Currents Summer 2024 (1) - Flipbook - Page 37
Mac Archer: I feel like I could teach a whole entire semester's coursework of what's
happening here at the moment. We are experiencing a bit of unrest - the insecurity has
definitely heightened to some of the most high-risk that I've seen in the past 15 years that I've
been here. What we're seeing here now is for really the first time ever a coalition of these
armed groups - these paramilitary groups - coming together and they are forming these
coalitions in contention with and against the Haitian government and also foreign
intervention - foreign intervention being the US, Canada and France backed multinational
force that originally was supposed to be Kenyan-led.
These armed groups have been backed historically - and you know in present day are still
backed - by high-ranking individuals in the Haitian government, and these high-ranking
members of the Haitian government are essentially backed by foreign powers like the US
government, like the French government, like the Canadian government. So it's very
interesting, I keep telling people it's almost like the serpent's tail, with the head of the serpent
biting its own tail because these armed groups would not have formed if it wasn't for the very
people in power that they are now trying to challenge and resist.
So you have the heads of these armed groups, predominantly leaders such as Jimmy
Chérizier, informally known as
