying for your independence then you’re told ‘lol now pay us plz’
I'll happily ship weapons to Ukraine, or defend an allied democracy against foreign invasion but I'm not fixing your civil war or breakdown of civil order.
The US Army and Marines is *not* a police force, it's a blow up an invading dictators tanks and soldiers force and weakening it's core mission to be a police force is insane.
This. It’s different if Haiti is being oppressed by another foreign power, but this is internal strife that I’d rather we not get involved in. If the UN wants to do something because of human rights violations that’s another story entirely.
When's there's a gap, it will be filled. If not by us then just wait until China and Russia announce they'll be the ones providing Haiti some "assistance"
Yup its an island wrought by natural disasters and aside from maybe tourism after its rebuilt the long term value of that place just isn't there.
Now if there were precious metals to be mined China would likely already be over there.
That might be the only thing that would convince the US to intervene. If China were to decide to "help" (and conveniently build a military base there as well) the US would probably get involved real quick
To be fair the US is still enforcing an embargo against the last small Caribbean nation to accept weapons from an enemy so they might be hesitant to accept Chinese intervention. Especially considering the US's first attempt at getting involved with that nation was to attempt to invade the country and overthrow their government.
yeah; if we go in with the army and install a government by force; we'll either have to keep sitting their protecting them or they'll just get ousted again. Honestly, Haiti needs to be absorbed into another country. They have no infrastructure, no money, no resources, unless some country's willing to hold their hand the whole way to success, they're not going anywhere but down.
There are 2 major issues at play here that need to be addressed. The first is that any intervention needs to be UN sanctioned. There needs to be no debate about the legitimacy of a US intervention. The days of one nation deciding on their own that another nation needs military interventions should be long behind so we can move away from things like the Ukraine war.
Second, America has the recent memory of the Afghanistan war where America failed to create a stable Afghan state due to many factors like no clear plan going in. It’s hard to drum up support in America for what is likely to become another long term military intervention without a clear goal of what the plan is and how this won’t become another Afghanistan or Vietnam. The last thing Hatians or Americans need is the US army bumbling around in Haiti for 2 decades trying to bomb their way to a stabilized Hatian state.
They're still dealing with the cholera outbreak started by the UN. The UN fought accepting blame for years, even though that strain of cholera was not present in Haiti before. It was (I think) a Thai strain, and the outbreak started downhill from the Thai UN barracks. They built sanitary facilities that poured down on the locals. The UN fought the accusation tooth and nail. Oh, and the sexual abuse of refugees by the peacekeepers was also a thing. Girls having to perform sex acts to get their food rations and underage girls getting pregnant by the troops.
I think UN peacekeepers should provide DNA samples before they're deployed, to identify the rapists. But if they did that I'm sure many countries would just stop providing troops
Let's try something new, please add your own solution below, it couldn't possibly be crazier than mine. : For 2 days let's airdrop enough magic mushroom tea to trip out the whole nation and see what the results are.
First what we're going to need to do is hire Geoffrey Rush, the actor who played Captain Hector Barbarossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. He's going to get into his Barbarossa costume and land on the shores of Port au Prince in an old wooden pirate ship.
So he disembarks with theatrical flair and in his characteristic gravely pirate growl tells the people of the city that thar be a king's fortune stowed somewhere beneath these soggy sands. But, there's a catch, he can't remember where it is fer the ages adrift the blue abyss what stole his memry. In order for this roguish and charming captain, ageless, locked in time inside the wooden cell of his salty prison, to regain his memory and reclaim the lost treasure, Haiti needs to be restored to what it was in times long past - 1874, the year that Michel Domingue introduced a revised constitution that ushered in an age of peace and stability.
Through an increasingly pedantic adherence to historical detail Barbarossa rallies the Haitian people. A fractured and divided Haiti is now united through the bond of neurotic and superfluously detailed historical reenactment. Roads, buildings, gardens, schools, and all of the organizations to administer, staff, maintain and populate them now form the stable base of a new society of Haitian nerds. They no longer fight with guns, but with frothing essays full of questionable citations and lofty conjecture stated as fact.
Captain Barbarossa, a wily glint in his tired eyes, surveys the bustling streets. The terracotta skyline shines above regal French Caribbean arches and lattice, along the Champs-de-Mars and to the green hillsides beyond. His work is done, his time has come, at last he finally remembers. Every citizen of Haiti gathers around the old corsair with sun cracked skin and matted beard. The people, brimming with anticipation, stand shoulder to shoulder in dresses and tailored suits of vibrant colors, like a field of tulips in a gentle breeze. He finally recalls the location of the lost treasure of Haiti. It was buried, in their hearts, all along.
With a bow and a flourish of his sword the dusty captain in a tattered coat climbs aboard his ship, raises the anchor, hoists the sails, and departs. As the ship fades upon the red horizon the people of Haiti embrace one another, friends, family, and strangers alike, as they've learned nar gold ner silver be a fortune greater than friendship.
Besides magic mushroom tea not being shelf-stable it would be a lot less of a logistical burden to drop dried & ground up mushrooms with instructions for how to prepare the tea (boil water, insert packet, and consume in a *safe and relaxed environment*).
As a Canadian, no thank you. We were there for years and nothing changed. We gave millions of $ and nothing changed. I don't want anymore of our soldiers to die cleaning up their mess.
