Since 2021, the Black Alliance for Peace Haiti/Americas Team has tracked the deepening crisis of imperialism in Haiti, in particular how imperialist forces and neocolonial puppets have worked to suppress and eliminate the organizing of popular movements and the will of the Haitian people. Over the last four years, this crisis has impacted nations around the globe, in particular Kenya.
This summer marks the one-year anniversary of Kenya’s youth-led uprising against the IMF-backed Finance Bill of 2024. Instead of reckoning with the demands of a generation that has endured skyrocketing inflation, police violence, and mass unemployment, President William Ruto has once again unleashed the full force of state repression. Live ammunition, abductions, and curfews have become routine tactics to crush dissent and left at least 50 protesters dead. As BAP’s Africa Team stated last week, these protests are not isolated and reflect a broader generational rejection of IMF-dictated austerity and repressive consolidation by neocolonial governance.
Thousands of miles away in revolutionary Haiti, Kenyan boots are still on the ground. Following the July 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïise and installment of Ariel Henry, by the Core Group, troops were dispatched under the so-called Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, which was renewed in October 2024 despite consistent opposition from civil society and popular movements throughout the Americas. These same violent police were sent to “restore order” in a country ravaged by decades of foreign intervention and neocolonial policies. The order that these forces represent is not one of peace, but of the continuation of imperialist domination and neocolonial subversion. The same regime that brutalizes its youth domestically claims to bring “security” to Haitians abroad. These militarized responses do not provide security for the majority of people in Haiti or Kenya, but for the multinational corporations, imperialist bureaucrats, and neocolonial oligarchs and elites.
Neocolonialism in Haiti: Outsourcing Imperialist Occupation
The MSS has failed to curb violence, but not because it lacks force, but because it was never designed to resolve the root causes. Since the Kenya-led MSS mission was formally launched in 2024 under U.S. sponsorship, it has remained strategically vague, militarily ineffective, and politically illegitimate. As grassroots activists have recently shared, the MSS and their masters in the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) have not been publicizing their activities because the paramilitary armed groups they were dispatched to combat have only continued to gain ground in and outside of Port-au-Prince. This includes the towns of La Chapelle, Artibonite, and Lascaobas in the Centre department
This is not because the intervention isn’t strong enough, it is by design. The MSS’s presence functions as a placeholder for deeper U.S. reoccupation and a justification for the continual militarization of Haiti’s political crisis, which has been, and remains, a crisis of imperialism. The failures of the MSS showcase, not just the failure of foreign intervention to resolve the crisis in Haiti, but exposes these interventions as tools to keep Haiti trapped under a neocolonial subjugation.
Life, Culture, and Sovereignty Under Siege
Earlier this week, paramilitary armed groups set arson to Hotel Oloffson, a historic site in Port-au-Prince known for its significance to Haitian art, journalism, refuge, and resistance. This was not just an attack on infrastructure, but an assault on the cultural memory and political soul of Haiti. At the same time, government forces under the illegitimate Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) increase ‘kamikaze drone’ attacks that have already resulted in the murder of at least 300 people in poor and working class neighborhoods, under the justification of striking at “terrorist gangs”. Now with the agreement between the CPT and Erik Prince’s U.S.-backed mercenaries, the militarization and violence only promises to deepen. As violence spreads beyond Port-au-Prince, both lives and symbolic spaces of Haitian resistance are being engulfed in the imperialist-fueled violence.
However, this month has also brought signs of resistance and solidarity. On July 13, displaced residents from the neighborhood of Solino in Port-au-Prince mobilized in the streets to protest for their survival and against the oligarchs and neocolonial state that are destroying their lives and livelihoods. On July 6, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) sent a delegation to Haiti in a clear rejection of U.S.-backed intervention. The delegation, comprising representatives from Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina, denounced foreign interventionism and called for “respect for Haiti’s sovereignty, urging solutions based on mutual cooperation, not military occupation…Behind the violence, corruption, and food shortages, is the same United States imperialism that oppresses all the peoples of the Global South.”
In stark contrast to Kenya’s role as a proxy enforcer for the U.S.-led Core Group politically and SOUTHCOM militarily, ALBA’s statement reframes possible solutions to the crisis in Haiti through regional solidarity, not Western mandates. This focus on solidarity is a core function of the development of the Campaign for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas, which has as a primary objective ending military intervention into Haiti and supporting peoples-centered movements that emphasize self-determination and dignity for the Haitian masses.
As anti-imperialists in solidarity with the masses of Haitians and Kenyans, we must remain clear. Whether in Nairobi or Port-au-Prince, the playbook is the same: suppress resistance at home, legitimize occupation abroad. But today’s African youth are not confused. They see the global connections. The same forces imposing debt and repression in Kenya are funding foreign domination in Haiti. The violence is not an accident, it is the enforcement arm of a neocolonial system. As the MSS flounders in Haiti and Kenyan youth continue to rise against domestic repression, the crumbling empire behind both is in much clearer focus.
The Black Alliance for Peace stands in solidarity with those surviving and resisting both of the comprador regimes in Kenya and Haiti as they collaborate with U.S.-led Western imperialism to oppress and exploit Africans in both nations.
Hands Off Haiti!
U.S. Out of Africa!
Make Our Americas a Zone of Peace!
References:
Fighting Words, “Kenyan Police Attack Youth-Led Demonstrations Against Brutality”
Haitian Times, “Port-au-Prince mourns Hotel Oloffson, LGBTQ+ refuge and majestic landmark, lost to criminal fire”
HaitiLibre, “Haiti – Politic : ALBA stands in solidarity with Haiti faced with foreign interference”:
TeleSUR English-Haiti, “Militant members of ALBA met with Haitian organizations to reaffirm solidarity”
Al Jazeera, ‘Kenya is not asleep anymore’: Why young protesters are not backing down
source: Black Alliance for Peace