: The Best Way for the World to Help Haiti in This Moment of Crisis #WorldNEWS When Jovnel Moise, a deeply unpopular president of Haiti since 2017, was assassinated on July 7 by a squad of gunmen posing

The Best Way for the World to Help Haiti in This Moment of Crisis #WorldNEWS
When Jovnel Moise, a deeply unpopular president of Haiti since 2017, was assassinated on July 7 by a squad of gunmen posing as DEA agents, the news stunned and horrified the world. Even Pope Francis weighed in with sadness, condemning “all forms of violence as a means of resolving crisis and conflicts,” and wishing for the Haitian people “a future of fraternal harmony, solidarity, and prosperity. ”
Most Haitians shrugged off the news and braced themselves for worst, while praying the violence that has plagued their lives the last few years is not exponentially increased by the violence of losing their freedom to foreign forces.
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The drumbeat of news of brutal killings and kidnappings of neighbors and friends, priests and commoners, and children and cops has become routine in Haiti since 2018, when an unforeseen spike in gas prices triggered protests against the Moise government. Over the past three years gang-related violence has gone from accidental by-products of protests against presidential incompetence to a fever pitch of terrorism and opportunistic crimes by marauding gangsters. The police and national guard had long been outgunned by these well-funded and well-armed gangs. The COVID-19 pandemic failed to dent their reign of terror.
By this summer many parents of means began sending their kids to live with relatives in New York, Miami, Paris, and Montreal, and enrolling them in schools in those cities for the coming school year, as they sought business and career opportunities on new shores. The last people Haiti could afford to lose were following the international community in bailing out on Haiti. Both in 2018 and 2019, I myself was evacuated from Haiti by United Nations security after violent protests broke out and made getting any missionary work done impossible. The U. N. eventually gave up on Haiti after nearly 15 years, probably a decade after Haitians had given up on the U. N. Yet disaster relief aside, the U. N. ’s presence was reassuring and academic. And the hope for peace and prosperity it represented was snuffed out.
Moise’s death is the culmination of years of lawlessness, frustration, and hopelessness in Haiti. Call it Peak Failed State
But we should also consider the leadership vacuum this murder creates an opportunity.
President Biden can chart a new, richer direction for U. S. -Haiti relations, if he plays this moment constructively. Calls for President Biden to send in U. S. troops to broker peace between the government and the gangsters and pave the way for elections are misguided and far too short-sighted. Bullying Haitians doesn’t work.