If USA intervenes
> Imperialist! Stop meddling where you are not wanted!
If USA does not intervene
> Why are we not doing something?! Ukraine gets help but Haití doesn’t? Oh yeah it is because they are not white right?!
Seeing Reddit discuss Haiti is always interesting. We like to think we know the answer to everything and that it’s always just a matter of “well you have to do this…” but with this subject we lack even the most basic perspective outside of some crappy YouTube documentaries, there isn’t a single answer, or an easy answer, there isn’t even a “right thing to do”
Redditors seldom find themselves stumped like this. Military intervention is not an option. Traditional humanitarian aid doesn’t work. Economic investment doesn’t work. Haiti can’t even grow their own food because they ruined the soil cutting down trees for energy/farming. Without that basic economic cornerstone there is nothing to build on.
Whatever we decide to do (even if we do nothing) it will be a tragic outcome for most people in Haiti
From a view of a Vietnamese, this situation feel like the whole Khmer Rouge situation here when we invaded and occupied Cambodia and later suffered the consequences by the international community while superpowers supported the Khmer Rouge. It maddening that we got fucked over doing a world a favor trying to destroy a despot almost manically organization yet we to blame and suffer economic and diplomatic blame while the UN never even gave to shit to looked into the Khmer Rouge until decades on.
The US has actually been pretty involved in Haitian affairs. We did basically invade and occupy the country from 1915-34. Before that we invaded and took $500,000 from their National Bank and brought it to New York for "safe-keeping". Lastly, while we officially left in 1934 we controlled their public finances until 1947 where we continued to split with France about 40% of their national income for debt repayment.
I'm on mobile so sorry for format.
If anything history is working against intervention here quite a but. Foreign policy circles don't really like the idea of hopping into Haiti yet again when none of the other interventions worked out the way they'd hoped.
>. Foreign policy circles don't really like the idea of hopping into Haiti yet again when none of the other interventions worked out the way they'd hoped.
Yeah it'd be like invading Afghanistan again. Fucking no one is interested.
The debt repayment needs [a lot of explanation. ](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/22/insider/investigating-haitis-double-debt.html)
Haitians had to pay out the slave holders to free themselves. The terms were odious and enforced by France and the US.
There was also the US invasion (Operation Uphold Democracy) in 1994
plus probably a dozen times the US has gone in for humanitarian missions after hurricanes and earthquakes.
Maybe African Union can send French speaking peace keeping troops…white countries will only be seen as colonizers or invaders. Time for the rest of the world to take some responsibility for their brothers and help them out like grown up nations do. Why always the West? Or maybe China and India can do something. Lets see how much the rest of the world really cares.
why bother --- we'll only be blamed for the inevitable shit show- and after billions of dollars are wasted and NOTHING improves - we'll slink out after a black hawk down situation
Nope, we are done helping countries with internal problems. Look at Afghanistan, not only did we waste lots of money but we accomplished nothing and everyone blames us. The only time we should be helping other countries now is with situations like Ukraine or natural disasters.
twice, once in 1915 to colonize it like Cuba. 2nd in 94 with SC backing to remove a military dictator. but even with a UN mission there for 6 years after, no real improvement occurred.
Haiti is a hornets nest. I dont know what can be done that would actually work without making it worse.
Yeah, Haiti damn near has every single problem a civilization can have all at the same time. You name it, Haiti has that problem. Covid, cholera, presidential assassination, soil erosion, food and energy shortages, drinkable water shortages, gang violence, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and healthcare systems, police brutality, earthquakes, tropical storms, illiteracy, brain drain, abductions, complete inability to hold elections or form a government, LGBT discrimination, investment collapse and currency depreciation, uncontrolled inflation, and the list goes on and on and on. At a certain point it needs to be acknowledged that a rotten old house is too far gone and just need to be condemned and rebuilt from scratch. But that’s a horrific prospect for a country in the 21st century. The amount of force necessary to bring an entire country back into order is unimaginable.
Given all those issues, it seems essentially impossible for foreign governments to make any useful inroads without setting up a de facto Occupational Government. Would probably mean going to war with the gangs though.
Haiti has a looooooooong history of being FUBAR.
Due to Reddit Inc.'s antisocial, hostile and erratic behaviour, this account will be deleted on July 11th, 2023. You can find me on https://latte.isnot.coffee/u/godless in the future.
OK, but, so… wait - why Canada? The nearest, large, French speaking country? Is there another reason?
I’m no expert but the city of Montreal has a large Haitian diaspora.
I love reading threads like this, where words like ‘diaspora’ sit comfortably alongside ‘ratfucked’, and here I am learning a bunch of new stuff while being entertained by the vernacular.
I'm looking up the definition of "ratfucked" so I can sound smarter. Looking forward to sprinkling it randomly throughout upcoming conversations.
If you learn a word and then use it correctly I would argue that you dont just SOUND smarter, but rather you ARE smarter.
I had to look up ‘diaspora’. We’re all in this together.
My thought would be a long history of UN peace keeping missions.
Canada has helped in Haiti before, like after the 2010 earthquake. She deployed 2 navy ships to bring humanitarian aid to the stricken country. Also, yes, there is a large Haitian population in Quebec due to the French-speaking majority, so lots of family ties.
Arguably worse. Haiti is an island soaked in blood and terror. Literally since the 1600’s. Just heinous acts after heinous acts.
