As the search continues for missing Salvadoran soldiers attacked by Haiti’s gangs, the U.N. has offered a sobering assessment of the country’s violence-torn conditions — a reminder of the dangerous if not deadly situation Haitians being deported back there from the U.S. still face.
The four Salvadoran military aviation technicians (and perhaps a fifth Salvadoran soldier, according to reports) are part of the new, U.N.-backed and largely U.S.-funded international Gang Suppression Force.
The GSF is being deployed to assist Haiti’s overwhelmed police against the criminal groups that all but rule the country.
Gang members ambushed the Salvadorans outside the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Sunday. It’s just the latest sign of how difficult it will be to neutralize Haiti’s powerful gangs — as Carlos Ruiz Massieu, the U.N.’s top official in Haiti, told the U.N. Security Council this week:
“Of particular concern is the ability of gangs to adapt their tactics as security operations intensify," Ruiz Massieu said.
"On the ground, we are witnessing increasing reliance on retaliatory violence against communities ... The situation is very dire."
That continuing violence — the U.N. says the gangs have killed more than 4,000 people this year — has again forced Haiti’s interim government to indefinitely postpone desperately needed elections it had hoped to hold in December.
Haiti has not had an election since 2016. But with so much of its infrastructure, especially roads leading out of Port-au-Prince, controlled by gangs, fewer than 800,000 out of 6.5 million eligible voters have been able to register.
“Human rights and democratic activists tell me elections probably are going to be held in the third or fourth quarter of 2027 — at best," Jocelyn McCalla, executive director of the Miami-based nonprofit Haitian-American Foundation for Democracy, told WLRN.
"But people there are scared [out of] their wits, because the gangs unfortunately are ahead of the game. There needs to be a far more sophisticated approach as far as the international community is concerned.”
READ MORE: Is it a human rights violation to deport Haitian TPS holders to a cauldron of gang violence?
The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz, insisted this week that a more effective approach is coming under the GSF, and that Haiti’s nightmare security situation will soon change for the better.
“To the gang bosses terrorizing Haiti: your days of operating with impunity are numbered," Waltz said.
"The Gang Suppression Force is coming for you. The international community will not tolerate it.”
Still, less than a third of the GSF’s 5,000 pnlanned members are in place in Haiti so far. — and this week’s apparent abduction of the Salvadoran troops has cast a further pall.
Moreover it's renewed fears that the hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants who’ve lost Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, in the U.S. — and whom the Trump administration has begun to deport — are being thrown into a threatening maelstrom, which human rights advocates warn may constitute a violation of international law.
“Rational policymaking would dictate that you don’t send Haitians back to Haiti at this time,” said McCalla.
Also raising anxieties: Haiti’s interim government is allowing people who’ve been sanctioned by the U.S. and international community for alleged gang ties to run in the elections when and if they’re ever held.
One is former President Michel Martelly, whom the U.S., Canada and the E.U. have sanctioned for alleged drug trafficking, money laundering and sponsoring violent gangs. Martelly, who resides in Miami and denies the allegations, has registered as a presidential candidate.
The interim government's election commission claims that under Haitian law, people can only be disqualified from running for elected office if they've convicted of a felony — and so far that is not the case for Martelly and a host of other political and business elites accused of gang links.
Nevertheless, McCalla said, "This risks placing the same people responsible for facilitating Haiti's gang takeover to return to power."
McCalla argues another shortcoming of the interim government's election prep is that it has not yet consulted the Haitian diaspora, as was promised.
