Nayib Bukele Junior Dessalines: The Prodigal Son of Jean-Jacques Dessalines

EDITORIAL: A Haiti Without Haitians? Bukele Must Explain What His Troops Are There to Protect

By Cherlie Joseph

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Jean-Jacques Dessalines did not fight to make Haiti a country where foreign leaders would decide whose lives mattered. His legacy demands sovereignty, dignity and the right of Haitians to determine their own future. Any leader presenting himself as a liberator on Haitian soil must answer to those principles.

That includes Nayib Bukele.

As more Salvadoran troops arrive, the question is not simply how many soldiers El Salvador can deploy. It is what those soldiers are authorized to do, who commands them and who will answer if Haitian civilians are harmed.

According to reporting by Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald, the reinforcements began arriving amid efforts to locate four Salvadoran personnel missing after a gang ambush. Her reporting also raised a serious question: sources said a required status-of-forces agreement had not been signed when the reinforcements began arriving. That is a question of accountability, not an administrative footnote.

A Rescue Mission Cannot Become an Unlimited Mandate

The missing Salvadorans deserve to be found and returned safely. Their families deserve answers. Armed groups cannot be excused for kidnapping, killing or terrorizing people.

But the suffering of four families cannot justify exposing countless other families to uncontrolled violence.

A rescue operation requires a defined purpose. A broader security intervention requires transparent authority, operational limits and independent oversight. Neither can rest entirely on a foreign president’s confidence in his own methods.

If the deployment is expanding beyond the original rescue mission, the public deserves an explanation. What changed? Who approved it? What are the limits? What conditions will bring the troops home?

Military strength cannot substitute for those answers.

Haiti Is Not at War With El Salvador

Which foreign country has Haiti attacked? What interstate war explains the spectacle of foreign reinforcements entering a country whose people are already trapped between armed groups, failing institutions and repeated outside interventions?

The authorities describe an operation against gangs. That stated objective must never become permission to treat entire neighborhoods as enemy territory.

Living in an area controlled by an armed group does not make someone a combatant. Poverty does not establish guilt. A young man walking through his own neighborhood is not a legitimate target because someone considers his appearance suspicious.

The distinction between a resident and an armed attacker must survive every operation. Otherwise, the promise of security becomes another source of fear.

Civilian Suffering Demands More Than Reassurance

Associated Press reported that Doctors Without Borders treated 30 people injured by gunfire or drone explosions between October 18 and 26, with some wounded people taking hours to reach its hospitals. That reporting does not establish responsibility for every injury. It does establish an urgent need to protect residents and preserve access to medical care.

Reports and allegations of civilian deaths must be investigated independently. They should neither be dismissed as propaganda nor presented as proven findings before the evidence is established.

Every reported incident deserves scrutiny: who was harmed, what happened, which weapons were used and which force was operating nearby?

A government that claims to protect civilians should welcome those questions. It should publish findings, acknowledge mistakes and provide remedies when its personnel cause harm.

Do They Want a Haiti Without Haitians?

This question expresses a profound fear. It is not proof of a documented plan to eliminate the population. It is the political and moral question that arises when people hear promises of liberation while fearing that their homes may become battlefields.

What does liberation mean to a mother unable to reach a hospital? What does restored order mean to a family forced to abandon its neighborhood?

A security strategy must be judged by the lives it allows people to live. Can children attend school? Can residents travel safely? Can families remain in their homes? Can journalists document operations without intimidation?

An operation cannot claim success merely because it produces images of heavily armed soldiers.

Soldiers, Contractors and the Right to Know

Haitians also deserve clarity about the different armed actors operating in their country. Foreign military personnel and private contractors are not interchangeable categories. Calling everyone a mercenary may express anger, but identifying their actual roles makes accountability harder to evade.

Who employs them? Who pays them? Who authorizes their actions? Who investigates complaints?

Haiti’s leaders must answer these questions publicly. Inviting foreign assistance does not relieve them of responsibility for the population.

Bukele must also understand that Dessalines’s legacy is not available as a costume for foreign military ambition. No leader becomes Haiti’s liberator through speeches, troop numbers or publicity.

The measure is whether Haitians emerge safer, freer and more able to govern their own country.

Haiti does not need a victory proclaimed over its suffering. It needs security that protects its people—and respects that the country belongs to them.

Source credits: Miami Herald reporting by Jacqueline Charles, October 29, 2026; Associated Press, October 29, 2026. This editorial expresses the author’s opinion.