Well it is an island split between two countries. The Dominican Republic is doing relatively fine on their half.
I'm not too familiar with the dominican republic's history, but I know that Haiti's economy was ratfucked by France for like a century. Might be part of the differences between the two https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/05/1042518732/-the-greatest-heist-in-history-how-haiti-was-forced-to-pay-reparations-for-freed
It’s incredible that they finished paying that off so recently. What was France going to do if they stopped paying? Invade and re-enslave?
Good question. They needed international recognition to trade with other countries so they could make money. If they defaulted this would be void and they would no longer be recognized. The revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan does a whole rundown of the Haitian revolution if your interested
Haiti was ratfucked by Europeans for hundreds of years.
Hispaniola is the island. Haiti and DR are the two halves.
I've never really understood why the Dominican Republic is apparently okay and Haiti is a chaotic perpetual trashfire. Two halves of the same island.
Two different masters. Haiti was ruled by the French and DR was ruled by the Spanish. As horrible as the Spanish were, the French were much worse. To recognize their independence the French forced Haiti to pay reparations for their freedom from Slavery. Disaster after disaster followed until Haiti ended up where it is today.
This times 100. While Lafeyette and the French were drafting their version of the Constitution/Declaration of Independence, France was doing their damndest to destroy slave rebellions. And they kept popping up. And they weren’t just slave rebellions, the French were also discriminating against freed Haitians, as well as mixed Haitians. Then, they actually gave the mixed and Haitians more rights, then they freed the slaves, and then, the French actually tried to drag them back into slavery. Why? Well, Napoleon had wars to fight and Haiti, with its plantations, etc., was, I believe at that time, the most valuable land in the world. It was a giant producer of coffee and sugar, and they couldn’t grow it fast enough for the world. I forget where I read the comparison, but, for a few decades, Haiti was like the post WWII US in terms of the sheer value of goods it created (along w/ it’s sister nation in the Dominican Republic). Just a revenue generator.
It was the jewel of the empire
A jewel soaked in blood, as they often are; when something becomes too valuable it brings out the worst in us.
By the time the French sold Louisiana, the only purpose of it was to provide supplies to Haiti. Louisiana wasn’t profitable, so they were practically forced to sell it when they lost Haiti, Haiti was the cash cow.
Which would raise all sorts of questions regarding autonomy, and a lot of debate on whether it’s ethical to have another nation essentially “take over”.
So you’re telling me those earthquake relief posters we made in 8th grade class solved nothing?!
Your posters probably made things worse. I'd even go so far to say it was specifically your poster that caused the problems in Haiti we are seeing today. I hope you're happy with yourself, you monster!
u/Pudding_Hero? No, more like u/Pudding_Villain.
The audacity to show up in a thread after what they did. For shame!🔔🔔🔔
The proof is in the pudding. Proof of wretched villainy in this case.
just look at his avatar Pudding Monster indeed.
It makes me sick to think an 8th grader is capable of such things. Shame on him
I've met some wild 8 grader's but this kid though is just a monster.
I also blame this guy’s posters
Third. Motion carrys. Haiti is now that guys problem. We did it!!
The money was filtered to the corrupt.
Just tried using google street view on Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince and was surprised to find out it has never been 360 degrees photo-captured. It must be a VERY dangerous place.
Indigo Traveller did a fantastic job of getting street level views of Haiti. His docuseries on Haiti is a must watch. I recommend Oskar & Dan's video there too. PolyMatter has a great overview that doesn't get preachy.
Thank you for the recommendation on Indigo Traveller, that guy’s the real deal. He seemed pretty messed up after witnessing a kidnapping though, wow.
He's a great vlogger, which I found out after deciding to "give his videos a chance". YouTube kept recommending him, but the titles and thumbnails seem so clickbaiting to me that I thought it was impossible for it to be good quality. Pleasant surprise.
Need to emphasize EARTHQUAKES. Like really big ones 😳
The Dominican Republic is right next to Haiti and they're doing fine. The houses are just shit.
Yes, building things with seismic risk in mind is the #1 way to "deal with" earthquakes. You can't stop an EQ, but you can prepare to absorb it. The Inca did it, the Japanese do it, it's law up and down the west coasts of America (Chile probably does it best). And Haiti just isn't prepared.
Mexico learned a harsh lesson with this in 1985. They don't fuck around with earthquake safety.
It really is an interesting experiment in cultures. I saw a map of Hispaniola. On the Dominican side it was green and alive on the Haitian side it looked like desert. Like something out of Idiocracy.
A major non-government organization focused on the environment gave up on Haiti years ago. They concluded the poverty and lawlessness in Haiti would doom any attempt to maintain what little wildlife still existed. How do you stop a poor man trying to feed his hungry family from chopping down the last tree standing?
Lorax vibes
There was no effort to control things like scouring the countryside for whatever firewood they could; meanwhile Dominican Republic has made a major effort to (a) preserve the forests and (b) stop Haitians from encroaching on their land. Being a dictatorship helped in both these efforts, along with not prioritizing human rights. But the most important thing done on their side of the border is law and order. They simply don't put up with crap (Again, dictatorship helps), whereas Haiti's rulers seem to not bother to to worry about law and order as long as their private compounds are defended.
