In news coverage of the deployment of Kenyan police officers in Haiti is missing an important implementation detail: how will they communicate with their Haitian police colleagues? Haitian...
In news coverage of the deployment of Kenyan police officers in Haiti is missing an important implementation detail: how will they communicate with their Haitian police colleagues? Haitian civilians?
Will Kenyan officers be divided into teams that are assigned interpreters?
They’ve been looking for translators since at least August, 2023. https://www.stvincenttimes.com/us-seeking-caribbean-translators-for-haiti-multi-national-force/
They’ve been looking for translators since at least August, 2023.
US seeking Caribbean translators for Haiti multi-national force
Last Updated: Sat 5, Aug 2023 7:21 PM : AST
The United States said on Friday that it expects several Eastern Caribbean countries to send translators to Haiti as part of a United Nations-backed multinational force led by Kenya, as efforts to end the escalating violence between armed gangs and police in the French-speaking Caribbean Community (Caricom) country continue.
Barbara A Feinstein, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Caribbean Affairs and Haiti, said at a press conference that “there has been mentioned, for example, that in the Eastern Caribbean, there are certain countries that have the same or a very similar Creole to Haitian Creole, to the extent that they might be able to provide translators or interpreters is something that could also be of use.”
The summary of Dan Foote's position in that interview is that past interventions have not succeeded. Beyond that, Foote offers no suggestions. There's some slightly more direct criticism in...
The summary of Dan Foote's position in that interview is that past interventions have not succeeded. Beyond that, Foote offers no suggestions. There's some slightly more direct criticism in another article from Foote about the scale of the intervention, but I can't tease out whether he wants the US to intervene harder or not at all.
Frankly, there's no reason to believe that this will be the intervention that succeeds, but I was hoping for Foote to suggest something at all, since leaving Haiti to the gangs is not palatable.
His general recommendation seems to be to not politically engineer anything: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/11/1237665794/an-expert-weighs-in-on-the-crisis-in-haiti
His general recommendation seems to be to not politically engineer anything:
Haitians need to come together, as they did in the wake of the assassination, and forge a political consensus so that there's a social contract between the people and the transitional government. Right now, CARICOM, the U.S., U.N. and OAS are in Kingston, Jamaica, meeting on this, where I fear they're going to try to force a power-sharing agreement amongst the Haitian leading partners, which won't work because they will sign it, and then they will spend the next two years jockeying and fighting to be in power. The Haitians will and can come together for Haiti. And the key to this whole thing is eventual elections are trusted by the Haitian population.
KELLY: [...] I mean, what should the U.S. do here, in your view? What is the right move?
FOOTE: Empower the Haitian civil society and opposition political parties.
KELLY: How do you do that with the violent - we're looking at photos of bodies in the streets.
FOOTE: Mary Louise, two weeks ago, nobody cared about Haiti. Now, just because the prime minister has not been able to return and the gangs have closed the airport so he can't return, it's worse. But it's not a hundred times worse. It's not 10 times worse. It's marginally worse. We need to give the Haitians time and space to get this right. And if we don't let them set up political base, we're going to send in a intervening military or security force that could well wind up fighting the very people it's being sent to protect. Let's let the Haitians have a chance to mess up Haiti for once. The international community has messed it up beyond recognition countless times. I guarantee the Haitians mess it up less than the Americans.
Letting Haiti self-determine what they want in their political system sounds good, but can Haitians have a voice when the gangs have so much power? Foote thinks the gangs should be at the table:...
Letting Haiti self-determine what they want in their political system sounds good, but can Haitians have a voice when the gangs have so much power? Foote thinks the gangs should be at the table:
Whether we like it or not, the Haitians will need to have some sort of national dialogue and talk about reconciliation. What do the gangs want? Because we need the gangs to, you know, reopen the airport once Henry resigns and open the port and cooperate with the rebuilding of Haiti. So what do they want?
Have you seen pictures of what's happening in Haiti? The gangs are selfish; they're not committing violence because they want a better political system for their compatriots lol. But ignoring the lunacy of asking gangs what they want, a week before that, Foote stated that the US needed to militarily intervene.
