Voodoo Land Killings

The current failed state of Haiti was originally part of the Spanish Empire until 1697, when the western portion that is modern Haiti was ceded to France and became Saint-Domingue.

Haiti Map

It was the home of sugarcane plantations worked by enslaved Africans with the French settlers being outnumbered by slaves by almost 10 to 1. A large number of the slaves were able to retain many of their ties to African cultures, religion, and language with these ties continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. 

So when the 1791-1804 Haitian revolt by the slaves took place, despite multiple French attempts to retake control and after more than 50,000 French troops died in those attempts, including 18 generals, often from yellow fever, it ultimately resulted in the slaves freedom, and made Haiti the first sovereign state in the Caribbean with a distinctly African nature, and only the second republic in the Americas.

It instantly became the first country in the Americas to officially abolish slavery, and the only country in history established by a slave revolt ... from then on, it was all down hill. Wars with its neighbour the Spanish Dominican colony and state debts forced on them by France in order for it not to not reconquer the island in 1826, resulted in a U.S. occupation of  Haiti from 1915 to 1934 ... this was eventually to become the brutal rule of the Duvalier family (1957–1986). 

Another coup in 2004, then a final collapse and descent from whatever was left of what still passed for the rule of law, with the assassination in 2021 of the then-president, Jovenel Moïse, so that by 2024 the government had finally collapsed, with no elected officials remaining. Violent gangs now rule the land ... some of the most barbaric in the world, and now they control  an estimated 85% of the capital Port-au-Prince, and increasingly large swathes of the countryside.

Anarchy In Haiti

So much of a bloody mess is the oldest black state in the western hemisphere, that now not one western state wants to put in any troops in to defeat the gangs, so that only the weak Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission is prepared to even try and restore some order, but they are not strong enough.  

Its stable island neighbour Dominican Republic announced in 2022 the country’s biggest purchase of military gear since 1961 – six helicopters, ten aircraft, 21 armored vehicles and four anti-riot trucks to secure the borders.  Dominican President Luis Abinader said "It’s very dangerous for the integrity of the Dominican Republic to receive asylum seekers in the country [from Haiti]."

The most striking refusal to act now, is the USA, normally quick to act in their own backyard (see Grenada) ... In 2004 they deployed 2,000 U.S. Marines, who led the initial stabilization force, but who did not try to subdue or disarm the lawless street gangs in Port-au-Prince, who themselves chose to lay low until the Marines departed rather than take them on.

But twenty years later they resolutely refuse to get involved in this voodoo gangsta land .... but there are good reasons. There is serious historical opposition to international intervention within Haiti, and they protested attempts in 2022, and the idea of yet another foreign occupation is resisted. So where does that leave Haiti?

Well the risk of mass migration to the United States will only grow and a former US ambassador, James B. Foley, estimated that back in 2004, up to 90 percent of the population (then estimated to be around 8 million) would emigrate to the U.S. if given the opportunity. This of course would include the brutal gang members, currently raping and killing at will across Haiti, who would then be unleashed on to US cities.

Is that a price the US is prepared to pay? ..... President Trump may find this on his in-plate rather sooner than later, especially if the reports of mass killings in December 2024, keep coming out of Haiti in January.