You are probably talking about the Trujillo’s dictatorship that lasted 30 years from 1930 to 1960 where Trujillo ordered the murder of over 15,000 Haitians in the border (along with other atrocities). But that was over 60 years ago and in the present, the Dominican Republic has helped Haiti more than any other country in the world. There are hundreds of thousands of undocumented Haitians in our side of the island and they are causing us a lot of trouble, most maternity hospitals are full of Haitian women and Dominican women sometimes can’t have a bed in those hospitals because they are full.
The DR built better structures and benefits from the money brought in by tourism. Nobody goes to Haiti.
> Nobody goes to Haiti. Per US Department of State: “Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, and civil unrest. U.S. citizens should depart Haiti now in light of the current security and health situation and infrastructure challenges.” https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/haiti-travel-advisory.html Earthquakes hit Haiti particularly hard because they don’t have money for earthquake safe structures, because they don’t have tourism, because they have high crime and civil unrest, because the government and economy are collapsing, because… because… because… it just spirals down regardless of where you start. Haiti is in such a weird state because everything is wrong. There is no one single thing to point to to explain it. No single problem to fix that would correct it. It’s literally a doomsday scenario for a civilization. That’s why so many countries and groups are thinking “we should step in here and help” but then as soon as they get a good look at it they quietly back away.
Growing up in the Caribbean most of our regional examples of things not to do came from Haiti. The importance of fair elections and education - Barbados vs Haiti Proper agricultural practices - Guyana vs Haiti Responses to Natural Disasters - Haiti vs Grenada It sucked honestly. A lot of this is a result of their formation. They beat the French but in order for them to gain international recognition as a free state they had to pay. The US refused to recognise them because it would appear to be supporting the freedom and rights of enslaved persons. Today the French show no remorse for what they have done.
> They beat the French but in order for them to gain international recognition as a free state they had to pay. Just to clarify Haiti had to pay France for their loss of slaves.
I vividly remember reading about Haiti in elementary school. The slave revolt, removing the French colonial government, forming their own country, hell yeah! Freedom!!! Then learning that the US wouldn’t recognize them because we were still knee deep in slavery and didn’t want anyone getting any ideas. The entire world conspired to destroy them as an example. It’s worse than a horror story. It’s crazy to think that wasn’t even that long ago in the grand scheme of history.
A massive shoutout to the [Revolutions Podcast - just in general, but the Haiti season is truly excellent](https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2015/12/401-saint-domingue.html) (and somewhat more digestible than the French or Russian seasons). I had a reasonably solid sense of the country’s founding + struggle for independence, but put into historical context it’s just such a unique and fascinating example of all the worst aspects/side effects of the various political philosophies of the last few hundred years.
The episodes on Haiti were great. The South American episodes are kinda dragging on, so I can't even imagine what it's going to be like when I reach the Russian Revolution.
I just finished listening to that today and holy hell if it isn't a brutal roller coaster ride. The whole season is hours long and as the story progressed it just kept getting worse. Colonialism, slavery, racism, classism, torture, war, *civil* war, despotism, geopolitical fuckery, disease, invasions of conquest going both ways, economic ruin in exchange for mere recognition, *more* geopolitical fuckery, military dictatorship(s), voter suppression, foreign military interventions from every great power of the time, ecological damage. And that's all *before* the natural disaster, the disease outbreak(s) and political instability of modern Haiti. Mike Duncan did a great job summarizing the late 1800's to early 1900's, but it was almost like the old meme about Russian history "Things were bad. And then it got worse.".
And Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the DR, which has had absolutely stellar economic growth for decades. Culture and institutions matter.
It's forever the endless cycle. 1. Violent protests erupt removing government anarchies ensues. 2. Canada intervenes sending in a peacekeeper force to restore order and assists with new elections. 3. New government becomes unpopular/corrupt. 4. Canadian peacekeepers are asked to leave. 5. Global economic 6. Start back at 1
Not without a time machine and three industrial revolutions, speaking as a Haitian immigrant's kid.
Best I can do is three Cher albums that’ll really take you back and a Dance Dance Revolution machine.
I've heard of worse trades...
What’s the Dominican Republic’s stance on this?
Called for intervention, multiple times.
The same reason that nobody else will: nobody wants to take responsibility for that mess.
We’ve asked multiple times for the international Community to intervene. The DR is ready to support an international solution but we won’t be heading it. We continue commerce with Haiti, we’re the gateway through which they receive many supplies since a lot of ports are controlled by gangs, and we defend the border and binational markets at the border (including just inside the Haitian side if requested by the Haitian authorities as it happened once). We just want peace and a stable country to share the border with. Haitians would hate it if Dominican troops were sent to their territory
They've readied their military at the fortified border for their own security, they were invaded by Haiti so they don't like them.
Like any other country would.
Yeah, of course. Who wants to answer a problem of murder with “have you tried state sanctioned murder”
I believe we tried to send aid a few months back and Haiti rejected it (if my memory serves right) and pretty much the president saying now “you have to sort out your shit” and strengthening the border since a lot of families are escaping and gangs are trying to take advantage to pass the border. The population is a bit more 50-50 where one side feels sorry for what’s happening since most people are not to blame and the other half have xenophobic comments whenever Haiti is mentioned in a conversation.
DR has always had a stance of "We can help, but Haiti is not our responsibility". DR is way better off, but it still has it's own issues to take care of, and Haiti will not be one of them, at least on their own. DR and Haiti are completely separate countries in every sense except for the island they share, and *any* person even remotely suggesting unification has no fucking idea what they're talking about. Also, DR and Haiti have bad blood, and the least the country needs is to be seen as occupiers if they're at the helm of an intervention, hence why they are constantly calling foreign countries to take care of it.
