In Haiti, Bukele cracks down where UN failed

“We have a bunch of gangsters, thugs, punks, thieves, and drug smugglers running the country.” These words were spoken to me 36 years ago by Richard Morse, owner of the Hotel Oloffson, as we looked down from a balcony at Port-au-Prince, the fetid capital of Haiti.The Oloffson, built in the 19th century as a presidential residence, came to the world’s attention in Graham Greene’s 1965 novel, The Comedians. It then attracted celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Jackie Onassis, and Elizabeth Taylor who, like me, were drawn by curiosity — a desire to see Haiti’s sinister mix of tyranny, poverty, voodoo, violence, and general dysfunction a short flight into the Caribbean from Miami. Recommended Stories Rum punches in hand, hotel guests could see it all down the hill in the fearful city. An Oloffson regular was Auberlin Jolicoeur, a dandy, gossip columnist, and government informer, who gloried in Greene’s lightly fictional depiction of him as the treacherous Petit Pierre. He strutted about, preening and tapping his Malacca cane while, in a nearby cemetery, I watched a young thug weave through the gravestones with a machine gun under his arm. Morse’s lament about Haiti and those who run it came to mind when El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele sent 2,000 troops there last month to crack down on gangs that kidnapped four Salvadorans. His military is no global power but outmatches the ramshackle gangsters who’ve preyed on Haiti since Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier established his Tonton Macoute in 1958.President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele. (Camilo Freedman / SOPA Images/Sipa USA) The Salvadorans executed an air assault on one gang’s headquarters, its occupants fled, and now the crime leaders are suing for peace talks overseen by the United Nations. One must hope the U.N. does not get involved for a while, if at all, because its record in Haiti is as bad as elsewhere. It has a Haitian gang suppression force already that, if it worked, would have made the Salvadoran incursion unnecessary.The U.N. is not the only outsider to fail Haiti, just as gangs are not the only people to enrich themselves from its misery. Bill and Hillary Clinton made out like bandits there via their various charitable organizations which, after a massive earthquake in 2010, preferred reconstruction bids from those who’d donated to the Clinton Foundation.Haitians themselves are to blame for the misery of their homeland, one of the poorest places in the world, which President Donald Trump had in mind when he referred to “s***hole countries.” Outside do-gooding forces, the U.N. and the Clintons, have not turned the place around or transformed it from a failed state into a properly functioning country.‘ISLAMAPHOBIA’ LIE GAINS POST-MIDTERM MOMENTUMSo maybe Bukele won’t either. But what the place has long lacked, it may now be getting: intervention by enforcers prepared, able, and under orders to inflict salutary violence on predators and scavengers who’ve kept the benighted island nation in thrall for generations. The Salvadorans, notably, operate outside the U.N. mandate.There is bleating about Haitian sovereignty from the usual suspects, as though Haitians had not lost their sovereign authority long before all but a few of them were born. The gangs burned the Oloffson to the ground last year. While some question Bukele’s move to stop such stuff, the Haitian public notably does not. They cheer passing military convoys and celebrate in the streets. Who can blame them?