Dan Foote, who as the Biden envoy opposed calls for any American boots on the ground in Haiti, said a U.S.-led military intervention can no longer be avoided.
“It's an absolute necessity now,” Foote said in an interview. “We've let this slide from worse to worst, all the while abdicating our responsibility to others. But nobody can argue that Haiti isn't a failed state when the penitentiary gets emptied out.”
If the US needs to intervene with military force, it doesn't sound like bringing the gangs to the political process at all. Nor does it sound like a non-interventionist policy. Dan Foote is a hack who just wants to disagree with whatever the current actions are, which is easy to do because there has never been an easy fix for Haiti. The West (mostly France) fucked it all up there.
I think there's some room between political engineering and doing nothing. It's not that the West (including the US) has a bygone history of causing problems for Haiti. It's played a continual and...
I think there's some room between political engineering and doing nothing. It's not that the West (including the US) has a bygone history of causing problems for Haiti. It's played a continual and recent role in tipping the scales of Haitian politics, which above everything else breaks trust in election results (even when they're legitimate) and makes room for alternative groups to violently or dishonestly seize power.
The gangs are Haiti's power brokers right now, and the people are abiding them for better or worse. There's no easy way to fix Haiti through external intervention at this point. I'm usually...
The gangs are Haiti's power brokers right now, and the people are abiding them for better or worse. There's no easy way to fix Haiti through external intervention at this point.
I'm usually sympathetic to toppling unpopular authorian states to empower the people, but there's no single group with a monopoly on violence that could be called a state. It'd be setting up some new top down authority, and the history of externally-managed nation building projects isn't great.
Mirror: https://archive.is/8HVsF
In news coverage of the deployment of Kenyan police officers in Haiti is missing an important implementation detail: how will they communicate with their Haitian police colleagues? Haitian civilians?
Will Kenyan officers be divided into teams that are assigned interpreters?
I'm quite curious.
They’ve been looking for translators since at least August, 2023.
https://www.stvincenttimes.com/us-seeking-caribbean-translators-for-haiti-multi-national-force/
I've heard questionable things about this whole ordeal: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/19/dan_foote_haiti_biden_ariel_henry
The summary of Dan Foote's position in that interview is that past interventions have not succeeded. Beyond that, Foote offers no suggestions. There's some slightly more direct criticism in another article from Foote about the scale of the intervention, but I can't tease out whether he wants the US to intervene harder or not at all.
Frankly, there's no reason to believe that this will be the intervention that succeeds, but I was hoping for Foote to suggest something at all, since leaving Haiti to the gangs is not palatable.
His general recommendation seems to be to not politically engineer anything:
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/11/1237665794/an-expert-weighs-in-on-the-crisis-in-haiti
Letting Haiti self-determine what they want in their political system sounds good, but can Haitians have a voice when the gangs have so much power? Foote thinks the gangs should be at the table:
Have you seen pictures of what's happening in Haiti? The gangs are selfish; they're not committing violence because they want a better political system for their compatriots lol. But ignoring the lunacy of asking gangs what they want, a week before that, Foote stated that the US needed to militarily intervene.
If the US needs to intervene with military force, it doesn't sound like bringing the gangs to the political process at all. Nor does it sound like a non-interventionist policy. Dan Foote is a hack who just wants to disagree with whatever the current actions are, which is easy to do because there has never been an easy fix for Haiti. The West (mostly France) fucked it all up there.
I think there's some room between political engineering and doing nothing. It's not that the West (including the US) has a bygone history of causing problems for Haiti. It's played a continual and recent role in tipping the scales of Haitian politics, which above everything else breaks trust in election results (even when they're legitimate) and makes room for alternative groups to violently or dishonestly seize power.
The gangs are Haiti's power brokers right now, and the people are abiding them for better or worse. There's no easy way to fix Haiti through external intervention at this point.
I'm usually sympathetic to toppling unpopular authorian states to empower the people, but there's no single group with a monopoly on violence that could be called a state. It'd be setting up some new top down authority, and the history of externally-managed nation building projects isn't great.