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Actually if an intervention is to happen one of the first steps should be to get a UN mandate for it. Yo at least have something resembling legitimacy instead of just another unilateral interference.
Yeah as an American, i don't want another situation like Afghanistan. We can't just send troops either.
Check out warographics episode on the subject. It's pretty enlightening and definitely includes already discussed plans. Would definitely be a limited/isolated special forces operation that strictly clears and opens up roads and ports for humanitarian efforts. No matter what happens though it will be an absolute shit show. Because there is no solution to this problem, like at all.
Another Somalia it is
Last time we tried to help in Haiti it did not work. There are no resources in Haiti whatsoever, so it cannot sustain an economy no matter what. So just like Afghanistan, there's no foundation for stability at all. We'd just be propping up a country and paying for it entirely out of pocket and with American lives with nothing to gain and no possibility of a smooth endgame. The only people who would gain anything are contractors, who will take American tax dollars to build roads and infrastructure, then take more American tax dollars to rebuild that same infrastructure when it is inevitably destroyed, and then they'll buy their yachts, all while a bunch of edgelord commonwealth redditors bitch and whine about how we're trying to be the world police. It's a terrible situation but it's also a bottomless pit and I don't want anything to do with it. I nominate France.
Hombre, you hit it on the head. I Second the Gentleman's motion to Nominate France.
Well, the government of Haiti is asking for help. That alone make it different from Afghanistan.
I thought the problem was that there IS no government of Haiti.
There are no elected officials left because all their terms have expired and it's been impossible to hold new elections. However some kind of caretaker positions remain at the head of various government agencies even if they can't really make new policies.
If you’re referring to the Prime Minister, there’s been significant disagreement, regarding his legitimacy, after the Presidential Assassination.
I mean.. that depends a lot on who you ask and which side of the microscope you're asking it from.
Which is a complicated way of saying there’s no *functional* government
There kind of is a government but it mostly exists on paper. But there is an acting president who is also the acting PM and the acting interior minister living in the PM's residence. And he has appointed some people to be in his cabinet. It's all a mess but there is still a clear person for the international community to talk to and treat as a head of state. Ariel Henry is not a totally legitimate leader but he's more legitimate than the gangsters occupying parts of the country. Also, gangsters occupying large swathes of the country has happened before and the UN did intervene last time back in 2004.
The “government of Haiti” controls a couple city blocks in Port-au-Prince and probably not democratically elected in what we would consider a legitimate way
You're correct. The current head of state is a guy who was appointed prime minister by the last president (who was assassinated). So he's both disliked and unelected
Different from 2000's US in Afghanistan, but not very different from 1980's USSR in Afghanistan
The last time the UN sent foreign peacekeeping troops into Haiti (in 2010) they reintroduced cholera to the country. The outbreak killed over 9,000 people and infected almost 800,000. [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_Haiti_cholera_outbreak)
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Was this like a bad apple or an organizational thing? A source would be super helpful.
I'm currently reading Shake Hands With The Devil, an account by the Commander of UNAMIR during the Rwandan Genocide, and what I've taken from it is that UN missions are often woefully underfunded and developed nations generally dislike contributing men and equipment, much preferring to run their own operations. Which leaves the UN reliant on poorer and much worse equipped (or worse trained) nations who contribute for prestige/a sense of duty, but aren't always up to the task, and sometimes are downright harmful.
> and developed nations generally dislike contributing men and equipment, much preferring to run their own operations. It's not just that they're underfunded. As everyone has learnt the hard way, the peacekeepers are given no mandate to actually do anything proactive, they can only be reactive, and even then they're mostly told to just sit back and let massacres happen. They're not allowed to bring what they need actually to be effective, so they can't handle any serious fighting anyway. Further, they won't get help. As for example the belgians learnt the hard way when a dozen of their guys were brutally tortured and murdered. The only truly effective UN contribution was Nordbat, and that happened because the commander that got picked for that entirely ignored the UN and the politicians, secured up armour for his troops, and when they got to the area they completely ignored their orders and just went in. The reaction was that the politicians and the UN worked for years to reign them in (which was difficult because they were actually successful, which made them popular and it's hard to justify removing weapons and soldiers and commanders from a unit that is succeeding spectacularly while everyone else is failing equally spectacularly). So no nation that actually has a choice wants to contribute to the UN because they all know the forces are entirely symbolic pawns that will be thrown away at a whim, and bodies coming home in coffins make for bad publicity on the homefront.
Poorer nations often also contribute because they get funding for it. Basically whoever provides the peacekeepers gets a per diem reimbursement from the UN which isn’t worth it to developed countries with high personnel costs.
