Editorial | Private military in Haiti

It must have indeed been an exceptional circumstance that caused the postponement of last Friday’s virtual summit of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders at which Haiti’s ongoing security/political crisis was the main item on the agenda.

Nonetheless, this newspaper is concerned not only about the delay, but the fact that a new date hasn’t been announced for the session. For not only is the Haitian situation dire and in need of urgent attention from the region’s leaders, (but) we worry that a seemingly desperate action by the country’s interim government could have the perverse outcome of pushing the country over the precipice, rather than ameliorating the security issues. Which would only amplify the prospects for instability in the Caribbean.

In other words, The Gleaner does not believe that the use of unaccountable private military companies (PMC) to undertake high-technology killings of purported gang members is a tenable route to long-term stability, and especially if that company is one run by Erik Prince.

That approach may deliver short-term gains. But it is also likely to exacerbate impunity, deepen distrust and further weaken the country’s ability to achieve consensus around building institutions of democracy.

NEW, CREATIVE THINKING NEEDED

Nor are we at this time in favour (without significant preconditions) of formal dialogue with the gangs that have effective control of more than 85 per cent of Port-au-Prince, as has been suggested by Dominica’s prime minister, Roosevelt Skerrit.

We, however, concur on the need for additional, and even new, creative thinking to deliver a primarily Haitian solution to the country’s problems.

Haiti has endured a historic deficit of democratic governance, which has bred political instability, economic stagnation and social dysfunction.

The 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse by foreign mercenaries plunged Haiti into even deeper chaos.

While CARICOM, of which Haiti is a member, brokered the creation of an interim council to run the country and prepare for elections, security, especially in the capital, has all but collapsed.

Gangs have largely overwhelmed Haiti’s under-manned and under-resourced national police, and have killed several thousand people – including more than 4,450 in 2024 and over 1,500 up to March of this year.

More than a million Haitians are internally displaced. An estimated two million face emergency levels of hunger, and over half of the population (5.7 million) is acutely food insecure.

DEPLOYMENT INSUFFICIENT

In response to the security crisis, Kenya has deployed around 800 police to Haiti (of 1,000 it promised) as lead of a multinational security mission. A handful of other countries has contributed members to the United Nations-endorsed MSS (which is not a UN force). But the total deployment, so far, is a little over 1,000, insufficient to defeat the gangs.

This is the backdrop against which – as has been widely reported in the US press – the Haitian government hired Mr Prince, a well-known entrepreneur in the private military contracting and security sector, to go after, and eliminate, gang members.

Mr Prince, a supporter of US President Donald Trump, is expected to have up to 150 of his own personnel in Haiti, whose primary method, it has been said, is to use drones to find and take out purported gang members. He will also advise the national police.

Although he has connections with several other security-related outfits, Mr Prince, these days, is most readily associated with two companies:

• Frontier Services Group, which offers logistics, risk management and security services, mostly in Africa and Asia; and

• Reflex Responses (R2), a security services and military training provider, whose centre of operations is in the Middle East.

OPAQUE OPERATIONS

But Mr Prince gained notoriety in the first half of the 2000s as owner of Blackwater, which was a private security contractor for the US Government in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Blackwater’s men were involved in the so-called Nisour massacre in 2007 in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed . Some of the shooters were later convicted for murder in the United States, but pardoned by Mr Trump during this first presidency.

Mr Prince sold Blackwater in 2010, and the company, after a series of mergers and acquisitions, is now absorbed into the security firm Constellis.

The bottom line is that Erik Prince has a long history of often opaque operations, and in conflict zones. His skill, however, is not building accountable institutions in support of democratic governance.

The hardmen he will take to Haiti, the ex-Marines and Navy Seals and so on, may have success in eliminating some gang members. And the far removed and dissociated tech whizzes with their drones will perhaps do the same.

The real danger will be the collateral damage – and the potential absence of accountability.

Should that be the case and the people who are supposed to be saved become victims, the possibilities upon which Haiti’s recovery rests, as tenuous as they already are, may well be severely compromised.

CARICOM, as a guarantor of the Haitian process, must have something to say on the matter. As well as on Mr Skerritt’s idea.