The Gang Suppression Force the U.S. is proposing for Haiti would be far larger, more like a military in makeup and more lethal than the current police-led Kenyan mission, the top U.S. diplomat in Port-au-Prince said.
“To be clear, the mission is colored overwhelmingly as military due to the urban combat nature of it,” said Henry Wooster, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince. “But also happy to take police.”
The military orientation of the newly proposed force would be a marked difference from the current Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission, which has suffered from broken-down equipment and hampered logistics.
The force would act to secure “places such as the airport, the seaports, key road junctures, power plants, etc, and so forth, all the things where a state, any state needs to assert its authority to establish the fact that it is, in fact, a sovereign enterprise,” Wooster said.
Wooster and other U.S. officials have been using this week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York to push for more international support for the proposed force, which the U.S. and Panama have co-sponsored in a draft resolution for the U.N. Security Council. The council could vote on the plan as early as next week.
Wooster likened the U.S. approach in Haiti to doing triage.
“I liken it to an emergency room that gets a patient who comes in, who’s been very severely injured, and while you know they’ve got contusions, maybe a concussion, and they’ve got a broken leg and lacerations, you’ve got to stop the bleeding immediately. You can’t let them bleed out,” Wooster said. “It’s... impossible to attend to the other aspects of the problem if you have not achieved security. So that is our objective. That’s why getting the U.N. Security Council resolution passed now is so crucial, and that’s why the focus in that resolution is stability and security.”
Many key details -- including the cost of the mission and exactly how it will operate -- remain unclear. During a press conference in New York, Wooster did provide some of the most revealing information to date.
The U.S. is confident “we will be able to do what is called force generation,” getting enough troops for the task, he said.
“We are confident, given the conversations that we have had with member states, that we will gain sufficient personnel, whether they’re police types or military,” he said. The current Kenya-led mission has struggled to field 1,000 officers to Haiti. “The Western Hemisphere is enormous. We’re confident that within those countries, we will attain the 5,500 troops, we’ll call them that for ease of not distinguishing with police just for the moment.”
Wooster also confirmed that while the force’s mandate would be covered by the U.N. charter’s Chapter 7, which allows the use of force, the new Gang Suppression Force will be much more lethal than the Kenya mission. They will be able “to take the offense, to go after the gangs, to pursue them with lethal force,” he said.
Another marked difference, said Wooster, is that while the new force will support the Haitian national police, it will not have its movements restricted by them, as is the case with the Kenya-led mission.
“The Gang Suppression Force mandate would allow them to have freedom to maneuver,” he said. “For instance, the Haitian police can go this way into this part of Port-au-Prince, or somewhere else in Haiti, and the Gang Suppression Force, still supporting them, can go to another place, another neighborhood in the city, or another part of the country.”
Also, the new force will be “reporting up” through a civilian in the form of a special representative. “They will provide oversight, political direction and so forth,” Wooster said.
“Exactly what is at stake here is a fight for the survival of a sovereign entity, the Haitian state,” he said, adding that armed gangs are are “raping, pillaging, murdering, intimidating, burning. The United States is doing, what? We are pursuing a response to this. ... stability, survival of a legitimate state, and combating lawlessness, terrorism, violence.”
Though U.S. officials have been ramping up the pressure for support for the force, there remain concerns about the proposal, ranging from its reporting structure to how it would coordinate with the Haiti National Police. There is also the price tag, which the U.S. has not publicly revealed. Wooster said in the case of the Kenya-led mission, the U.S. has already paid for logistics, meals, vehicles, places for the personnel to sleep and medical support..
“We have paid over $1 billion at this point,” he said, noting that funding for the Gang Suppression Force would come out of U.N. member nations assessed contributions plus voluntary contributions, rather than solely “out of the wallet of the United States government.”
Other concerns surfaced during a high-level meeting on Thursday about the crisis in Haiti, hosted by the International Organization of La Francophonie and the Caribbean Community.
“The Haitian national police must remain at the center of this effort if we want this mission to be credible and sustainable, and it is also very important to ensure that we have the proper accountability related measures and mechanisms,” said Pelayo Castro, deputy managing director for the Americas at the European Union.
Wooster acknowledged that there are legitimate questions, such as length of deployment and the chain of command. But time is of the essence, he said, describing the criminal groups as not just terrorists but “insurgents.”
“Why do I use that term? Because … insurgents typically are those who have decided to take up arms with a political agenda, to go against a state, a legitimate state authority, overtake it to themselves, become the state,” he said. “And that is precisely the agenda we have with several of the gangs.”
Labels Matter
Security analysts say the situation in Haiti continues to defy clear international legal characterization and the choice of labels –- crisis, armed conflict, gangs, terrorist groups, armed groups, criminal groups, insurgents –- carries significant legal and humanitarian implications. The proliferation of terms, said Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, a senior analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, creates ambiguity.
“Gangs now function as de facto, parallel sovereigns, exercising governance capacities,” he said. “Yet, I still believe their primary objective is not to overthrow the state, but rather to seek to negotiate, to secure a more advantageous position within the system, without necessarily seeking its replacement.
“Defining these actors as insurgents, or characterizing the situation as an internal armed conflict, might be tempting,” he added. “But it requires a rigorous process. Such a determination must carefully assess implications for the country, the criminal groups themselves, their supporters, and, most critically, for the civilian population, whose protection is deteriorating. This issue is central to any future response.”
Le Cour Grandmaison said he agrees with the decision that the successor force to the Kenya-led mission needs to be more military-like as opposed to police-led.
“The situation today requires a military approach. And military mobilization may convince more countries to contribute to the force,” he said. “But it is above all the logistical, tactical and operational aspects that must make the difference. Otherwise, any force will find itself without a compass or the means to deal with criminal groups. A genuine strategy is needed, from A to Z, and it must also include an immediate judicial component to dismantle the networks that support the gangs.”
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