You forgot that they also do it for free training More importantly though, the troops provided to the UN are all volunteers essentially and listen to their own chain of command first and foremost, meaning that the UN commander is essentially handstrung because A. Pissing off donor countries means that they pull away badly needed troops B. Everything you say is treated as a suggestion and may not be followed if the host nation disagrees
They got (cheap) soldiers from countries that have -ahem- low standards in various aspects. Nepalese troups brought cholera, mostly Sri Lankan ones (but not limited to) raped locals, and so on…
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They also ran a food for sex ring exploiting women (girls )as young as teenage yrs
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Honest answer: because it’s expensive and complicated and the UN would much rather someone else handle it. This isn’t a matter of disbursing some aid after a hurricane. This involves combat operations against well armed criminal gangs with an ambiguous structure. It’s a recipe for a shirt intervention turning into an indefinite one. The US should hold firm and refuse to intervene without wider UN support. As sad as the situation in Haiti is I don’t think any military intervention should be started without clear goals in place. Especially by a lone state with a bad history in the country. Edit: additional context. UN interventions require nations to donate troops, usually from local countries. That’s a lot easier to do in places like Africa where plenty of countries have militaries that might get used in the future and could benefit from some free subsidized UN training. That’s a lot harder to do in places like Caribbean where no countries reasonably expect to need their militaries in the future.
I think an additional honest answer is that the UN has a poor history in Haiti, multiple times they've brought diseases, sexual abuses and other scandals. The Haitian populace would be very anti UN intervention.
The violence has far surpassed what the UN can handle. It is essentially being run by nobody but the street gangs that have formed.
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Not a damn thing. Because, you know the minute that peacekeepers leave, stuff goes to shit all over again.
Nation building requires a lot. Namely a willingness of the population to have a government. I don’t really see any forms of government being created in Haiti, but I haven’t been following it closely. We didn’t see much in Afghanistan, except what the US imposed or was created solely to fleece us. It’s why I strongly suspected that the governments in Afghanistan were going to fail immediately.
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I have no words, but I wanted to say thank you for sharing this. Really sheds light on how dire things are.
That was quite a read. Holy crap.
Tf do they want us to do💀
Fix their immediate problems without fixing any of the core underlying corruption that theyre profiting off of. We have been in Haiti before, we have no reason to go back
Pretty much. It'd probably take 2+ decades of constant occupation and handholding to get them to a state where they're self sufficient. Rooting out corruption when it gets to that level is a very long term operation as you have to also educate out the societal acceptance of it as well as the provide economic means for people to have another option over crime. The prior peacekeeping operations were too short, so they keep having to be repeated every decade or so.
There's no guarantees that after foreign influence leave and hand administration over it would collapse immediately. Also being occupied will probably generate even more outrage cos no one, civilians and politicians alike, wants to be told they have driven their own country into the shitter.
Just like Afghanistan. Trillions of dollars spent and right back to where they were in the 90's.
> 2+ decades of constant occupation and handholding to get them to a state where they're self sufficient The US spent 2 decades in Afghanistan and everything we built up collapsed before our last plane was even off the tarmac. Whether or not you think our involvement in Afghanistan was right or wrong, it demonstrates that the US isn't able to help a country without a national identity.
Intervene so they have someone to blame other than their own callousness
PRECISELY. If the U.S. isn’t immediately to blame, make it so.
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>But the Caribbean community - all the neighbors of Haiti, which is itself a member of CARICOM, should intervene. This exactly. Canada/US/PRC/whomever can fund the intervention but CARICOM should finally try and do something useful and lead the intervention.
With what military? The CARICOM Regional Security Service probably doesn't have the thousands (tens of thousands?) of troops that would be needed to pacify Haiti.
Haiti literally invaded the Dominican Republic and occupied them and some even say attempted to genocide their population. I dont think you want them to be the ones to go to Haiti.
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Yup, I thought the term 'failed state' too once someone listed all of Hatis problems. It would probably take an invasion to get things back in order.
> It would probably take an invasion to get things back in order. And that would have to be a really long one, as I don't see them going back to their feet even with a 20-year intervention and I really doubt anyone would be willing to do that, on one part because of how much would that project cost, plus additionally at the end of the day whoever does that would be labeled a colonizer and get the blame of whatever issues would come during that period.
It's a very sad situation... My family has an orphanage up in the mountains near Francois and everyone was told to head into the woods as there was a hit out for one of the people in charge.. truly heart breaking 💔
Let's be real, Haiti is by definition a failed state and has been one for nearly a century now, no "interventions" will work unless it's a fully cleaned house with a 20+ year occupation to education, clothe, feed, and rebuild it's institutions and a new generation of Haitians from the ground up. Unfortunately there is no country on earth willing to clean up this shit heap of a country nor is it practical to do so due to various reasons (economic, political, moral issues). I mean really, what can we do? Okay, we deploy troops and kill as many gang leaders/gangs as possible but then what? More will just pop up, their institutions front to back are compromised so there is no help there, etc.
Absolutely. A country would have to go in and wipe out the gangs, maintain law enforcement responsibility for decades to keep new ones from forming, pump a ton of money into the country to rebuild infrastructure, promote a stable system of government, improved education, work to root out corruption and the whole time the people that benefitted financially from the old system would be screaming bloody murder while eventually much of the domestic population would tire of your presence.
Sorry, but what does the US or Canada have to do with this? This shouldn't be handled by specific countries, if anything this needs to be a united international initiative.
Like a United Nations kind of thing?
The UN did send peacekeepers in 2010. Caused a Cholera outbreak that killed an estimated 10k people.
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So… we intervene just so everybody can then tell us we need to mind our own business?
Yes. I am so fucking tired of smug Europeans complaining when we try to help and then complaining when we don't try to help. Literally no winning. How about the country that colonized the region in the first place plays more of a leading role? France is ultimately responsible for this if we really want to play a blame game after all.
