Opinion | At Last, The U.S. Edges Toward Intervening In Haiti – The Washington Post

Haiti’s descent into anarchy accelerated, predictably, after its president’s assassination 15 months ago. Only now is the Biden administration throwing its weight behind international intervention — sending in a force that would presumably include U.S. personnel in some capacity. That stance, too long in coming, is justified on humanitarian grounds and dovetails with the United States’ own interests. It also sets the stage for a risky and possibly violent insertion of police or soldiers in a country where armed criminal gangs have made the capital city a lawless dystopia.

In backing an intervention, Washington and its allies must calibrate the deployment to meet the undeniable dangers. President Biden and other key leaders should make the case that the perils of acting are outweighed by the urgency of containing a security and public health emergency that threatens hundreds of thousands of lives.

The United States and Mexico introduced a resolution at a special session of the U.N. Security Council on Monday, urging what the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, called “a limited, carefully scoped, non-U.N. mission led by a partner country with the deep, necessary experience.” The draft echoes a similar recent proposal aimed at reinforcing the Haitian police from U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, who on Monday called Haiti’s crisis “nightmarish.”

The immediate trigger for action is that gangs in Port-au-Prince, the capital, have blockaded the country’s biggest fuel terminals and severed roads, meaning hospitals, schools, food outlets and banks can no longer provide basic services. Water supplies are also breaking down, and a cholera outbreak that began several weeks ago is spreading, with no effective public health system to contain it.

Haiti, long the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, is now in free fall. According to the United Nations, nearly half of Haiti’s 11 million people face “acute hunger,” including 1.8 million at risk of a food “emergency.” In Cité Soleil, a sprawling slum in the capital, 19,000 people face a food “catastrophe.”

Virtually anyone who can leave the country has done so, often making their way to the U.S. southern border. Others will surely make desperate attempts to follow, despite the deployment of a large U.S. Coast Guard vessel just offshore. This cannot continue.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has sent what it calls an “elite” disaster response team to Haiti — of seven individuals. That is inadequate. What’s needed is a highly prepared force — police experienced in urban environments are preferable to troops trained to kill. The first priority should be to reestablish access to fuel facilities and reopen transportation links. That will mean suppressing gangs now in charge, which are allied with powerful Haitian commercial clans. It would be useful if international public health workers quickly followed, with expertise and supplies to alleviate hunger and stop cholera from spreading.

Beyond that, Haiti needs a longer-term multinational peacekeeping force, without which there will be no possibility of future elections or a legitimate Haitian government — the preconditions of durable stability.

Since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021, we and other observers have warned of a humanitarian meltdown absent swift international action. Dire consequences materialized rapidly; they are no longer ignorable.

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