Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, a former police officer who is now the country’s most powerful gang leader, has demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Henry. Chérizier was fired from the Haitian National Police in December 2018. He is now the head of a powerful gang federation called the G9 Family and Allies, also known as FRG9. Chérizier is linked to multiple large-scale massacres in Port-au-Prince, including the La Saline massacre in 2018, where over 70 people were killed.

A humanitarian crisis is growing as 300,000 Haitians have been forced to flee their homes, and neither the government nor international agencies are able to maintain order or provide aid to the displaced. The country is experiencing a cholera outbreak as citizens are forced to drink contaminated water. There is a shortage of doctors and nurses, and those in the country cannot reach hospitals for fear of being killed, kidnapped, or raped.

Haiti’s Decades of Political Instability

The current wave of violence was triggered in 2022, when it was announced that fuel subsidies would be cut. But in reality, the origin of this complete collapse of the rule of law was decades in the making. In 1957, François Duvalier, Papa Doc, was elected but quickly installed himself as “president for life.” The Tonton Macoutes, Duvalier’s private paramilitary enforcers, instituted a wave of repression, torture, extrajudicial killings, and arbitrary detention of regime enemies and opposition figures. He closed many schools while exercising tight control of the education system, hoping to keep the populace uneducated. Directly out of the playbooks of Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, or Kim Il Sung, he indoctrinated Haitian children who were made to recite a political catechism based on The Lord’s Prayer: “Our Doc, who art in the National Palace for life.”

In 1971, when Papa Doc died, nearly 90 percent of the population was illiterate and plagued by diseases such as yaws, tuberculosis, as well as malnutrition. Per capita income for Haiti was about $75 a year, while in the rest of Latin America, it was about $400. He was succeeded by his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, “Baby Doc.” Although the younger Doc made more of an effort to throw a thin veneer of legitimacy on his oppression, Baby Doc’s regime was ultimately very similar to his father’s, with rampant human rights abuses and murders. He was ousted in a coup in 1986.

The legacy of the Duvalier dynasty aside, Haiti has had a fraught politics in the independence era. Prior to Papa Doc Duvalier, five Haitian presidents were assassinated. From 1945 to 2023, there had been 24 coup d’états, although some were not successful. The most recent assassination occurred in 2021 when President Jovenel Moïse, who was elected in 2017, was killed by a group of 26 heavily armed men storming his compound. His assassination created a power vacuum and deepened political turmoil that we’re now seeing play out in the extreme lawlessness across the country.

Despite successive presidential elections or coups, the underlying structural problems in Haiti always remain. For example, the country remains prone to natural disasters, with the 2010 earthquake that killed 220,000 people a tragic reminder. A large portion of the population lives in poverty with limited access to basic necessities, fueling desperation and crime. The country’s long history of political instability, with frequent coups and dictatorships, has created a climate of distrust and instability. Widespread corruption has weakened institutions like the police and justice system, making it impossible to maintain rule of law. In Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, Haiti ranked 171st of 180 countries.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry has ruled the country since the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, but he has never been embraced by the population. Consequently, political instability has widened since 2021, further weakening already-feeble government institutions and affording gangs added space to operate and gain control over territory. Gangs tend to exploit poverty by offering protection rackets and engaging in kidnappings for ransom. Gang control and weak institutions exacerbate poverty, creating a vicious cycle that fuels the emergence of new gangs, as well as the outbreak of turf wars, all of which drive down the economy even further.

US-Haiti Relations Are a Mixed Bag

Activists have been calling for the U.S. to end its support for Henry, and many believe that Washington has played a role in the ongoing instability in Haiti. When Baby Doc fled the country, it was on a US airplane. A more blatant example can be found in the case of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who served as the president of Haiti in two non-consecutive terms. He was first elected in 1991 and was ousted from power shortly thereafter in a military coup led by Raoul Cédras. Aristide was restored to power in 1994 through a US-led United Nations mission known as the United Nations Mission in Haiti (UNMIH).

After Aristide returned to office, a structural adjustment sponsored by the World Bank allowed rice imports from the United States, which ended up destroying the local rice market. Young men who lost their jobs in the rice farms migrated to Port-au-Prince, where they began working for criminal gangs. Politicians, including Aristide, in turn began to rely on these gangs as armed enforcers.

Aristide was re-elected as president in 2000 but faced significant opposition during his second term, including accusations of corruption and authoritarianism. In 2001, he called upon the street gangs to help put down an attempted coup. Street gangs were subsequently deployed by other politicians at various times during the following 20-odd years, solidifying themselves as a permanent fixture of the nation’s political landscape. This latest attempt to overthrow the government was essentially caused by the genie that was let out of the bottle back in 2001.

In 2004, amid a rebellion and mounting pressure, Aristide was again ousted from power. The circumstances surrounding his departure remain contentious, with Aristide claiming that he was forced to resign under duress and removed from the country by the United States. It is true that he was flown out of the country on a US military plane, and that US Marines were subsequently deployed to Haiti to quell the disorder. While Washington was involved in his removal, it’s abundantly clear that Aristide was not a popular figure, and his removal appears if anything an attempt to avert an uprising rather than destabilize the country.

Current Gang Crisis Inherits a Fraught Political Legacy

Following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Haiti faced a political crisis. The U.S., along with other international actors, called for a peaceful transition of power. Washington reportedly expressed support for the then-acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who was initially nominated by Moïse shortly before his death. However, Joseph faced opposition from some Haitian political factions. Some reports suggest that Washington shifted its stance and eventually supported Ariel Henry’s appointment as prime minister. This might have been out of a belief that Henry could garner broader political support within Haiti.

Just recently, when Henry was denied permission to land in the Dominican Republic, he was permitted to land in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. This could be interpreted as a sign of U.S. support for the Henry government, but it seems more likely that the U.S. is in support of stability in Haiti in a more general sense, and thus extended a normal diplomatic courtesy to a fleeing head of state.

Haiti’s constitution requires a presidential election to be held, but due to ongoing political instability, that election hasn’t happened. As a result, Henry remains in power as acting prime minister/president. Chérizier and many other Haitians are tired of waiting and are demanding that Henry step down, as has CARICOM, a 15-nation bloc of Caribbean states. By some accounts, the U.S has withdrawn its support of Henry.  Chérizier has asked the national police to arrest Henry and has warned that if they do not, then he and his men will wage civil war. On March 8, Secretary Blinken called Henry and asked him to find a negotiated solution, a compromise, with the other parties to the conflict. The Secretary also said that he would support a collaborative effort with CARICOM to expedite a transition of power.

With violence raging on the streets and competing gangs jockeying for position, however, it remains unlikely that anything approaching a free and fair election could be held, at least in the short-term.