Haiti: Army on War Footing
Haitian Army, June 2024 Photo: @nouvelliste
June 19, 2024 Hour: 1:52 pm
Such chaos has prompted the speedy mobilization of a multinational contingent, supposedly led by Kenya, whose men should be in Haiti before the end of June, but the African nation claims that logistical details are lacking to disembark its troops.
On Wednesday, Haiti dawned with its army on a war footing, in another attempt to unite efforts to fight a coalition of gangs that controls 80 percent of the capital.
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The Minister of Defence, Jean Marc Berthier, ordered the Acting Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General Jodel Lessage to put the Armed Forces in D-position.
The order in short is to put the military institution on alert, with soldiers in combat position, the daily Le Facteur Haiti reported.
Between March and June, gang members attacked the airport, the port, schools, universities, police stations, prisons, ministries, bank branches, community stores, the national printing press, which first published in 1804, and set fire to a 96,000 square metre warehouse in the free zone.
They also attacked private cars, a religious seminary, the first Baptist Church in Haiti, founded more than 180 years ago, and more than a dozen pharmacies, and in a demonstration that they mean business, they burned down the house of the former commander-in-chief of the Haitian National Police.
Such chaos has prompted the speedy mobilization of a multinational contingent, supposedly led by Kenya, whose men should be in Haiti before the end of June, but the African nation claims that logistical details are lacking to disembark its troops.
The US government, which appears to be out of Haiti’s internal affairs, threatened the coalition of criminal gangs that is keeping the national police in check.
“The gang members will have to choose between prison and the cemetery,” said the US ambassador to Haiti, Dennis Hankins.
In April, the US began landing its air force planes in Haiti, loaded with weapons, ammunition, armoured vehicles and other combat equipment, and in addition to its soldiers, it brought with it mercenaries under the guise of contractors.
Washington – some media recall – is considered here to be to blame for the economic, political and social chaos in the Caribbean country, which it intervened militarily in 1915 and supposedly abandoned in 1934.
Most of the arms and ammunition used by the gang members, who are martyring the population, come from the United States.
Autor: OSG
Fuente: DW-The Star
