Times Radio Feature - Focus on Haiti 2/2

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to Darryl Morris for Times Radio, for a special two-part interview on Haiti. 

Transcript

Darryl Morris: 0:00

So, okay, let's move on. We're gonna return to Haiti. We were having a really interesting conversation last night, weren't we? The sort of cut cut got cut short a little bit. Um, the the uh Haiti football team, national football team, qualified for the World Cup this week. Incredible feat, to be honest with you. It's the first time, I think it's only the second time in their history that they've done that. The manager of Haiti's team, though, has never visited the country. The team play their matches 500 miles away, all because of some deep, serious unrest in that country that has led to gang warfare on the streets, private security firms, and the international community in some ways turning its back. John Bonfinglio hasn't, though. We were speaking to him last night. We're gonna pick up our conversation again and speak to him next. He's also been out and about today speaking to some Haitians, some people who can give us the context of what it's like in this quite extraordinary story in this extraordinary country.

Automated: 0:52

Across the UK, on DAB, online, and on your smart speaker. This is Times Radio. Daryl Morris on Times Radio.

Darryl Morris: 1:05

Hello there, good evening. Okay, so um just just about this time last night, we were talking a little bit about Haiti, weren't we? This extraordinary tale of Haiti's national team having qualified for the World Cup, but their manager having never been there and and and the team not playing anywhere near there because of the unrest, the violence that has kicked up in the last decade there. And the sort of tapestry of um of characters and stories that have emerged since. Uh, John Bonfinglio is there for us again tonight. John, thank you for um thank you for returning. It felt like we felt like we didn't quite get through the story the way we wanted last night. So I think it's worth our time again. Maybe just sort of re-establish where we are with Haiti. And and I mean, using this sort of World Cup hook as the part of the story, which is that I mean it's not funny really, but that the sort of manager of this football team can't or hasn't hasn't been there, um, really kind of paints a very vivid picture, doesn't it, of where Haiti is?

Jon Bonfiglio: 2:00

It does. And not only has he not been here, he has no interest in coming. He openly says that he's not going to be visiting Haiti anytime soon, which is, you know, something of a stark statement. Um, Haiti, a country of 11 million people with the lowest per capita income of any country in Latin America and the Caribbean, but it's not even close. Next on the list, Huris, has nearly three times the GDP of Haiti, and in areas at the moment it is de facto experiencing famine. At the same time, it has proportionally, would you believe, the highest number of millionaires in the region, all of which gives you a sort of sense of the historic social and political abuse that the country has been suffering without even mentioning hurricanes, earthquakes, and so on. Now, a key point uh in terms of where we are now is the fact that a few years ago in 2021, its then president Jovenel Moïse, uh, who was engaged with dismantling some of these structures and abuses, was assassinated in his own home in the capital, Port-au-Prince. And the ensuing power vacuum saw an exponential rise in gang violence and dominance, especially in the capital. Now, today I've been uh speaking to uh uh to Haitians in and around uh Port Um Capachan in the north of the country, and uh we have a clip here from Jean-Ricardo Compere, uh, who is a Haitian activist, an advocate who explains a little about the rise of the gangs.

Jean-Ricardo Compere: 3:29

There's a very long story behind the spreading of the gang after the killing of our late president. So one of the main reasons is because there isn't there's no punishment for them, and again, they become more powerful just because uh they they they could I say that uh I think they get mostly support from from the outside world. And and there's one thing, most of the guns they're using are from a country that is supposed to help us, that always say, okay, they they're supporting us, they want peace, they they want peace in AD, whereas guns are for are coming from your country and telling us that you want to you want peace in in this country. If they controlled the border, if they didn't want that to happen, for sure it would not happen.

Darryl Morris: 4:20

So so he's talking there about gangs getting outside support and guns coming from countries that are claiming to support them. Who who is he talking about specifically?

Jon Bonfiglio: 4:29

Well, he's very specifically talking about the the United States, which is just over the water from Haiti. Bear in mind that the country is flooded with uh with weapons, but there has been an arms embargo on the country uh for the last few years. Um three out of four seized weapons in Haiti uh are verifiably linked to US uh guns traders. Now, those are verifiably linked. So the number the real number is is actually higher than that because there's a number that that cannot be traced back to the USA, and that is through either private sales, uh commercial sales, through aid, uh, and through clandestine drops uh uh as well. And of course, this this preponderance of of guns has meant that the uh that the gangs are the the best armed forces in the in the country. And of course, uh the violence that ensues in their sort of um in their immediate space and in their hinterlands has meant that the country has also suffered huge internal displacement. Over one in ten people has been forced to move in the in the in the last few years. And here once again uh we have John Ricardo Compare just uh just explaining a little bit about that.

Jean-Ricardo Compere: 5:39

People are moving mostly from Port of Prince in in a part of Atibonit, which is uh one of one of the provinces in Haiti. You know, we have ten provinces, like ten departments, like we say it. So yeah, there is so many people that are in Carpetin by now uh that had to flee Portal Prince just because of uh the insecurity stuff. Not only Carpation, like pretty much all those stable places, all the stable provinces, uh you will find so many people that left Port-Prince. And yeah, it's very visible.

Darryl Morris: 6:19

So so who who are these gangs? What are they trying to do, John?

