It is heartbreaking that our iconic, touchstone neighbour, Haiti - the first country to abolish slavery and lead a successful slave revolt - has descended into its present, deep state of crisis.
As I write, violent gangs remain in control of the capital, seeking the sacking of the US-backed present prime minister, having freed thousands of prisoners from their cells. In response, an international force, including Jamaica, Belize and Bahamas is ready to join African forces in a UN-authorised multinational mission to back Haitian police in restoring security.
The country's violence - 5,000 killed in 2023 - has been perpetual and predictable and, in many ways, has become endemic. After centuries of corrupt government and foreign intervention, the people now live with the unremedied devastation wrought by recent countless hurricanes and earthquakes.
After over 200 years of giving its colonial master, France, its marching orders, the country's lack of essential infrastructure is shocking - water, roads, schools, medical facilities, sewage - people have no work and generally poor housing.
At least two-thirds of Haiti's food is imported. Haitians do not even dare to hope that their chronic state of underdevelopment would or could improve. Their country is classed as the poorest in the Western hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world, when, ironically, it was once the richest in the French empire.
One can lose good friends by expressing honestly-held views about Haiti, just as one could about the atrocious goings-on in Gaza. For both, reason is suspended by the sheer weight of history. We want to celebrate the incredible feat of defeating imperial France, but it is hard to accept that what transpires today is a direct result of what ensued in Haiti once power had changed hands in 1791. It was not plain sailing for the legendary Toussaint L'Ouverture once he became governor of Haiti, not internally, nor with Napoleon.
Slavery and empire were violent and so was the forging of the new state created by former slaves. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, L'Ouverture's general, who succeeded him and finally led Haiti to its 1804 independence, was not moderate. He declared himself emperor and oversaw the murder of the remaining French in Haiti after seizing their land.
That may have set the precedent for violent government and the military as a power broker. The country's de-facto split between a monarchy of former slaves and a republic of elitist free people of colour determined the sociopolitical chaos that has ensued.
The centuries of political in-fighting and corrupt hogging of power have been as damaging to Haiti's stability and development as the undermining of Haitian self-interest by foreign intervention and genuine international lack of interest in the development of what was widely regarded as a rogue state.
If one were to speculate on why Haiti is such an abject failure economically and politically, from our own experience of self-rule and independence, we must deduce that former slaves would have ve
