THE former US special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, has lashed out at what he calls “a complete meddling puppeteering move” by the US and its international allies to impose a political solution on strife-ridden Haiti, calling the plans “a waste of time.”

Speaking during an interview with BBC News Hour last week, Foote decried efforts by the US and Caribbean Community, an intergovernmental organisation referred to as Caricom, to effectively choose Haiti’s destiny by installing “a white-imposed leader of Haiti that the Haitians don’t want.”

Foote resigned his post in 2021, angered by the Biden administration’s ruthless deportation of 4,000 Haitians, many living in tents at the time, a continuation of a Trump-era policy that he called “inhumane.” Those deportations were embraced by unelected Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry who has since left the country and has now resigned. Foote also served as deputy chief in the US embassy in Port-au-Prince in 2011.

“Nobody cared about Haiti two-and-a-half weeks ago until Ariel Henry couldn’t get back into the country,” Foote told the BBC on March 16. In Haiti, there was “already a severe humanitarian crisis going on but nobody was rushing to save it.”

Now, said Foote, “Caricom and the US have chosen seven sectors of Haitian society and in some cases, the actual individuals to represent the Haitians” to select a Haitian government. “The problem is they’re not taking into account the voices of 11,500,000 other Haitians,” he said.

The lessons of history have not been learned, he argued. “We have intervened politically — the internationals and the US — in Haiti six or eight times in the last 109 years. Each time it’s failed miserably.”

Self-determination will not be easy. “The gangs are in charge. You can name whomever you want, if the gangs don’t want them it’s not going to work,” Foote pointed out.

Nevertheless, “the Haitians need to unite for the betterment of Haiti. Right now they’re united against having the internationals impose a solution that they know will not work,” he said.

“The key to Haiti’s success is a political consensus accord that agrees on a transition government representing the Haitian people, not [U S Secretary of State] Tony Blinken or Caricom or the UN but the Haitian people,” Foote continued.

But it may not work. “I’m not certain the Haitians can solve this crisis but they have the only chance at doing it successfully,” Foote said. “I think the Haitian people are on the verge of finishing the 1804 Haitian revolution to get their sovereignty now.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.