It may be controversial, but my sentiments are always “poor Haiti'' or “poor Palestinians” whenever some item of tragedy or injustice concerning those two benighted countries is reported. Note: I intentionally describe Palestine as a country.
The time of the assassination last week of Haiti’s president Jovenel Moise may have coincided with my intense engagement with a programme on Al-Jazeera about the assassination of Khalil al-Wazir, better known as Abu Jihad, leader of the Palestininan military wing of the armed struggle, in Tunisia in 1988.
Media reports claim that US agencies believe Moise’s extrajudicial killing was a well orchestrated operation involving a highly trained and heavily armed group. It was so too when Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, mounted a daredevil infiltration of the Al-Wazir’s home, having landed on a nearby Tunis beach under the cover of darkness. The precise and deadly operation had been planned for months, using an accurate replica of the layout of the house.
For 25 years Israel's role remained undetected, and it is still uncertain, but there is reason to believe Israel did not act alone, just as the men who were promptly killed by the police in Haiti on suspicion of Moise’s death definitely were not sole actors. Alas, Moise’s wife was injured, but Mrs Al-Wazir was carefully handled.
Of course, when I was a schoolchild Haiti was not a subject on the syllabus. We learned of the Haitian revolution en passant, and most of us only gained any knowledge of the most important event in the history of our region – the Haitian revolution – through fiction and advanced study.
The Black Jacobins by CLR James is the classic text. but it was not how I discovered Haiti. The popular and accomplished English novelist Graham Greene was an unexpected chronicler of our region, from his evocative 1960s fictionalisation of the actual 1920s-30s’ attempt to persecute the Catholic church in Mexico – The Power and the Glory – to his haunting The Comedians, about Haiti.
That novel was my introduction to Haiti’s unique and vivid culture and the depth of the corruption of the Papa Doc era. Greene’s writing and insights must be viewed through the prism of his Englishness.
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Although there is a wealth of literature about the enormous achievement of Toussaint Louverture and the almost romanticisation of the Haitian revolution and the Haitian people, it is hard to suppress pessimistic feelings about Haiti’s trajectory. One misfortune follows another, whether it is hurricane, cholera, earthquake, environmental degradation, chronic poverty, coups d’etat, dictatorship and economic ruin, which all render it a failed state.
Last week’s developments have left the defiantly unstable country (it has been changing presidents on average every two years) with a deep political void, since political power was concentrated in the hands of Moise, who since 2019 had been ruling by decree, and security (or the lack of it) was in the ha
