Unable to fly home and with the Dominican Republic unwilling to let him land, Ariel's plane was redirected to Puerto Rico where he has been ever since. Today, he announced that he would resign his position, setting off a scramble back home to see who would lead Haiti's next government.

The embattled prime minister of Haiti, Ariel Henry, has said he will resign after weeks of mounting chaos in the Caribbean nation, where gangs have been attacking government structures and social order is on the brink of collapse.

Henry said in a video address late Monday that his government would leave power after the establishment of a transitional council, adding, “Haiti needs peace. Haiti needs stability.”

“My government will leave immediately after the inauguration of the council. We will be a caretaker government until they name a prime minister and a new cabinet,” Henry said.

PM Henry's fate wasn't decided on his own. Sec. of State Blinken met with a group called the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) which held a meeting in Jamaica. Those leaders agreed Henry needed to resign and a transitional council would be put in place to schedule new elections and take on the role of president which has been vacant since 2021 when the previous president was assassinated. 

All of this sounds good but given that the gangs essentially forced PM Henry's resignation, they definitely will have a say in it. And it sounds like they aren't interested in making way for a transitional council.

For more than a week, Haiti’s all-powerful gangs have terrorized Port-au-Prince, attacking the airport, port, government buildings and at least a dozen of the city’s police stations. The United States this week airlifted its embassy staff out of the country as the crisis deepened...

Haiti’s most powerful gang leader, former police officer Jimmy Chérizier, also known as “Barbecue,” had threatened civil war unless Henry resigned. On Monday, before the announcement of Henry’s resignation, Chérizier said his coalition of gangs would not accept the new presidential council either, and he threatened to attack hotels where “the traditional politicians” typically stay. He said a new government should be chosen by his coalition of gangs and “the Haitian people.”

“If the international community continues down this path, it will plunge Haiti into chaos by selecting a small group of traditional politicians, sitting in a hotel, and negotiating who will be president and what the model of government will be,” Chérizier said. “We are having a bloody revolution in the country.”

It sounds to me like Barbecue wants to be president. And while it's probable that a large number of regular people in Haiti don't support having a gang leader in charge, it's not clear what they can do about it. So long as the gangs are willing to kidnap, kill and torture anyone who opposes them, it's not really a matter of holding a fair vote.

And that brings us back to the Kenyan police. Now former PM Henry obviously saw them as a way to get the gang violence under control and save his position in power. Now that he's gone are they still obligated to fulfill a contract he signed? Kenya says it will honor the contract but not until a stable government exists.

A deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti to help quell gang-fueled lawlessness is on hold until a new government is formed in the Caribbean nation, officials in Kenya said Tuesday...

“The deal they signed with the president still stands, although the deployment will not happen now because definitely we will require a sitting government to also collaborate with,” said Salim Swaleh, a top spokesman for Kenya’s Foreign Ministry. “Because you don’t just deploy police to go on the Port-au-Prince streets without a sitting administration.”

So this is kind of chicken and egg situation. Haiti can't get extra police to deal with the gangs until it has a stable government and it can't have a stable government until it has police to deal with the gangs.

I'm taking it as a given that the US has no interest in sending troops to Haiti to deal with the gangs. So that only leaves a few possibilities that I can see at this moment. The first is that we offer Barbecue a seat at the table and maybe even a role in the new government. It's hard to imagine that going well. And why would he settle for half a loaf when he's currently in a position to demand the whole thing. The second is that we try to buy him off. And I guess the third option is that the CIA makes sure he has an accident of some sort.

I'm not sure which is most likely but at the moment all roads to a stable Haiti seem to run through Barbecue.