On Sept. 30, the UN Security Council passed the U.S.- Panamanian resolution calling for the creation of a “Gang Suppression Force” (GSF), a larger and “more lethal” force of 5,500 foreign police and military personnel, to combat Haiti’s violent gangs. This is to replace the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS), led by Kenya, whose year-long UN mandate expired on Oct. 2. The resolution was rushed through by the U.S., which claimed there was no time for in-depth discussion, despite the ambiguity and many unanswered questions about the GSF proposal, raised by Russia, China and Pakistan which abstained from voting, and even by the 12 nations that voted for the resolution, reported the Miami Herald Sept. 30.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia explained in his remarks that the abstention was due to the fact that Haiti’s neighboring states asked Russia and China not to veto the resolution, because the Haitian situation is so dire that something must be done quickly, even if it’s flawed. In each of their incisive remarks, Ambassador Nebenzia and China’s Permanent Representative Fu Cong warned that given the miserable U.S. record on previous UN interventions into Haiti, nothing good is likely to come out of this latest ill-conceived effort. Behind the flashy new name, serious dangers lurk, including the lack of oversight of a foreign force whose mission will be to enter into combat with gangs “armed to the teeth.” In the midst of Haiti’s incredibly complex situation, Ambassador Fu Cong warned, “resorting to military force to combat violence with violence is unlikely to succeed, but could further complicate the already intractable situation.”
The only clarity in this proposal is that it provides a 12-month mandate for the GSF. The 1,000 Kenyans remaining in Haiti will be transitioned into the new force. Everything else is murky. Funding is to come through “voluntary” donations by member states to a special UN Trust Fund, the same mechanism that failed to fund the MSS because nations didn’t donate to it. Nebenzia pointed out that the sums nations were asked to donate were quite modest, “compared to the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars these same countries allocate to support their interests elsewhere in the world, as well as to supply weapons to conflict zones, in particular, to Ukraine.”
Skepticism is widespread about the U.S. commitment to Haiti, and to the GSF, given past U.S. funding decisions regarding the UN. Where will the 5,500 troops come from? How will troops from several different countries be trained and deployed together? What are the rules of engagement? How much will the GSF project cost? Oversight is to come from some ill-defined “standing group of partners” which was only created one month ago, and which the Miami Herald appropriately called a kind of “coalition of the willing.” Its members haven’t been identified, but are probably from the EU or “international community” whose policies have historically only succeeded in killing Haitians.
