Haiti moves closer to total collapse and its prime minister is unable to return home

Banks and government offices in Haiti are being pillaged and burned. Police substations are falling under the control of gangs. Prisons have broken open. And neighborhoods across the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince, are experiencing continuous gunfire.

As a powerful coalition of armed gangs continues its assault in a volatile Haiti— and the political party of a former coup leader proposes he lead a takeover of the country — fears are mounting that Haiti has mere days, or maybe even hours, before it completely collapses.

Meanwhile, the country’s embattled prime minister, Ariel Henry, who had been on a state visit to Kenya, has been unable to return home. He attempted unsuccessfully to return via the neighboring Dominican Republic on Tuesday after international commercial flights to Haiti remained suspended for a second straight day. But Henry’s charter plane was denied entry into the Dominican Republic and he was forced to land in Puerto Rico, an official in the U.S. territory confirmed to the Miami Herald. The Dominican Foreign Ministry did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment.

Kenyan President William Ruto, who last week declared he is ready to deploy 1,000 of his police officers to help Haiti after signing a bilateral agreement with Henry, has told U.S. and Haitian officials he can have his troops ready to go within 72 hours. The White House is relying on it, ruling out a deployment of U.S. forces and pledging to “expedite” the multinational support mission, led by Kenya, that has taken over 16 months to materialize.

But Republicans in Congress are still objecting to the disbursement of millions of dollars the Biden administration pledged to help support the mission. The U.S. funding is needed to pay for the mission’s planning and deployment.

Ruto has said without the funding, his troops aren’t leaving home.

“The way the situation is now, Haiti cannot wait any longer,” said Pierre Esperance, a human rights activist in Port-au-Prince. “The gangs are in many places and starting to pillage. If there isn’t a rapid response to support the police, the situation can become even worse at any moment.”

On Monday, gangs surrounded the international and domestic airports in the capital, firing at police while trying to breach a security wall. In addition to trying to take control of the facility, they were also awaiting Henry, whom they had promised to keep out of the country. While police, along with soldiers from the army pushed back the attack, another police substation in the Delmas 28 neighborhood fell.

The attacks have demoralized an already weak police force, said Esperance, noting that rank-and-file officers have abandoned some posts and are no longer taking orders from superiors. Police are absent in areas not under attack by gangs, he said.

U.S. officials acknowledged to McClatchy and the Herald that the mission’s lack of funding is a critical obstacle, noting that other countries had also faced hurdles submitting their financial pledges in time.

But where until now the Biden administration has felt it had time on its side to carefully craft a plan for the police-led mission, a week of chaos has shattered that calculus.

The fall of Haiti’s government could spark a migration crisis from the Caribbean nation to U.S. shores that the Biden administration has feared since its earliest days, in the midst of an historic debate on Capitol Hill over immigration reform and at the height of an election year.

John Kirby, White House National Security Communications adviser, told reporters Tuesday that several factors are at play holding up the Kenyan deployment beyond funding. He was unable to name them.

“Let’s put that aside. You’re right, and we’re gonna need some support,” Kirby said. “We are working actively with members of Congress. I mean, I think we can all recognize that this is in our interest as well, because the region’s interest and certainly the interests of the Haitian people is to get a more stable, calm, secure environment there.”

Both the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, James Risch of Idaho, and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul of Texas are opposed to the release of the funds, accusing the Biden administration of failing to provide a detailed plan for the mission.

A spokesperson for Risch told McClatchy that the senator had released 20 percent of the State Department’s initial $50 million request — “enough money for the administration to put together a comprehensive plan for success and present it to Congress.”

READ MORE: White House battles Republicans in Congress over funding for police force to help Haiti

“The department has still not spent that money or provided any meaningful benchmarks,” Risch’s staffer said. “It has also not been forthcoming about any new developments, nor has it been responsive to congressional oversight requests on this matter.”

“If the administration can’t manage the $10 million it’s been given,” the spokesperson added, “why should Congress give it more for this untested program?”

The U.S. has pledged up to $200 million to fund the Multinational Security Support mission. Of that amount, the administration made an initial request for $50 million from Congress. Lawmakers released $10 million, but the administration countered by asking for $17 million to begin the process, according to sources familiar with the effort.

‘Fevered’ discussions in Washington

Fears of Haiti’s complete collapse gripped the State Department on Tuesday and forced top administration officials into ‘fevered,’ all-day meetings on the crisis, according to one U.S. official familiar with the matter.

Access in and out of Port-au-Prince is blocked by armed gangs controlling all roads out to the ports, rural regions and the main national road to the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Kirby reiterated a State Department alert from over the weekend urging Americans to depart immediately, despite the roadway perils, the airport coming under attack and all international flights being suspended.

“There are other ways to leave,” he said.

An official with the Department of Homeland Security told McClatchy that the agency has yet to see any effect from the crisis on migration flows across the Florida Straits. But potential Haitian migrants, too, are being blocked from exiting the country by gang-enforced road closures.

With an attempt by the Caribbean Community to bring together Haiti’s main olitical players failing once more, some leaders continued to blame Henry for the ongoing chaos. Supporters of Guy Philippe — a former coup leader who was deported from the U.S. last year after serving time for drug trafficking-related money-laundering charges — took to the radio to propose that he lead a transition government.

The spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged Tuesday that the situation on the ground “is getting worse.” Guterres, he said, is reiterating his appeal for urgent action and for financial support to the Multinational Security support mission.

“We need to see faster and more sustained support, a coalescence of support of the international community around the multinational support mission. We continue to believe it is the best possible option at this time,” spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.

He added the U.N. doesn’t have the capacity to monitor the toll of the crisis on the ground, but its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that the recent escalation of violence in Port-au-Prince has led to some 15,000 people being forced to flee their homes. Most of them had already been displaced previously, he added.

The U.N. Security Council has scheduled a private meeting on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Haiti and get an update on the multinational security mission.

“As each day goes by, if not each hour, it is clear that the Haitian people are the ones who are suffering and who are trying to eke out, trying to survive in the midst of horrific and inhumane violence,” Dujarric said. “One of the reasons the Secretary-General suggested a support mission, a non-U.N. peacekeeping support mission, is that in the ideal world these things are mobilized much faster and get on the ground much faster than an official UN peacekeeping mission.”