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Haiti has descended into a state of political, economic and security collapse.
The free fall in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country is accelerating, and it is a pipe dream to imagine it can pull itself together without outside intervention. To oppose a muscular international force that could restore some semblance of order is to shrug at an unfolding humanitarian disaster.
In the face of Haiti’s agonies, the heedlessness of the Biden administration and the United Nations is unconscionable.
With more than a third of Haiti’s population of 11 million already in need of food assistance, rampant criminal gangs have paralyzed fuel deliveries, without which economic activity — and the availability of food and medical care — has ground to a halt. The government is an empty shell and often in league with the gangs who have seized control of entire neighborhoods and critical roadways. An epidemic of kidnappings — whose victims include 17 missionaries, all but one of them Americans, now being held for ransom — has spread unchecked.
To oppose intervention is to be complicit in the resulting chaos and suffering.
The outlines of Haiti’s current chaos were predictable following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July. He presided over a hollowing-out of already feeble institutions and relied on gangs as enforcers. His death triggered a collapse in what passed for order and governmental authority.
Today, no one is in charge — except for violent armed gangs whose terrain is concentrated around the capital, Port-au-Prince.
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