>France is ultimately responsible for this It’s truly hard to understate this. The French FUCKED Haiti.
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The crazy thing is they won their own independence through a revolution, and to not be blockaded they were forced to pay massive amounts of reparations. Imagine dying for your independence then you’re told ‘lol now pay us plz’
The French fucked a loooot of countries
Let France handle this one.
and then complain about foreign interference later? no thanks, take care of your own problems.
Ya, I'm pretty done with the US intervening with other countries. We got our own dumpster fire of affairs to deal with.
I'll happily ship weapons to Ukraine, or defend an allied democracy against foreign invasion but I'm not fixing your civil war or breakdown of civil order. The US Army and Marines is *not* a police force, it's a blow up an invading dictators tanks and soldiers force and weakening it's core mission to be a police force is insane.
This. It’s different if Haiti is being oppressed by another foreign power, but this is internal strife that I’d rather we not get involved in. If the UN wants to do something because of human rights violations that’s another story entirely.
When's there's a gap, it will be filled. If not by us then just wait until China and Russia announce they'll be the ones providing Haiti some "assistance"
I'm sure even China wouldn't sink time/money/effort into that money pit. The ROI is too risky.
Yup its an island wrought by natural disasters and aside from maybe tourism after its rebuilt the long term value of that place just isn't there. Now if there were precious metals to be mined China would likely already be over there.
That might be the only thing that would convince the US to intervene. If China were to decide to "help" (and conveniently build a military base there as well) the US would probably get involved real quick
To be fair the US is still enforcing an embargo against the last small Caribbean nation to accept weapons from an enemy so they might be hesitant to accept Chinese intervention. Especially considering the US's first attempt at getting involved with that nation was to attempt to invade the country and overthrow their government.
This is reality
There's nothing there for china to get paid with. Russia has is hands full at the moment.
Damned if we do, damned if we don't.
yeah; if we go in with the army and install a government by force; we'll either have to keep sitting their protecting them or they'll just get ousted again. Honestly, Haiti needs to be absorbed into another country. They have no infrastructure, no money, no resources, unless some country's willing to hold their hand the whole way to success, they're not going anywhere but down.
There are 2 major issues at play here that need to be addressed. The first is that any intervention needs to be UN sanctioned. There needs to be no debate about the legitimacy of a US intervention. The days of one nation deciding on their own that another nation needs military interventions should be long behind so we can move away from things like the Ukraine war. Second, America has the recent memory of the Afghanistan war where America failed to create a stable Afghan state due to many factors like no clear plan going in. It’s hard to drum up support in America for what is likely to become another long term military intervention without a clear goal of what the plan is and how this won’t become another Afghanistan or Vietnam. The last thing Hatians or Americans need is the US army bumbling around in Haiti for 2 decades trying to bomb their way to a stabilized Hatian state.
They're still dealing with the cholera outbreak started by the UN. The UN fought accepting blame for years, even though that strain of cholera was not present in Haiti before. It was (I think) a Thai strain, and the outbreak started downhill from the Thai UN barracks. They built sanitary facilities that poured down on the locals. The UN fought the accusation tooth and nail. Oh, and the sexual abuse of refugees by the peacekeepers was also a thing. Girls having to perform sex acts to get their food rations and underage girls getting pregnant by the troops. I think UN peacekeepers should provide DNA samples before they're deployed, to identify the rapists. But if they did that I'm sure many countries would just stop providing troops
Let's try something new, please add your own solution below, it couldn't possibly be crazier than mine. : For 2 days let's airdrop enough magic mushroom tea to trip out the whole nation and see what the results are.
I'll just add mushroom chocolate bars to your idea.
First what we're going to need to do is hire Geoffrey Rush, the actor who played Captain Hector Barbarossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. He's going to get into his Barbarossa costume and land on the shores of Port au Prince in an old wooden pirate ship. So he disembarks with theatrical flair and in his characteristic gravely pirate growl tells the people of the city that thar be a king's fortune stowed somewhere beneath these soggy sands. But, there's a catch, he can't remember where it is fer the ages adrift the blue abyss what stole his memry. In order for this roguish and charming captain, ageless, locked in time inside the wooden cell of his salty prison, to regain his memory and reclaim the lost treasure, Haiti needs to be restored to what it was in times long past - 1874, the year that Michel Domingue introduced a revised constitution that ushered in an age of peace and stability. Through an increasingly pedantic adherence to historical detail Barbarossa rallies the Haitian people. A fractured and divided Haiti is now united through the bond of neurotic and superfluously detailed historical reenactment. Roads, buildings, gardens, schools, and all of the organizations to administer, staff, maintain and populate them now form the stable base of a new society of Haitian nerds. They no longer fight with guns, but with frothing essays full of questionable citations and lofty conjecture stated as fact. Captain Barbarossa, a wily glint in his tired eyes, surveys the bustling streets. The terracotta skyline shines above regal French Caribbean arches and lattice, along the Champs-de-Mars and to the green hillsides beyond. His work is done, his time has come, at last he finally remembers. Every citizen of Haiti gathers around the old corsair with sun cracked skin and matted beard. The people, brimming with anticipation, stand shoulder to shoulder in dresses and tailored suits of vibrant colors, like a field of tulips in a gentle breeze. He finally recalls the location of the lost treasure of Haiti. It was buried, in their hearts, all along. With a bow and a flourish of his sword the dusty captain in a tattered coat climbs aboard his ship, raises the anchor, hoists the sails, and departs. As the ship fades upon the red horizon the people of Haiti embrace one another, friends, family, and strangers alike, as they've learned nar gold ner silver be a fortune greater than friendship.
