DANIEL FOOTE: Bodies are BURNED ALIVE in Haiti after the Biden administration did a deal with the devil… and I should know - I was the US Special Envoy to the troubled country until I was forced to quit in disgust
Ambassador Daniel L. Foote (ret.) was U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti from July - September 2021
As I watched the footage of suspected Haitian gang members begging for mercy as a vigilante mob burned them alive on Monday, I felt disgusted – but totally unsurprised.
Unsurprised because atrocities like this have become commonplace in a nation that has lost any semblance of civil society.
Disgusted because I am in no doubt that the blame for this horrific violence lies with President Joe Biden.
Let me explain.
In July 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated, and the country collapsed into civil unrest.
I was named U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti by President Biden, charged with helping to restore peace and pave the way towards democratic elections.
Suspected Haitian gang members begged for mercy as a vigilante mob burned them alive on Monday in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Ultimately, however, I was unable to do my job and resigned within three months.
But not because of anything the Haitians had done. Rather, because Biden betrayed them.
Following Moise’s killing, a group of foreign powers led by the United States moved fast to appoint Ariel Henry, the former social affairs minister, as acting prime minister.
The people of Haiti had no say in the matter, but popular elections were supposedly going to be held at a later date.
Soon, however, the crisis in Haiti was spilling over onto American soil.
In September 2021, aerial footage of a sprawling encampment of some 15,000 Haitian migrants massed under a bridge in Del Rio near the Texas border made national headlines.
Filthy, crowded conditions in the fetid camp raised fears of COVID-19 outbreaks.
Food and water were scarce as desperate men, women and children crossed the Rio Grande river in search of supplies.
And images of Border Patrol agents on horseback corralling migrants were described by Biden’s own Secretary for Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, as ‘horrifying’.
Desperate not to let the situation spiral into a full-blow PR nightmare, the federal government cleared the area in less than a week.
Suspected gang members begged for mercy (left) before being burned alive by a vigilante mob in Port-au-Prince on Monday.
Following Haitian President Jovenel Moise’s assassination, a group of foreign powers led by the United States moved fast to appoint Ariel Henry (pictured with US President Joe Biden and wife Jill), the former social affairs minister, as acting prime minister.
Several thousand people were deported back to Haiti by plane.
It was a humanitarian crisis, but the chaos was over within days – thanks largely to Henry’s willingness to accept the deported Haitians back to his country.
But I believe that was the plan all along. That Biden essentially made Henry – who also now serves as acting president – the dictator of Haiti in return for easy repatriation of immigrants, whose presence on the U.S. border represented something of a political headache even before the Del Rio disaster.
After all, anyone who knows anything about Haitian politics could have seen Henry for what he is: yet another power-hungry tyrant.
He has already been directly linked by phone records to those suspected of being behind Moise’s assassination.
And, nearly two years into his sham presidency, there are still no signs that democratic elections are anywhere on the horizon. Washington has made no indication they’ll push for them, either.
Even if elections did come, Henry is so unpopular that the vast majority of Haitians say they wouldn’t vote or accept the results – not least because they believe the process would likely be rigged.
Now, already one of the poorest countries in the world, the interminably beleaguered nation has been plunged into even deeper disarray under his corrupt leadership.
Haiti is now more violent than Somalia. The police have been rendered helpless. Mob-rule reigns. Disease is rampant. Fuel supplies are desperately depleted. And inflation continues to rise unfettered as protests breakout almost daily.
The number of reported criminal incidents has more than doubled since last year. And gangs have taken over of an estimated 80 per cent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
In September 2021, aerial footage of a sprawling encampment of some 15,000 Haitian migrants massed under a bridge in Del Rio near the Texas border made national headlines.
Images of Border Patrol agents on horseback corralling Haitian migrants were described by Biden’s own Secretary for Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, as ‘horrifying’. (Pictured: Del Rio disaster in September 2021).
Rapes, gun violence, kidnappings, lynchings – these are now the hallmarks of day-to-day life in Haiti.
Monday’s gruesome public executions – in which residents of Port-au-Prince and a nearby neighborhood attacked and burned criminals amid heaps of gasoline-soaked tires – merely marked another bloody escalation in anger among Haitians over the nation’s increasing lawlessness.
Meanwhile, our leaders in the so-called free world couldn’t care less.
Back in the summer of 2021, I tried to warn my counterparts in Washington that Henry was bad news.
I’d sat in the planning room as the U.S.-funded reconstruction efforts following Haiti’s catastrophic 2010 earthquake that left 250,000 dead. And I saw then how excluding Haitians from the decision process directly led to the now infamously botched recovery plan.
It was clear to me that, with the appointment of another de facto dictator, we were again telling the poor Haitians what to do – instead of asking them what they wanted.
We needed a Haitian-led solution.
So let’s be clear: the craven politics of the U.S. government come at a cost.
As the smoke rose from the burning flesh of those gang members in the streets – it was clear who was to blame.
The Biden administration has done a deal with the devil - and sold out the Haitian people for an easy political win.
Now, it has blood on its hands.
