U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124.

Transcript

Laura Coates: Keith Mines is the director of the Latin America program at the United States Institute of Peace. Good morning, Keith. How are you?

Keith Mines: Good, Laura. How are you? Good to be here.

Laura Coates: I'm doing great. Thank you so much. Talk to me about what has been going on recently in terms of the United States' efforts in Haiti. Remind us first of how we got to this very chaotic time.

Keith Mines: Yeah. Well, it started with an assassination three years ago of the president of Haiti. And from there, security just unraveled. The gangs took over most of Port au Prince and parts of the country, and it's just been a very long process to get the political situation reset and to get security restored. So, the political situation is better. There's a functional transitional council that acts as the presidency, and there's a very good prime minister, Prime Minister Conille, and the United States has been trying hard for the last six months to try to take advantage of momentum that it has. The most important recent thing, of course, was the arrival of the Kenyan led multinational security force. It's small. It's 400 Kenyan police officers and some others may be coming in, but it's a very small force. But it's been enough to at least get the port, the key roads and the airport back open again, some security in neighborhoods of Port au Prince, flights have resumed, product is coming in and out, and there's some healthcare facilities that have been reopened, and the Prime Minister hopes that schools will open in October. But it's not by any means universal. The gangs still control most of Port au Prince, violence and kidnapping still very high. Numbers of displaced persons are still over 600,000 and 5 million Haitians are relying on humanitarian assistance. So still a lot, a lot to be done. And the gangs, to date, have not responded, have responded kind of oddly. They haven't directly confronted the new force. They continue to snipe at them whenever they get into a neighborhood, but basically they've been kind of working around them in some instances, allowing the force to secure a town or a neighborhood, but then coming back in when they leave. So, for right now, the Haitian police are not large enough to hold areas once they've secured them. This has been a long-term problem, and the police really are going to need bigger numbers, more capacity, to be able to stay the course once they get in. So, it's not really clear what the long-term strategy is for the gangs, whether they'll continue this kind of shadow boxing, or whether they'll directly confront the force, but for now, there's something to build on, and there's a wave of progress that's encouraging. That's what the secretary went to Haiti to reinforce.

Laura Coates: Taking a step back for a moment, when you talk about the interim government, whose role was that to put that into place, and to what extent has that been helped along by the international community?

Keith Mines: Yeah, that's been, it's been very helped. Well, CARICOM was the facilitator of the talks that led to that new government and played a really critical role in that there was some other outside mediators. So, it was kind of a matter of getting the Haitian actors together and helping them to develop this very creative mechanism where they've got a transitional presidential council on the one side, and then that presidential council selected a prime minister who now runs the government. So politically, things are actually not in a bad place, and that's, I think it's a sustainable arrangement. They've done relatively well. There's been some little corruption scandals, there's some things that still need to be addressed. But in terms of leadership, it's night and day compared to what we had a year ago with Prime Minister Henry, who just didn't communicate and didn't really seem up to the job. So much more effective government right now to work with.

Laura Coates: So now that Blinken and, obviously, I think there was a visit also by the U.S Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield in July. What was the purpose in July? And have things progressed enough now for there to be this visit in September?

Keith Mines: Yeah, I mean two visits back-to-back like that, that's actually pretty significant. It means that the United States really does want to draw attention to Haiti. Visits like this, of course, pull in a lot of attention. The press all goes, and it gets a few days at least worth of high-level attention. And it shows that the United States is committed to this. I mean, it's still kind of leading from behind, because it doesn't want to put troops on the ground, but it's doing what it can to try to build out this multinational force. Part of it is also fundraising. Frankly, the security mission is very under resourced and undermanned. Other countries are just not kicking in, particularly in the hemisphere. It's really kind of sad that big countries like Mexico, Brazil, Chile, are not really contributing, not only not contributing any police or anything on that order, but not even money. So, there's a couple of countries that will be bringing some police and other trainers and things in the Bahamas. The Jamaicans, Belize have agreed to contribute to the force. Argentina has something they're going to contribute. And El Salvador is providing a helicopter unit. So, kind of a handful of small countries but there's still a lot of fundraising to be done.

