The assassination yesterday of the latest president of Haiti, Jovenel Moise, by heavily armed men, marked another Haiti been-there-done-that and an uncanny parody of the sad 217 years of the western hemisphere’s most troubled nation.

The current turmoil is something the world has seen many times before, but this time the globe reacted with greater shock and apparent alarm, likely because there was so much hope for a new Haiti after the devastating January 2010 earthquake and the outpouring of grief and promised aid.

Nearly every world capital expressed disbelief, and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres condemned the incident in the strongest terms, calling on all Haitians to “preserve the constitutional order, remain united in the face of this abhorrent act, and reject all violence”.

Security Council President Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière of France said members of the 15-member UN body, who met yesterday, were saddened by the death of the Haitian leader. The entrepreneur and politician had been in power since 2017.

The cry of Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness about the killing of Moise and injuring of his wife, Martine Marie, suggested that they were more than leaders of a country but friends who shared a common vision for Haiti.

The Jamaican leader, whose diplomatic tone is usually more measured, described the assassination of Moise as “a heinous act, a stain on Haiti, and a sorrowful time for the Caribbean”.

The two leaders are close in age — Moise, 53, and Holness, 49 years on July 22 — and Holness disclosed that he had “found him to be committed to seeing Haiti take her place within the world”.

But Holness’s pain aside, Jamaican authorities were likely bracing for the usual flood of Haitian boat people who seek haven on this island after every upheaval in that ill-fated, French-speaking country.

While Jamaicans have been historically hospitable to Haitians needing refuge, the Government’s coffers have been stretched thin by its spend on the novel coronavirus pandemic, and there is little appetite for offering assistance.

The killing of Moise in the deathly quiet of dawn Wednesday seemed to have caught the world off guard, despite the violent build-up in recent months, which spurred the Jamaica Observer to editorialise on the urgent need for a diplomatic solution to the Haitian crisis.

“The people of Haiti, who have been through too much difficulty for too long, deserve to be spared further pain and heartache,” the newspaper cautioned in its February 10, 2021 editorial.

After empathising with the long-suffering Haitian people, the world had been ready to see a new Haiti rise from the January 12 earthquake and shake off more than two centuries of misery, when it fought France to bring an end to one of the world’s most brutal slave colonies.

Few people disagree that Haiti had been allowed to recover in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804 launched by slaves and free people of colour, led by a former slave, Toussaint Louverture.

After 12 years of fighting, the Haitians achieved a stunning defeat of the forces of the great French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte under Louverture’s successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

On January 1, 1804 they declared Haiti the first independent nation of Latin America and the Caribbean, the second republic in the Americas, the first country to abolish slavery, and the only State in history established by a successful slave revolt.

Apart from Alexandre Pétion, the first president of the republic, all of Haiti’s first leaders were former slaves.

But the suffering of the Haitians did not end with the overthrow of the French, who demanded reparations for their loss — setting off a history of impoverishment of Haiti supported by the western powers.

Historians have routinely blamed Haiti’s intractable problems on the French extraction of reparations after Haiti declared its independence, as well as the energy crisis which plagues the country to this day and which was responsible for its utter deforestation.

In more recent times the country suffered more than two decades of dictatorship by François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, and then his son, Jean-Claude, known as Baby Doc, who was ousted in a popular revolt in 1986.

Hope rose among Haitians when the popular Roman Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, leading a grass roots movement called Family Lavalas, became the first democratically elected president in 1991.

Before long, political violence returned to the streets of Haiti, said to be fanned by the middle classes who resented Aristide and his brand of leftist populism. He was deposed by a military coup led by Joseph Raoul Cédras in 1991, only months after his first election.

But the brutal regime of Cédras, the de facto leader of Haiti, was characterised by vicious human rights violations, leading to Aristide being reinstated with the backing of the US’s Bill Clinton Administration in 1994.

Haiti’s misery remained unabated, ranking it first in the western hemisphere in poverty, HIV/AIDS prevalence, and malnourishment. Life worsened when the George W Bush Administration cut off all US foreign aid to Haiti and nudged the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund to freeze loans to the Aristide Government.

Ten years later Aristide was again forced out by the threat of another armed insurrection and popular demonstrations fed by unkept promises and pressure from the US and France. He went into exile in South Africa after stopping 10 weeks in Jamaica under invitation from then Prime Minister P J Patterson.

As if Haiti did not have enough from natural and man-made disasters, on January 12, 2010, the country recorded its most devastating earthquake, which killed an estimated 230,000 people, injured 300,000 more, and displaced more than 1.5 million as a result of collapsed buildings and infrastructure.

The best estimates put damage and losses stemming from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake at US$7.8 billion, representing 120 per cent of Haiti’s gross domestic product (GDP), and the price tag for reconstruction reached US$11.3 billion.

“The unprecedented damage throughout the country weakened the Government’s ability to respond to the crisis. In addition to the loss of one-third of its civil servants, Haiti suffered partial or total collapse of key administrative buildings”, including the National Palace, the national penitentiary, the parliament building, and all but one of its ministries, the UN reported.