Jon Bonfiglio: 6:24

So I mean it's not gonna surprise you, Darrell, if I say that it's a it's a complex situation. It's far from from straightforward. Um the first thing I'll say in response to your question is that the gangs are undoubtedly criminal. Uh they are undoubtedly individuals and groups that that emerged from this, again, this this this power vacuum. Now, gangs are not um they're not new in Haiti. Historically, they were always sort of sponsored by by the elite. They they they were a way of controlling the the population. Now, what's interesting here with these gangs is that um uh as of 2021, they're not just criminal, they are also deeply political. They didn't just emerge from this murder of the president by accident. To some extent, they were his allies, and they refuse to accept that the Haitian elite, these millionaires that I spoke of before, will take over control of the island uh again. So whatever happens next in Haiti, they want a seat at the table. They've said as much, and they say they say that repeatedly. Add to that, to add to the complexity, you've also got the emergence of various self-defense groups built around protection from the gangs, but who have also been accused of violence and killings. And then you have what we might term the security forces, the Haitian police, the Kenyan-led UN-sponsored multinational security support mission, and and private military companies, all operating independently of each other, with impunity, no oversight, and with the exception of the Kenyans, uh, all of whom have been uh guilty, well, accused of being guilty and abuses. And in this context, the gangs are gaining territory across Haiti pretty much every day.

Darryl Morris: 8:02

Who are employing the private security private militaries?

Jon Bonfiglio: 8:07

So the um the current uh Haitian Transnational Transitional Uh Council, Presidential Council, has entered into a uh secret, a clandestine, non-publicized agreement with an individual whose name you might remember, Eric Prince, formerly of Blackwater and abuses during the Iraq uh war, who now runs a new company called Vectus International. And they uh not only employ mercenaries in Haiti, but are also primarily engaged because of a lack of polit political will uh and a and um and a disinterest in having casualties, their own casual casualties on the ground, in employing mechanized drones to um to to counteract the gangs. Now, if we look statistically at their efficacy, they have um they have killed more civilians, uh women and children, than they have gang members.

Darryl Morris: 9:04

Gosh. And so where are the international community? The the what what's what's the world doing about this?

Jon Bonfiglio: 9:12

Well, I mean not not not very much, uh truth be told, Daryl. Haiti needs help, it needs real help. At the moment it feels as though it's somewhere between a sort of 1970s Caribbean island and a society recovering from natural disasters until the next one, of course, and then sort of a dystopic, futuristic, stateless uh nightmare. It's it's there's this kind of really strange aesthetic where you're now seeing, especially in the capital and its surrounds, you're seeing drones operating against uh young men, young hyper-armed men on motorbikes. There's little doubt that Haiti needs robust international support, it needs long-term strategic financing, serious and accountable security infrastructure, and a big dose of luck. And of all of these, I suspect that luck may be the easiest that it might source.

Darryl Morris: 10:03

So you're you're you're you're there. You're giving us a bit of a flavor of what it's like there. You're walking through the street. You are you getting a sort of sense of the gangs and the armed um or militias, if you want to, if you want to sort of call them that. You can you can sort of see them, can you, and feel them around you.

Jon Bonfiglio: 10:17

So where I am on the north coast of Haiti is not gang controlled. It is um it's sort of uh almost uh an outpost which is not which is still under under state control, but is very much a sort of a uh an outlier. But it you know what it feels like? It feels like um one of those sorts of territories and spaces which which in which people don't know what's going to come next, where there's lots of, of course, uh again, internal migration that's that's taken place, where there's there's people that have fled to this area, and it's like a space outside of a war zone where it's unclear which way the front line is moving, and um uh and there's kind of uh vulnerability in that, and there's definitely a sense of it feels like a complete outpost. Um, there is economic movement here, hotels are full, but there's a lot of international agencies that are part of that sort of economic uh driver, and undoubtedly there's a lot of people that stop here that are going one way uh or or another. So here we're very much at the at the edge of things as the gangs heads uh increasingly west to east, uh controlling more and more in the way of uh economic routes, trade routes, and security infrastructure.

Darryl Morris: 11:39

How does it claw its way out of this?

Jon Bonfiglio: 11:43

Well, it's a $60 million question, isn't it? Because Haiti now has occupied, as uh as somebody said to me today, has occupied a particularly damned space in the international consciousness for a long, long time. There's no way that Haiti is going to emerge from this by itself. Um there's a generation of Haitians, undoubtedly, that have the drive to take the political project forward, but they can't do it alone. This is a this is a country that needs uh international will, that needs uh trust, that needs multinational structures, all of which are thin on the ground at the moment um to take it forward. And bear in mind where we are, I mean, I'm not saying that the world shouldn't take notice of other of other locations where these kinds of things are happening, but one of the kind of the the ironies of of Haiti is that it is really not that far south of the USA. It's in it's right in the middle of the of the Western Hemisphere, and it is sort of the the historically has been the poster boy for what uh when everything goes wrong, uh it it emerges in in the perspective of this uh this small nation on the island of Hispaniola.

Darryl Morris: 13:00

Yeah, that is they've become a sort of byword for it, haven't they, really, in a way, um, for a lot of those things. Um, John, thank you for your time and your brilliant work. Um safe travels back. I know you're heading back, aren't you soon from uh from here? So thank you for being there for us and uh and safe trip.

Jon Bonfiglio: 13:15

No problem, take care.

Darryl Morris: 13:17

Thank you. John Montfingla with us on Times Radio tonight. Um extraordinary insight.