The world is sending soldiers back to Haiti - this time without Canada's help

Why is Canada involved in Haiti? Why is it Canada's job to fix a failed state?

Those are two of the most common questions CBC News hears from Canadians about the current state of an‐ archy and widespread gang violence in this Caribbean is‐ land nation. The answers are complicated - because Canada's involvement in the international response to Haiti's plight is much more limited than it might appear.

In fact, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not volunteer for the job of fixing Haiti. As they say in the army, Canada essentially was "volun-told" to sign up for the daunting task of restoring order there and the federal government has been doing everything it can to limit its role ever since.

It was the Biden adminis‐ tration that tried to drop the Haitian hot potato in Canada's lap, arguing that Washington's hands were filled with larger global mat‐ ters, such as the war in Ukraine and threats to Tai‐ wan.

Nearly two years ago, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began to talk to Caribbean leaders and oth‐ ers about Canada taking the lead on an "international sta‐ bilization force" for Haiti.

It was an assignment the Trudeau government ap‐ peared determined to ditch.

WATCH: Should Canada intervene in Haiti?

It's rare for a Canadian government to resist heavy and sustained pressure from an American administration, but that's what happened in the case of the Multinational Security Support Mission for Haiti.

But unlike Jean Chrétien, who turned down Washing‐ ton flat when asked to con‐ tribute troops to the invasion of Iraq, Trudeau chose to run out the clock.

Instead of soldiers, Cana‐ da sent fact-finding missions to Haiti to look into the possi‐ bility of a mission. It sent air‐ craft to fly over Port-auPrince and contribute intelli‐ gence to the Haitian National Police. It even sent two Kingston-class coastal de‐ fence vessels to Haiti to pa‐ trol Port-au-Prince Bay, os‐ tensibly to stop gangs from attacking shipping or launch‐ ing amphibious attacks on ri‐ vals' territory.

In other words, it did everything short of putting boots on the ground.

And through it all, the message coming from Prime Minister Trudeau, Ambas‐ sador to the UN Bob Rae (his chief envoy on Haitian mat‐ ters) and Canada's ambas‐ sadors in Haiti was consis‐ tent: Canada does not wish to repeat the mistakes of past deployments.

Trudeau repeated that message this past week, say‐ ing that changes in Haiti "have to come from within the Haitian society and have to be executed by Haitian police and by others."

"We have to come to grips a bit with the history of large military interventions, where basically you're just pushing aside all of the Haitian insti‐ tutions and [saying], 'We'll do this,'" Trudeau said. "And then the pressures come from back home, saying, 'Well, how long are those troops going to be there?'

"Troops come out again, and then where are you? What have you got left?"

The federal government has consistently couched its position in terms of respect for Haiti's self-determination.

"We believe very strongly that Haitian institutions themselves have to play the leadership role," Rae said at a CARICOM summit in the Ba‐ hamas last year. "We don't think it works for Canada or any other country to substi‐ tute itself for institutions that should be able to do the job."

Trudeau and Rae often have implied that Haiti's lead‐ ers have failed to live up to their own responsibilities - a view widely shared by Haitians themselves.

"We think with the appro‐ priate kind of help and assis‐ tance, and whatever it is that they ask for and feel that they need, yes, we're going to do it," Rae said at the CARI‐ COM summit. "But it's really important for the Haitian po‐ litical elite to take some re‐ sponsibility for what's taking place and what continues to take place.

"That's exactly why in all of our discussions in Haiti on the ground … we're saying to all other leaders, you've got to get together, you've got to create a path that leads to an election but ... also leads to it strengthening all of the insti‐ tutions that make up a de‐ mocratic society."

The Trudeau government stuck to that message through more than a year of U.S. pressure, while carefully avoiding a public split with the U.S. over the mission. Ot‐ tawa essentially ragged the puck and raised doubts until the Biden administration got tired of pushing.

Fortunately for Canada, at that point African and Caribbean countries began to express a willingness to step up and take on the mis‐ sion themselves.

Why isn't Canada doing more to help Haiti?

All of which brings up an‐ other question a lot of Cana‐ dians have been asking CBC News about Haiti - why isn't Canada sending peacekeep‐ ers, as it has in the past?

Canada is contributing $80.5 million to the multina‐ tional security force but will not send soldiers or police to participate directly.

