America’s Special Envoy to Haiti Quits, Issuing Scathing Denunciation of Biden Administration

The resignation of America’s Special Envoy to Haiti, who has denounced his government’s“inhumane” policy toward the refugees who are being shipped to their gang-infested homeland, represents a major new crisis — a tsunami — for the Biden administration.President Biden’s envoy, Daniel Foote, named only two months ago, issued a scathing letter to Secretary of State Blinken. Mr. Foote, a career foreign service officer, announced his “immediate resignation” and castigated the Biden administration. “I will not be associated,” he wrote, “with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti.”Ambassador Foote noted that Haiti is “a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life.” It’s clear that Mr. Foote, a career diplomat, who served as ambassador to Zambia and previously as deputy chief of mission in Haiti, has been frustrated since he was named to the post. The crisis in Texas appeared to be but the last straw.The crisis has seen about 13,000 Haitians, mostly from countries in Central and South America, make their way to Texas, where they have been taking shelter from the scorching weather under a highway overpass. The Biden administration reacted by flying thousands of them to Haiti . Haiti currently lacks a government and is ruled by violent gangs.It’s hard to remember a resignation letter from a senior American diplomat quite like Mr. Foote’s. “Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed,” he wrote to Secretary Blinken, “and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.” I, and other leaders in Haiti’s civil society, have been denouncing these policies for months — nay, years.“The people of Haiti, mired in poverty, hostage to the terror, kidnappings, robberies and massacres of armed gangs and suffering under a corrupt government with gang alliances,” wrote Mr. Foote, “simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants, lacking food, shelter, and money without additional avoidable human tragedy. . . surging migration to our borders will only grow…”Nor did Mr. Foote spare others in the international community, his government included, for their blind support of the current — but unconstitutional — prime minister, who’s pursuing the same policies that got Haiti where it is, while they reject Haiti’s civil society consensus position — to include all major sectors of society in the country’s governance through free elections and to pursue a proper lustration.“U.S. and other embassies in Port-au-Prince,” Ambassador Foote wrote, “last issued another public statement of support for the unelected de facto Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his ‘political agreement’ over another, earlier accord shepherded by civil society.” The diplomat pleads for letting Haitians choose their leadership and chart their own future.“What our Haitian friends really want, and need,” he writes, “is the opportunity to chart their own course, without international puppeteering, and favored candidates, but with genuine support for the course.” And he adds, in what I believe are wise words: “I do not believe that Haiti can enjoy stability until her citizens have the dignity of truly choosing their own leaders fairly and acceptably.”This goes way back. A good place to start, though, would be in December 1990, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president. he was overthrown less than a year later, and made his way to Washington. In 1994, President Clinton brought him back to Haiti, escorted by 25,000 American troops. They stayed a few months, and the U.S. arranged for the United Nations to come in.Mr. Aristides presidency ended in 1995, when Rene Preval was elected. He was succeeded in 2001 by, again, Mr. Aristide, who remained in office until being forced to resign in February 2004, when he fled to exile. An interim government, in which I served as ambassador to Washington, took power in March 2004. Elections were held in 2006, when Mr. Preval became president again.It was after Mr. Preval that Michele Martelly, the self-styled “legal bandit,” was “elected” with support of Secretary of State Clinton and the American envoy in Haiti, Kenneth Merten. When Mr. Martelly was forced out, an interim government held power until Jovenel Moise was again “elected,” assuming power in 2017. When his constitutional term expired in February, he refused to step. He was assassinated on July 7.Mr. Foote is not optimistic for the future, as he concludes in these terms: “The hubris that makes us believe we should pick the winner — again — is impressive. This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results. More negative impacts to Haiti will have calamitous consequences not only in Haiti, but in the U.S, and our neighbors in the hemisphere.”A cagey diplomat, Mr. Foote copied his letter to Mr. Blinken to two Congressmen who had lobbied for a Special Envoy, Gregory Meeks, chairman of U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, and Andy Levin, a Democrat from Michigan who is a particularly outspoken member of the committee.Another recipient is a former Ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, who is now acting Director General at the State Department and the one who calls many of the shots in Haiti. He’s the one who engineered, in 2011, the presidency of Mr. Martelly, who chose Moïse as president, Moise maintained the support of the United States while he dismantled the country’s democratic institutions.________Ambassador Joseph, two times Haiti’s envoy in Washington, is a contributing editor of The New York Sun. Correction: 1995 was the year Mr. Aristide’s first term as president ended. The year was given incorrectly in the bulldog due to an error by the editor.

America’s Special Envoy to Haiti Quits, Issuing Scathing Denunciation of Biden Administration

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