By Widlore Mérancourt and Samantha Schmidt
March 6, 2024 at 7:07 p.m. EST

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The United States is urging Haiti’s embattled prime minister to clear the way for the election of a new president, a position vacant since 2021, amid growing pressure from armed rebels at home and governments abroad.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. government has asked Prime Minister Ariel Henry to “move forward on a political process that will lead to the establishment of a presidential transitional council that will lead to elections.”
As the armed gangs that control an estimated 80 percent of Haiti’s capital called for Henry’s ouster, the prime minister was having difficulty returning to the country.

Henry, Haiti’s top official since the still-unsolved July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, visited Kenya last week to rally support for the deployment of a U.N.-approved, Kenya-led security force to Haiti, a key element in his plan to restore calm.
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He was returning home Tuesday when the Dominican Republic, with which Haiti shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, denied his plane permission to land. He headed instead for Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory.

On Tuesday, Caribbean diplomat Ronald Sanders told The Washington Post, Henry received a message from the U.S. State Department asking him to consider stepping down under certain conditions. Sanders, the ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the United States, said the message, which was described to him, included a statement that Henry could read when announcing his resignation.
The 74-year-old physician, unelected and increasingly isolated, has declined so far to step down.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening. Earlier in the day, spokesman Matthew Miller denied that the United States had urged Henry to resign.
“We are not calling on him or pushing him to resign,” Miller told reporters. “But we are urging him to expedite the transition to an empowered and an inclusive governance structure that will move with urgency to help the country prepare for a multinational security support mission to address the security situation and pave the way for free and fair elections.”

Henry leaves an auditorium at the U.S. International University Africa in Nairobi, on Friday after speaking to students on bilateral engagement between Kenya and Haiti. (Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images)
With Henry away, Haiti’s gangs this week have dramatically escalated the violence in a country where security was already collapsing. An attack on the country’s largest prison over the weekend allowed thousands of inmates to escape, prompting authorities to impose a 72-hour state of emergency and nighttime curfew.
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The presidency remains vacant; lawmakers’ terms have expired. That leaves Henry to lead the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Port-au-Prince and parts of the countryside are controlled by armed gangs who rape, kidnap and kill with impunity. The State Department on Wednesday urged U.S. citizens here to leave the country as soon as possible.
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Haiti’s most powerful gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier, the former police officer known as “Barbecue,” this week gave Henry an ultimatum: Resign or “the country is headed straight to a genocide.”
“If the international community continues to support him, they are taking us to a civil war,” Chérizier warned Tuesday. “We will fight until Ariel Henry’s resignation.”

Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, head of Haiti’s G9 and Family gang, speaks to journalists in the Delmas 6 neighborhood of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday. The former police officer said he would target government ministers to prevent the prime minister’s return to Haiti and force his resignation. (Odelyn Joseph/AP)
Caribbean leaders, seeing Henry as more hindrance than help, have also called on him to step down. On Tuesday, the Caribbean Community (Caricom) urged Henry to resign and proposed a timetable for next steps.

Henry was attempting to fly back to Haiti on Tuesday when he received a message from the State Department asking him to agree to a new transitional government and resign, the Miami Herald reported.
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A Haitian politician who participated in discussions with Haitian leaders and Caricom said Henry’s resignation is “inevitable.” Haitian and Caribbean leaders have suggested a two-headed transitional government in which a prime minister and presidential council would share power, according to the politician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. Caricom leaders are increasingly arguing that there is no path forward with Henry as prime minister.

“If it is clear that your time is up, both within the state and by the interested parties outside of the state, I don’t know what the point of your hanging on is,” Sanders said. “Particularly when you are not even in the country and you’re stuck in Puerto Rico with very little ability to get back to the country that you are supposed to be the prime minister of.”

“He’s in a very difficult position,” he said. “It’s only a question of time.”

Henry has spoken of holding elections but has not called them. Haitian politicians have long discussed allowing Henry to remain as prime minister and share power with a presidential council. But other Haitian and Caribbean leaders have rejected the idea.
It’s unclear whether Henry is open to stepping down — “or if that even matters,” said Jake Johnston, author of “Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism and the Battle to Control Haiti.”
“Henry’s legitimacy comes from the international community, not from anybody in Haiti,” said Johnston, a research associate who studies Haiti at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. “If the international community pulls that support, he can call himself whatever he wants, but does he actually exercise any real authority?”

Given security conditions, it’s unlikely that elections will be feasible in the short term. Johnston said a vote while Henry remained prime minister was never going to work. The international community, he said, should have stopped propping up Henry long ago.
“By waiting as long as they did, by pushing this forward right to the brink, not only have Haitians paid with their lives but the resolution to the crisis has become that much more difficult,” he said. “Now the negotiations are taking place with both a literal and figurative gun to everyone’s head.”
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On Saturday night, heavily armed gangs attacked Haiti’s two largest prisons, allowing thousands of inmates, including some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, to escape.

By Monday, gangs had burned down a police station near the airport and fired multiple shots at the airport itself. A police union reported attacks on several police stations throughout Port-au-Prince.
Water and food in the capital are scarce. Violence has trapped many residents in their homes and shut down most public hospitals.
The University Hospital La Paix, one of the few still operating, is “overwhelmed,” its medical director, Jean Philippe Lerbourg, told The Post on Wednesday.
Since Feb. 29, he said, La Paix has admitted 66 gunshot victims and dozens of patients with other wounds. Two of the gunshot victims have died.
“We can’t hold on much longer,” Lerbourg said. “We’re running low on blood, and we’re short-staffed because many can’t reach the hospital.”