The U.S., meanwhile, is giving $300 million US to the mission, or about $406 mil‐ lion Cdn. Both countries are also earmarking side dona‐ tions for humanitarian relief.

A very small number of RCMP officers are deployed to Haiti now, mostly in train‐ ing roles. Their number fluc‐ tuates; the terms of the de‐ ployment allow for up to 45 Mounties to be in Haiti at a time, but their current com‐ plement numbers in the single digits.

Instead, the soldiers and police making up the multi‐ national security force will come from Kenya, Benin, Ja‐ maica, Trinidad, Guyana, Bar‐ bados and a few other Caribbean island nations. Kenya will take the lead and will be the first to deploy.

The weight of symbol‐ ism

This will be the first major multinational security mis‐ sion led by an African coun‐ try outside of Africa. It will differ from past UN-run mis‐ sions in that it is being as‐ sembled almost entirely by black African and Caribbean former colonies, rather than the European and American powers that tended to domi‐ nate before.

Those nations will feel a heavy weight of symbolism as they struggle to put the world's first black republic - a nation born out of a success‐ ful slave rebellion - back on its feet.

For Kenya, there's a chance to win considerable international credit if it's able to pull the mission off suc‐ cessfully. President William Ruto's government has made it clear it sees the mission as a kind of coming-full-circle for Kenya - from British colony to a responsible world citizen doing its part for in‐ ternational peace and secu‐ rity.

The Kenyan government has shown some qualms, though, as the security situa‐ tion in Haiti continues to de‐ teriorate and now that the government of outgoing Hait‐ ian Prime Minister Ariel Hen‐ ry has fallen apart. So have some other participants.

This would be a formida‐ ble security mission for any nation. For the multinational security force, Haiti will be an extremely difficult environ‐ ment.

Haitians have expressed deep frustration with past in‐ terventions by the United Na‐ tions. UN peacekeepers earned an unsavoury reputa‐ tion when some of them took advantage of impoverished Haitian girls. Nepalese Army peacekeepers cut corners on wastewater disposal at their base in Haiti in 2010, intro‐ ducing cholera to a country that had eradicated it more than a century before.

The disease has since killed tens of thousands of Haitians - more than the vio‐ lence of the past few years. It didn't help that the UN dragged its feet for five years before admitting its responsi‐ bility for the epidemic.

A security mission un‐ like any other

The fact that the proposed deployment is led by and composed of black African and Caribbean nations could give it greater acceptance in Haiti, and help to soothe fears that Haiti's sovereignty is again being disregarded or that the U.S., Canada and the former colonial powers of Europe are calling the shots.

But in practical terms, this mission will be more difficult than any before in Haiti. Canadian peacekeepers faced disorder and gang vio‐ lence - but the gangs of twen‐ ty years ago were less orga‐ nized and much less wellarmed than the gangs of to‐ day.

"This is the worst of the worst," said Jacqueline Charles, longtime Haiti corre‐ spondent for the Miami Her‐ ald. "Haiti's had so many dif‐ ferent periods of instability and gang violence. And when you think back to 2004, we were talking about just a handful of gangs and you knew where they were.

"Today, you're talking about gangs who control, I would say, over 80 per cent of the capital even before this violence flared up.

"In the last two weeks, what we're seeing is coordi‐ nated violent attacks by gangs that normally don't speak to each other. They've orchestrated two major prison breaks. We've got thousands of people on the streets, murderers, kidnap‐ pers, other kinds of crimi‐ nals. They're still out there. You have a police force that is overworked, outgunned. So I don't think anybody has seen this in Haiti in recent years."

This week, members of the Five Seconds gang ap‐ peared on the streets of the capital in brand-new camou‐ flage fatigues, sporting new FAL rifles, assault sidearms and radios, and looking more like a paramilitary unit than a gang.

The gangs also have all the advantages of being lo‐ cals. They can fade away into a crowd whenever they need to - "like a fish disappearing into a school of fish," as a former Canadian soldier once put it.

Canadian military experts told CBC News that any mis‐ sion to pacify and retake con‐ trol of the capital from these gangs would require a force vastly stronger than the one currently proposed.

And the question Prime Minister Trudeau asked would still remain - what happens when the foreigners leave again?