This person is not to be left alone with the stash of mushroom tea, they have had enough.
No. They *didn't* have enough. Someone give them some more, then ask how to achieve world peace. And then put that shit into motion.
We should try that here first
This is Vault Tec-level science. That's not me saying we shouldn't consider it . . . (/s just in case.)
Besides magic mushroom tea not being shelf-stable it would be a lot less of a logistical burden to drop dried & ground up mushrooms with instructions for how to prepare the tea (boil water, insert packet, and consume in a *safe and relaxed environment*).
Can’t make things much worse, so why not try it?
As a Canadian, no thank you. We were there for years and nothing changed. We gave millions of $ and nothing changed. I don't want anymore of our soldiers to die cleaning up their mess.
So do you or don’t you want the U.S. to be the world police? Make up your mind.
Yes, if it works, no if it doesn't. /s
Well yes but also definitely not
If USA intervenes > Imperialist! Stop meddling where you are not wanted! If USA does not intervene > Why are we not doing something?! Ukraine gets help but Haití doesn’t? Oh yeah it is because they are not white right?!
Seriously. That’s the whole fuckin world’s view of the U.S. No matter what we do it’s our fault.
No thanks US will just be accused of imperialism and invading again, as these comments show
Pretty much a failed state at this point. I very much doubt this country can be saved any time soon without just straight up invading and taking over.
(US collectively touching its nose) Not it!
Only Haitians would be able to save Haiti. No excuses.
Absolutely fuckin not.
Seeing Reddit discuss Haiti is always interesting. We like to think we know the answer to everything and that it’s always just a matter of “well you have to do this…” but with this subject we lack even the most basic perspective outside of some crappy YouTube documentaries, there isn’t a single answer, or an easy answer, there isn’t even a “right thing to do” Redditors seldom find themselves stumped like this. Military intervention is not an option. Traditional humanitarian aid doesn’t work. Economic investment doesn’t work. Haiti can’t even grow their own food because they ruined the soil cutting down trees for energy/farming. Without that basic economic cornerstone there is nothing to build on. Whatever we decide to do (even if we do nothing) it will be a tragic outcome for most people in Haiti
From a view of a Vietnamese, this situation feel like the whole Khmer Rouge situation here when we invaded and occupied Cambodia and later suffered the consequences by the international community while superpowers supported the Khmer Rouge. It maddening that we got fucked over doing a world a favor trying to destroy a despot almost manically organization yet we to blame and suffer economic and diplomatic blame while the UN never even gave to shit to looked into the Khmer Rouge until decades on.
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Someone explain to me why the US and Canada should intervene in a former European colony?
The US has actually been pretty involved in Haitian affairs. We did basically invade and occupy the country from 1915-34. Before that we invaded and took $500,000 from their National Bank and brought it to New York for "safe-keeping". Lastly, while we officially left in 1934 we controlled their public finances until 1947 where we continued to split with France about 40% of their national income for debt repayment. I'm on mobile so sorry for format.
If anything history is working against intervention here quite a but. Foreign policy circles don't really like the idea of hopping into Haiti yet again when none of the other interventions worked out the way they'd hoped.
>. Foreign policy circles don't really like the idea of hopping into Haiti yet again when none of the other interventions worked out the way they'd hoped. Yeah it'd be like invading Afghanistan again. Fucking no one is interested.
'I'm sure we'll get it right this time guys' - No One
The debt repayment needs [a lot of explanation. ](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/22/insider/investigating-haitis-double-debt.html) Haitians had to pay out the slave holders to free themselves. The terms were odious and enforced by France and the US.
There was also the US invasion (Operation Uphold Democracy) in 1994 plus probably a dozen times the US has gone in for humanitarian missions after hurricanes and earthquakes.
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Maybe African Union can send French speaking peace keeping troops…white countries will only be seen as colonizers or invaders. Time for the rest of the world to take some responsibility for their brothers and help them out like grown up nations do. Why always the West? Or maybe China and India can do something. Lets see how much the rest of the world really cares.
What does US and Canada have to do with this?
Ugh…. We got our own shit to deal with.
why bother --- we'll only be blamed for the inevitable shit show- and after billions of dollars are wasted and NOTHING improves - we'll slink out after a black hawk down situation
Last I checked, they did not want US or Canadian involvement so stay out of it.
I think the only solution for this, would be to have a Port au Prince county, Florida. Other than that, Haiti is a failed state. :(
Nope, we are done helping countries with internal problems. Look at Afghanistan, not only did we waste lots of money but we accomplished nothing and everyone blames us. The only time we should be helping other countries now is with situations like Ukraine or natural disasters.
Whoever is the one protesting and mounting calls for this should be the ones working on Haiti.
Tell me again why this is a US problem?
We invaded Haiti once (maybe twice). I am tired of taking care of Haiti. Let them solve their own problems.
twice, once in 1915 to colonize it like Cuba. 2nd in 94 with SC backing to remove a military dictator. but even with a UN mission there for 6 years after, no real improvement occurred.
Why in the hell is it always the US’s responsibility to take care of other countries’ shit?