As bodies burn in the streets of Haiti, Biden’s administration is to blame – writes former diplomat

Ambassador Daniel L. Foote (Retd) served as U.S. Special Envoy to Haiti from July to September 2021

When I watched the footage of suspected Haitian gang members begging for mercy as a vigilante burned them alive on Monday, I was disgusted — but not at all surprised.

Unsurprisingly, such atrocities have become commonplace in a nation that has lost all semblance of civil society.

Disgusting, because I have no doubt that the blame for this horrific violence lies with President Joe Biden.

Let me explain.

In July 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated, and the country plunged into civil unrest.

I was appointed US Special Envoy to Haiti by President Biden, tasked with helping restore peace and pave the way for democratic elections.

In the end I couldn’t do my job and I resigned within three months.

But not because of anything the Haitians had done. Rather, because Biden betrayed them.

After Moise’s assassination, a group of foreign powers led by the United States moved swiftly to appoint Ariel Henry, the former secretary of social affairs, as acting prime minister.

The people of Haiti had no say in it, but popular elections would be held at a later date.

Soon, however, the crisis in Haiti spilled onto American soil.

In September 2021, aerial footage of a sprawling encampment of some 15,000 Haitian migrants under a bridge in Del Rio near the Texas border made national headlines.

The filthy, crowded conditions in the smelly camp raised fears of COVID-19 outbreaks.

Food and water were scarce as desperate men, women and children crossed the Rio Grande River in search of supplies.

And footage of Border Patrol officers on horseback corralling migrants was described as “horrifying” by Biden’s own Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas.

Desperate not to let the situation turn into a full-blown public relations nightmare, the federal government cleared the area in less than a week.

Several thousand people were deported back to Haiti by plane.

It was a humanitarian crisis, but the chaos was over within days – thanks in large part to Henry’s willingness to accept the deported Haitians back to his country.

But I believe that was the plan all along. That Biden essentially made Henry — who now also serves as acting president — dictator of Haiti in exchange for easy repatriation of immigrants, whose presence at the US border was a political headache even before the Del Rio disaster.

After all, anyone who knew anything about Haitian politics could have seen Henry for what he is: another power-hungry tyrant.

He has already been directly linked through phone records to those suspected of being behind Moise’s murder.

And, nearly two years into his mock presidency, there are still no signs of democratic elections on the horizon. Washington has also given no indication that they will push for it.

Even if an election were to come, Henry is so unpopular that the vast majority of Haitians say they would not vote or accept the results — not least because they believe the process was likely tampered with.

Already one of the world’s poorest countries, the endlessly beleaguered nation has been plunged into even deeper disarray under his corrupt leadership.

Haiti is now more violent than Somalia. The police have become powerless. Mob rule reigns. Disease is ubiquitous. Fuel supplies are hopelessly exhausted. And inflation continues to ramp up as protests break out almost daily.

The number of reported criminal incidents has more than doubled since last year. And gangs are estimated to have taken over 80 percent of the capital Port-au-Prince.

Rapes, gun violence, kidnappings, lynchings – these are now the hallmarks of daily life in Haiti.

Monday’s gruesome public executions — in which residents of Port-au-Prince and a nearby neighborhood attacked and burned criminals amid mounds of gasoline-soaked tires — marked just another bloody escalation of anger among Haitians over the country’s rising lawlessness.

Meanwhile, our leaders in the so-called free world don’t care.

In the summer of 2021, I tried to warn my counterparts in Washington that Henry was bad news.

I was in the planning room on US-funded reconstruction after the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti in 2010, which killed 250,000. And then I saw how excluding Haitians from the decision-making process led directly to the now infamously failed recovery plan.

It was clear to me that with the appointment of another de facto dictator, we were once again telling poor Haitians what to do—rather than asking them what they wanted.

We needed a Haiti-led solution.

So let’s be clear: the cowardly policies of the US government come at a price.

When the smoke rose from the burning flesh of those gang members in the street, it was clear who was to blame.

The Biden administration has made a deal with the devil — and betrayed the Haitian people for an easy political victory.

Now it has blood on its hands.