By Roberto Morejon

An agonizing humanitarian, economic and social crisis has unleashed in Haiti the terror of gangs, whose power and weaponry is staggering, in response to which the UN Security Council approved a resolution to send a controversial new security force.
 
The decision is linked to concerns about violence in Haiti, where gangs have committed looting, extortion and killed nearly 3,000 people between October 2022 and June 2023.
 
It is true that Haiti has suffered intimidation by armed groups for decades, but the present wave intensified after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021.
 
At that juncture, Prime Minister Ariel Henry called for international intervention, enough for opponents and many locals to question him.
 
With remarkable speed and tenacity, the United States and Ecuador conducted the diplomatic procedures in the Security Council to crystallize the effort, although China and Russia abstained in the final vote.
 
For many analysts and Haitians, a new foreign deployment in the Caribbean nation is reprehensible and they wonder how the gang members possess such powerful weaponry, smuggled from the Northern power.
 
Haitians have recalled that the United States has a long history of intervention.
 
Indeed, it invaded and occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and repeated intrusions in 1994 and 2004, under the pretext of shoring up democracy and restoring order.
 
UN peace deployments such as that of the Minustah force between 2004 and 2017 were associated with the introduction of cholera and the conception of children with native women who then abandoned.
 
The organizers of the new security mission, to be executed in Haiti at the beginning of 2024, claim that its characteristics will be different, it will be headed by Kenya and Caribbean countries will join it.
 
In addition, the military personnel will be outside the United Nations, although they are in line with the use of force authorized by the Security Council when other measures are exhausted.
 
But beyond variations in the composition and purpose of the mission, it will be the first time a foreign force has been deployed in Haiti in almost 20 years and in addition to neutralizing the gangs it will help create conditions for an electoral process.
 
Haitians and the international community will be very aware of the details and scope of such a contested irruption.