Unsolved Mystery: Who Organized the Haitian Coup?
Its possible that this one might get resolved by year's end
Remember the mysterious Haitian coup which alighted the cablers and captured real estate on the front pages of the newspapers until interest fell because, well, let’s be honest here — Haiti is a poor, black country. And there is only so much media bandwidth available for a poor black country, no?
Those who know me well know that I am fascinated above all else by unsolved mysteries. My interest in these things does not wane in a week. Maybe its because my ascendant is in Aquarius? Whatever the case, some unsolved mysteries happen in my actual life. Others, more vexatious, are cold cases that I have followed from the TV show. Of late, however, I have really become particularly obsessed with shady intergovernmental events that possibly involves a foreign intelligence operational component — like Wagner’s evil doings — that never get solved in the public commons beyond the initial press interest.
Or, maybe not. These international-political unsolved mysteries almost always happen in the Global South, where laws are bendy, independent press interest is sketch and police competence is altogether iffy at best. These sorts of stories tend to make a splash in the A-section of the national papers, then evaporate. But not to me; never to me …
And as the countries where these things occur are generally poor, life, as Hobbes once said, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” So there is, sadly, a certain tolerance level for assassination's that would never be accepted in, say, a Western democracy. Haitian life, in fine, is not as valuable as, say, American life. Haiti — the poorest country in the Western hemisphere — falls squarely under the category of the Global South.
And how could it not?
Which brings us to the biggest unsolved mystery, imho, in the Western hemisphere right now: Who organized the Haitian coup of 2021? How did it get to this?
There was the earthquake of 2010, which was probably the proximate cause of this particular breaking point of the country. Even for a nation with has had the bad fortune to being caught directly in the crosshairs of the West at the height of slavery, the earthquake was an extraordinary and traumatic event. Also, the Clintons (more on that right up ahead). From Just Security’s Andy Levin:
After the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, a popular musician known as Sweet Mickey won the favor of quite the power couple – then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton. In the subsequent presidential election, the musician, whose given name is Michel Martelly, came in third. But the United States and other interested parties pushed aside the second-place finisher for no democratically legitimate reason, alleging fraud without any statistical or constitutional basis for the decision, so that Martelly could be in the 2011 runoff, which he won.
Thus began the country’s dozen-year downward spiral, centered on the Haitian Tèt Kale or “Bald Head” Party, fittingly named after Sweet Mickey’s famous pate, rather than any set of values or policies. For complex and tragic reasons, the United States stubbornly stuck with Martelly, his hand-picked successor, Jovenel Moïse, and most recently with Moïse’s last extra-constitutional prime minister, Ariel Henry as Haiti descended first into kleptocracy, then into systematic gangsterization and lawlessness, and finally into complete chaos — until the whole house of cards came crashing down last month.
Thanks Bill and Hillary!
So, you see, we bear some — though obviously not all — of the responsibility to bring Haiti to order, considering our own tangled history with the country. Also, some history: The island — which houses Haiti and the Dominican Republic — was initially known as Santo Domingo and was a Spanish colony worked extensively by slaves. But by the 1700s, the French had taken over parts of the island, calling it Saint-Domingue. “Essential to the productivity of Saint-Domingue was its extensive slaveholding system, which was said to have been particularly cruel and abusive,” writes Matthew Vree and Alison Satake for Frontline. “At the peak of the island's prosperity, the slave population totaled at least 500,000. (By comparison, only 32,000 whites and 28,000 free blacks lived on the island.)”
The sheer numbers of slaves contrasted against the thin population of overseers led ultimately to conflict. Runaway slaves hid in the mountains only to commit guerilla warfare raids against the slavers. Ultimately the runaway slaves — calling themselves Maroons, led by the brilliant, charismatic leadership of Toussaint Louverture — took control of the island. Briefly; all too briefly.
