US pushes Haiti’s Henry to speed transition as gangs threaten civil war

The US said on Wednesday it was calling on Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry to expedite a political transition as armed gangs seek his ouster amid a collapse in security and a humanitarian crisis in the Caribbean nation.

Henry, Haiti’s unelected interim leader, has been in the US territory of Puerto Rico since Tuesday, apparently unable or unwilling to return to his strife-torn country after travelling to Kenya to rally security backing.

A state department spokesperson said the US wanted Henry to “expedite” a transition of political power.

The US also said it was not helping Henry return home.

“We are not providing any assistance to help the prime minister return to Haiti,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Haitian gangs have warned that if Henry does not resign and countries continue to back him, it could lead to civil war.

The Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, said that as late as Tuesday the US had been seeking to have Henry make an “indefinite stopover” on its territory, a request it denied, prompting Henry’s plane, which had already departed from New Jersey, to land in San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico.

Henry had travelled abroad to secure Kenya’s proposed leadership of a long-delayed UN-ratified security mission he first requested in 2022 to help fight the increasingly powerful gangs, but countries have been slow to volunteer support.

There is no set deployment date and questions remain on who will staff it.

Jimmy Cherizier, alias Barbeque, who leads a broad alliance of criminal gangs that have been fuelling a dire humanitarian crisis in Port-auPrince, Haiti’s capital, has signalled the gangs could fight the proposed mission as a united front and the city’s international airport is no longer secure.

Local rights group RNDDH said that at least nine police stations had been torched while 21 public buildings or shops had been looted, and more than 4,600 prisoners escaped in the past week.

“If Ariel Henry doesn’t step down, if the international community continues to support Ariel Henry, they will lead us directly into a civil war that will end in genocide,” Cherizier said at a press conference.

He said a broad alliance of gangs known as Viv Ansanm (Living Together) were fighting to annex strategic areas to allow them to oust Henry “as quickly as possible”.

Henry, who has been in power but unelected since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021, has postponed elections, saying security must first be established.

Leaders from the Caribbean Community (Caricom) have been meeting with Haitian government officials and opposition figures “around the clock” for three days, Caricom chair Irfaan Ali, the president of Guyana, said in a video.

Ali said they had not been able to reach “any form of consensus” between key Haitian players and it was essential to establish one as countries prepare to deploy troops in Haiti.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called for the “urgent deployment” of the planned security force, saying there was no realistic alternative to protect lives.

The UN Security Council held a closed-door meeting on Haiti on Wednesday. —