“Much of the service delivery infrastructure in and around Port-au-Prince, the capital, was destroyed, including critical stretches of the primary road network linking the capital to heavily damaged southern cities.”

Graphic scenes flashed across the world of the utter devastation caused by the earthquake inspired the largest mobilisation of people and resources in recent history to help Haiti recover and, hopefully, put its sad past behind it.

Jamaica played a modest if important role, and Prime Minister Patterson was appointed Caricom special envoy, and later a member of Haiti’s Presidential Advisory Council on Growth and Investment.

The council was made up of political and business leaders from around the world who represent a diverse set of skills and perspectives that together, President Michel Martelly hoped, would contribute to a genuine transformation in Haiti.

In his invitation to Patterson, the Haitian leader said it was because of the Jamaican’s “pedigree, personal skills, demonstrated leadership, and involvement in social causes”.

The face of the reconstruction effort was former US President Bill Clinton, who worked with former President Bush to lead America’s contribution and vowed to “build back better”. Many countries pledged above US$100 million to the cause.

Hope soon began to fade among Haitians, however, as the promised donations either did not materialise or failed to put a significant dent in the day-to-day problems faced by the populace.

The failure to fulfil the international community’s promise of better construction and free public housing for Haitians became a flashpoint in the discord over what became of the US$13.3 billion of the promised aid.

The accusations which were flying around took some of the shine off Clinton, who sought to explain what had happened in an interview with the Miami Herald newspaper on the 10th anniversary of the earthquake.

“A lot of people seem to think that our group, the reconstruction commission, was getting money. We didn’t,” said Clinton, who served as co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, along with Haiti Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. “We never took any donations,” the newspaper article quoted.

Clinton said it was the first time that Haitians from every major sector of society had the chance to work with the international community.

“It was a big cumbersome process, but it was totally transparent, and we kept up with who funded what, who got the money, and did an after-action audit on all of them,” Clinton said, according to the Miami Herald. “That’s a matter of record.”

Said Clinton: “All that money has been documented; 100 per cent of it went to Haiti, and what we did with that was build new businesses,” Clinton said. “We never even took any administrative overhead for anything we did for it. I funded it all out of the (Clinton) Foundation.”

The Commission ended its mandate in October 2011.

The World Bank had hoped to oversee a big chunk in its Haiti Reconstruction Fund, but wound up collecting just US$411.40 million from donors, roughly a quarter of its original target of US$1.5 billion to US$2 billion, the United Nations reported.

With the commission no longer active after its mandate expired under Haitian President Martelly in 2011, it is unclear how much remains outstanding, given that no one has been pushing donors to pay up, the Miami Herald wrote.

Another 10 years of ups and downs, including hurricanes and never-ending violence, left Haiti in a spot in which it is also behind all Caribbean countries in being worst impacted by the novel coronavirus pandemic, not starting any vaccination as the number of cases rises.

In recent months protesters had taken to the streets to demand Moïse’s removal, the New York Times reported. He had clung to power, ruling by decree for more than a year, even as many — including constitutional scholars and legal experts — argued that his term had expired.

“Armed gangs control many streets and have taken to kidnapping even schoolchildren and church pastors in the middle of their services. Poverty and hunger are on the rise, and the Government has been accused of enriching itself while not providing even the most basic services,” the newspaper said.

Last month, the UN reported an upsurge in deadly clashes between gangs in Port-au-Prince, saying it had displaced more than 5,000 people and citing preliminary estimates from its humanitarian agency. That added to a previous 4,000 since last year.

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the newly displaced required urgent assistance and protection.

“Priority needs include sanitation, shelter, access to clean water and food,” he told journalists. Response efforts are underway to assist some 2,000 of the most vulnerable people. These efforts are led by the Municipal Civil Protection, with the support of the UN.”

The violence left several people dead or injured, as rival gangs battle to exert control over populous areas such as Martissant, Cité-Soleil, and Bel Air. Hundreds of homes and small businesses had also been burned.

The UN said that the national police force was often not able to provide security and protection during the clashes, leaving vulnerable populations to fend for themselves. Police stations had come under fire. One policeman was killed and another injured when armed assailants attacked all three police stations in Cité-Soleil on Saturday, stealing several weapons.

“The unprecedented level of violence and subsequent displacements is creating a host of secondary issues, such as the disruption of community-level social functioning, family separation, increased financial burdens on host families, forced school closures, loss of livelihoods, and a general fear among the affected populations,” UN warned.

Into this boiling cauldron of misery and desperation came the daring assassination of a man who, while seemingly largely reviled at home, apparently caught the imagination of world leaders.

President Moïse’s assassination was expected to create a political void that threatens to deepen the turmoil that had gripped the country for months.

Yesterday, in a televised broadcast to the nation, interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph presented himself as head of the Government and announced that he and his fellow ministers had declared a “state of siege”.

And the beat goes on.