By the early 1800s, Napoleon had taken an interest in the first black republic and independent nation in the Caribbean and things went downhill from there. Toussaint L’Ouverture was captured and imprisoned, where soon after he died of pneumonia in the dank and cold prisons in 1804 in France. And thus began the breaking of Haiti, in which they were forced to pay crippling reparations to France for forcing them to expend their resources to take over Haiti. It sounds like a joke, but it actually isn’t. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere because of reparations for being so uppity as to want independence from European domination.
Chaos as a result has ensued, much to no one’s actual surprise. Such is the legacy of Haiti, whose current woes in part stem from the fact that it had the misfortune of becoming the first free back republic in the history of the world in the age of Jefferson and Napoleon. And its geographic location in the Western hemisphere at the height of the age of slavery made its existence so precarious. Thomas Jefferson — one of the most prolific slaveowners and hypocrites — refused to recognize Haiti’s independence. The United States refused to recognize the declared independence of the first black republic until 1862, in fact. To close out this brief history, Haiti, for the last 100 years, has been a playpen for CIA intrigue, particularly during the 80s and 90s. So you can see why there is a sense — but no evidence thus far — that one of the missing pieces of the Haiti coup puzzle might involve the CIA. I mean, many of the Columbian mercenaries were trained by the American military. So, there’s that ..
Since the coup and the Presidential assassination, multiple power centers have emerged in the country — an unelected interim council that has long overstayed its ad hoc mandate; gangs and warlords increasingly ruling the streets — and are the most visible signs of deterioration. “No need to wait for Le Moniteur to publish the Haiti presidential council decree.... ,” Tweets the unstoppable Amy Willentz. “Who says that matters, at this point, w/ an unelected govt running that show? Publish on the front page of Nouvelliste, or on a broad sheet that can be posted on every corner as in days of old.”
Finally, there is the strange evidence that the coup was hatched in Florida (see: the current legal proceedings taking place there). And, finally, that a lot of the weapons used by the gangs to keep the public under their control come from the United States. As Amy Willentz puts it in this interview by WhoWhatWhy:
Well, I think one of many reasons the United States, the Biden administration has not felt ready to go into Haiti with boots on the ground, as we say, is that these gangs are so well armed. And the United States doesn’t really feel in a position at this point to risk American soldiers’ lives against such a well-armed foe. It’s easier to go in with boots on the ground when you know you can just wave your saber and everybody will flee. But these guys, we can’t say that that would be the case because they have so much sophisticated weaponry.
And where do they get that weaponry? You might ask … They get it from the United States shipments that come through Miami from states where these weapons are bought, states which lack armed regulations like Arizona, Florida itself, and several other states. And then they come through Miami and they go on ships and they come into Haiti where people are paid off not to notice.
It is said that behind all of this is Dr. Christian Sanon, a 63-year old medical doctor and evangelical pastor who was born in Haiti but had lived in Miami for two decades. Sanon believes that he was divinely chosen to ascend to power in Haiti and allegedly put this whole plot together with the help of some very shadowy businessmen (see below).
If we are to believe this line of thought, the secret meeting to replace the Haitian government took place in, of all places, Fort Lauderdale. A proposal was drafted at The Tower and monies — over $860,000 of which — were collected by the sympathetic businessmen in attendance for a “private security force,” which I am sure we all know what that means. “It was quite a crew,” writes Matt Bevan and Yasmin Parry for ABC.net. “The alleged plotters all had code names like The General, J3, Pumba, Whiskey and Mr White.” Whiskey, it should be known, was a DEA informant from Haiti. Just saying.
So — who actually killed the then-President of Haiti, Jovenel Moise? And why did so many of the mercenaries involved come not from Haiti, but — oddly — Columbia? We know that the political situation in Columbia has led to soldiers without work, to become international mercenaries — essentially selling their expertise in killing and black ops overseas. But weren’t they given the mandate to capture the President alive? What went wrong in the “fog of coup”? And, when will someone be made to pay for leaving the former first black republic rudderless? From the AFP (via Barrons):
A Miami court sentenced a former Colombian military officer to life imprisonment Friday for his involvement in the 2021 assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moise.
Mario Antonio Palacios, 45, pleaded guilty late last year in federal court.
