This story's a month old now, but still bears posting:
March 6, 2024:On Tuesday, the US government effectively kidnapped Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, a right-wing figure whom it had hitherto staunchly supported, a Miami Herald report has revealed.
Against the will of the vast majority of Haiti’s impoverished people, Washington—backed by Canada and France, the other imperialist powers long involved in Haiti—placed Henry in power following the July 2021 assassination of the country’s president, Jovenel Moïse. The US-led “Core Group” of nations has continued to support Henry ever since, although he has no popular or legal-constitutional legitimacy and has refused to hold parliamentary or presidential elections despite the mandates of all elected officials having long expired.
Now, however, under conditions where the country is overrun by criminal gangs, most of which have close ties to rival factions of Haiti’s ruling elite, the Biden administration has apparently concluded Henry is a liability who should be flushed from office. To accomplish this, as the Herald article documents, US imperialism is resorting to its traditional thuggery and criminality.
This is all playing out as Washington and Ottawa scramble to put together a foreign paramilitary force to be deployed to Haiti with US and Canadian logistical support to bloodily restore bourgeois “law and order” on the Caribbean island-nation.
Both the US and Canada have a long history of neo-colonial occupation and military intervention in Haiti, including as recently as 2004 when they deployed troops to oust its elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But under conditions where they are waging war against Russia in Ukraine, supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and actively preparing for war with China, and where there is visceral opposition among the Haitian masses to an intervention led by either of North America’s twin imperialist powers, they are anxious to contract out the job.
Last week Henry traveled to Kenya, whose avidly pro-imperialist government has volunteered to lead a Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to Haiti and staff it with more than a thousand Kenyan national police.
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