Haiti’s Diaspora Watches From Afar

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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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April 25, 2024

Haiti's Diaspora Watches From Afar

Haiti's chaos continues, with gangs controlling much of the capital Port-au-Prince. Blocked from returning to the country, Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned today, handing power to a transitional council.
 
Haiti's diaspora watches uneasily, according to a Politico Magazine essay by Joel Dreyfuss, whose family has a history of involvement in Haitian politics. "The future of Haiti has never seemed so bleak," Dreyfuss writes. "Since 2021, it has had no functioning government. The terms of all elected officials have expired. … The police are outgunned—and there is no army. … The Haitians in the Diaspora can be a valuable source of expertise and a lobby abroad for their native land—if all can come to an agreement on what to lobby for. That is the greatest challenge. But first, they'll have to get rid of the gangs."
 
It's no secret how Haiti ended up desperate, Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat writes for The New Yorker, as it was born into debt after throwing off French colonial rule and slavery. Now, as does Dreyfuss, Danticat watches from afar and wonders about the country's future, writing: "Lately, some of our family gatherings are incantations of grief. But they can also turn into storytelling sessions of a different kind. They are opportunities for our elders to share something about Haiti beyond what our young ones, like everyone else, see on the news. … They fear that they may never see Haiti again. They fear that those in the next generation, some of whom have never been to Haiti, will let Haiti slip away, as though the country they see in the media … were part of some horror film that they can easily turn off. The elders remind us that we have been removed, at least physically, from all of this by only a single generation, if not less."

The Return of Arab Opinion

Often associated with the term "the Arab street," public opinion in the Middle East is often dismissed as less than meaningful, given the region's preponderance of authoritarian regimes that don't rely on the support of voters, Marc Lynch writes in a Foreign Affairs essay.
 
But Middle East publics, and the opinions they hold, could soon generate real force, Lynch writes. The Arab Spring was a convulsion of dissatisfaction, and the war in Gaza seems to be stirring a similar kind of protest energy, as Lynch sees it. This animus arrives as US influence and involvement in the Middle East are fading and as the region is adjusting to that new reality. Public opinion is already constraining Middle East autocrats, Lynch argues, suggesting Saudi Arabia would eagerly make a diplomatic-normalization deal with Israel if its citizens would stand it. (At CNN Opinion, Frida Ghitis has pointed to the survival of the Abraham Accords, Israel's Trump-brokered deals to normalize relations with a handful of Arab countries, as a rare glimmer of hope for regional stability.)
 
"Since Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, the Middle East has been rocked by mass protests," Lynch writes for Foreign Affairs. "The nature and degree of popular anger, the decline of U.S. primacy and the collapse of its legitimacy, and Arab regimes' prioritization of their domestic survival, as well as regional competition, suggests that the new regional order will be much more attentive to public opinion than the old. If Washington continues to ignore public opinion, it will doom its planning for after the war ends in Gaza."

To Michael Douglas,

Biden Isn't Too Old

The 79-year-old actor Michael Douglas—who portrays Benjamin Franklin in his stint as America's first diplomat in the Apple TV+ show "Franklin"—is roughly the same age as President Joe Biden, who is 81. So, is Biden too old to serve a second term as president, as some of his critics allege? No, Douglas told Fareed on Sunday's GPS, reflecting on changes in gait and memory as we age.

50 Years Ago, a Military Coup Brought Democracy to Portugal

50 years ago this week, a love song—a popular Portuguese entry into "Eurovision"—played on the radio, signaling Portuguese military officers to stage a coup against the country's dictatorship. Two years later, in 1976, Portugal would solidify itself as a democracy. At Le Monde, Raphaëlle Rérolle describes the events of the coup in a detailed chronology. On the broad strokes, Rérolle writes: "In the space of one night and one day, the revolution—not yet known as the 'Carnation Revolution' (it owes its name to the flowers distributed to soldiers by a Lisbon merchant, who then placed them in the barrels of their rifles)—was about to change the lives of the Portuguese people. Thanks to it, 8.7 million citizens regained a freedom that most had never known. It also put an end to the interminable colonial wars (in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea) that had been exhausting the country for 15 years."