Before that, he had for months denied any role in the attack on July 7, 2021, when Moise was shot and killed in his private residence by a force of more than 20 people, most of them Colombian mercenaries.
Even the ex-President’s widow has been charged with being implicit in the assassination in order to take over the position for herself. Fifty people in all have been charged, which may or may not just be a case of prosecutorial excess. A separate, American case is being tried, in of all places, Miami, because, allegedly, the plot was hatched there.
So the short answer is until all the culprits have been given prison terms, the answer is that this is still something of an unsolved mystery. There are still so many missing pieces to the story. Like, how does a Haitian-American pastor organize a coup in an American hotel room and get Columbian mercenaries to kill a Caribbean President? Who does one call to get Columbian mercenaries to do ones bidding? And, further, can we stop such a thing from happening ever again on American soil?
The mystery is still as yet unsolved, though a lot of the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together, the gaps notwithstanding. Unlike the mysterious and probably unsolvable Zambian Plane mystery, we may have trials and convictions of all the major players in the Haitian coup. And that, at least, would be a good thing.
How to uplift Haiti, however, is a far more difficult matter.
“Netanyahu declares at every opportunity that the hostages’ release is a top priority, yet he stops short of calling it Israel’s primary goal—offering, instead, vague talk of “total victory.” His critics believe that the obfuscation is purposeful: by keeping his goals vague, Netanyahu is able to prolong the war and push back elections, which polls indicate that he will lose. The hostages’ families are increasingly impatient. At the protest, the mother of a kidnapped man cried out from a bridge for Netanyahu to resign.About an hour later, protesters blocked an oncoming car, and the passengers began to curse at them; eventually, the driver plowed through the crowd, injuring five. The incident provided a measure of how politicized the hostage crisis has become. Fifty-nine per cent of Israelis support a proposed deal, by which Israel would cease attacks for a forty-day period and release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and Hamas would return forty hostages. The deal could then be extended for two more periods to bring home the remaining hostages. Barely a quarter of Israelis oppose such an agreement, even though it requires releasing prisoners who perpetrated murder. Yet members of Netanyahu’s government and their supporters in the media have turned increasingly against the idea, going as far as to suggest that the hostage families are trying to bring down his administration—or even working on behalf of Hamas.” (Ruth Margalit/TNY)
“An Axios poll earlier this year found 63 percent of Americans rate their personal financial situation as ‘good,’ a figure in line with historical levels. That is also reflected in people’s spending practices — they are behaving as though the economy were booming, even if they don’t think it is. A Wall Street Journal poll last month of seven swing states found a gigantic disconnect between the public’s view of economic conditions in their own state and in the country as a whole. Fifty-four percent of respondents believe economic conditions in their state are excellent or good. But only 36 percent of respondents said the same of economic conditions in the country. Now this was a poll of seven swing states, not the entire country. I suppose you could imagine the swing states are in dramatically better economic shape than the rest of America, though if that were true, you’d expect Biden to be polling a little better. What this suggests to me is that public assessment of the economy reflects something other than an objective assessment of economic conditions.” (Jonathan Chait/Intelligencer)
“Japan is now the linchpin to two vital strategic priorities. Both involve deterring or, if need be, defending against China. The most talked about involves Taiwan, whose security Japan has come to see as in many ways inextricably linked to its own security. The westernmost inhabited island of Japan, Yonaguni, is far closer to Taiwan than it is to Okinawa’s main island. If China were to absorb Taiwan and station troops on the island, Japan would find it far more difficult to defend its sovereign territory. Japan is acquiring the means to play a growing role in defending Taiwan, setting a target of nearly doubling its defense budget, acquiring counterstrike capabilities, and establishing a joint operations command. This shift has to figure increasingly into Chinese calculations as to what it might encounter if it were to use military force to take Taiwan, something that works to deter such a scenario. In addition, Thursday’s first-ever trilateral summit that also included the president of the Philippines signals growing concern over China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, much of it aimed at Philippine interests.” (Richard Haass/Substack)
Fascinating.