Laura Coates: What about the safety aspect? I mean that I remember seeing the coverage and the gang violence. I mean, it was unbelievable.

Keith Mines: Yeah, it's pervasive, but it's also just a level of cruelty that is really off the charts. These are just vicious, really unhinged gangs. So that's still there. It's still going on. Again, the forces started to confront the gangs in certain places and on certain levels, and it's really a question of sustainability now. Can they go into an area, put the gangs off to the side and then establish a police station which remains? The gangs have been really visual about this too. They'll go in with a wrecking ball and they'll knock down a police station or a prison to make the point that not only can we chase the police out, we even have the power to come in and knock down their building. So that's a big, it's a big task. Again, usually this will be done with much bigger numbers than what are available. So, the numbers game is going to constantly be one where they, the multinational security force and the good guys in this case, are going to have to be really creative in trying to find enablers that would help them to make up for this lack of numbers.

Laura Coates: Well, that's a concern in terms of, obviously, the safety aspect of it and the infrastructure that could be built. What about the humanitarian crisis? Without a government functioning, the people of Haiti must be suffering. And this is, by the way, in addition to the culmination of suffering, at least since, you know, what's happened with the earthquakes and beyond.

Keith Mines: Yeah, it's true, and there really is suffering. There is a humanitarian crisis that is ongoing in Haiti. It's another part of the funding issue that's odd, is there's a lot of countries that can't, for whatever reason, can't provide troops or police or whatever. That's fine, but even, but at least, to contribute on the humanitarian side would be nice. Canada's given a quite a bit of money, but there's just not, the fundraising efforts for Haiti have been very, very weakly met. And it's really unfortunate, because the needs are so, so great. There's something on the U.S. side too that would be helpful. There's some legislation that we've had, there's a lot that we've had for quite a number of years, HOPE/HELP, that has been really important to Haiti's industrial sector, and it's something that gives certain trade privileges to help its fragile light industries. And that's been pending passage for over a year in the U.S. Congress. So, there's something even on our side that would help, and that provides tens of thousands of jobs. And every job, of course, provides another few thousand in support. So, it's something really important that, for reasons I don't fully understand, has just been lingering and waiting to be passed in our Congress. And if it's not, it's going to lead actually to an even bigger humanitarian crisis, because a lot of jobs will be lost.

Laura Coates: What impact is this having on the surrounding countries? And you mentioned some that were providing assistance, but there must be a concern about what has happened there possibly happening elsewhere. Or is the political climate in Haiti unique enough that this is unlikely to have that impact?

Keith Mines: It's pretty unique. I think the main thing that others worry about, the Dominican Republic of course is its neighbor, is the one that's the most concerned about any spillover from Haiti, but that's mainly with refugees. And the others, I think, also are concerned about a wave of migrants. I don't think that's going to happen now, because I think the boats are just not available, and I think Haiti's pretty bottled up right now, so I don't think they worry too much about, and they're certainly not going to be a copycat, kind of a collapse of another government. If anything, I guess Haiti is a kind of a cautionary tale for everybody. So, there's a desire to help. There's a desire for things to get better. And again, in a lot of cases, countries are just not quite sure what to do. And then there's a bit of Haiti fatigue, which I personally think is unfair, that "Haven't we done this before? It didn't work last time. Why would it work this time?" In fact, there have been periods where things did work, and international assistance was really critical to getting Haiti to what I would call a good enough place where there's not rampant gang violence and humanitarian crisis. There's been years of relative stability, even though it's always fragile. So, I think that it's a little unfair to just kind of tag Haiti as this place that things never get better and why bother. I think there really is a need for countries to step forward, jump back in and help with all these many needs that Haiti has, and take advantage of wave of progress that's been made over the last few months. There really is something to build on now. And that's again, the point that Secretary Blinken was making.

Laura Coates: Keith Mines, thank you so much for joining us today. It's important to keep apprised of what's happening in Haiti. We've been watching the headlines for years, and it's important to see what these back-to-back visits might lead to there. Thanks for your time.

Keith Mines: Thank you, Laura. It's good to be here.