Moïse Assassinated, Kabul Falls, Haiti Struck Again: The Quarter That Redrew the Map of Caribbean Risk

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 October 2021 | Reporting Period: 3 July – 2 October 2021

Quarterly Briefing

• Haitian President Jovenel Moïse is assassinated in his private residence in Port-au-Prince on July 7; the country enters acute political crisis.
• A 7.2-magnitude earthquake strikes southern Haiti on August 14, killing more than 2,200 people and destroying 130,000 homes.
• The Taliban captures Kabul on August 15 as the United States and NATO complete their chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after twenty years.
• The Delta variant drives a new COVID-19 surge across North America; Jamaica imposes renewed travel protocols to protect its recovering tourism sector.
• Oil prices rise steadily toward $80 per barrel as the post-COVID demand recovery outpaces OPEC+ production increases.
• Jamaica’s economy posts its strongest quarterly growth since the pandemic began; the housing market surges on pent-up demand.

Prologue: Two Catastrophes in Eight Days

The third quarter of 2021 delivered, in the span of eight days in mid-August, two catastrophic events that together represent one of the heaviest blows Haiti has experienced in a generation already defined by suffering. On August 14, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake — the most powerful to strike the country since the catastrophic 2010 event — killed more than 2,200 people across southern Haiti and destroyed or damaged 130,000 homes, leaving an estimated 650,000 people in need of immediate humanitarian assistance. The quake struck five weeks after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on 7 July, which had left the country without its head of state, without a functioning parliament, and with a disputed constitutional succession that paralysed international assistance coordination even as Tropical Storm Grace added flooding to the earthquake’s destruction.

On August 15, in a geopolitically unrelated but globally seismic event, the Taliban swept into Kabul as US and NATO forces completed their military withdrawal from Afghanistan after twenty years. The images of the final evacuation — desperate crowds at Kabul airport, transport aircraft overloaded with refugees — dominated global news for the fortnight following and posed profound questions about Western military credibility that will echo in Caribbean security planning for years. For Jamaica and the Caribbean, the quarter’s most direct concern was the double Haiti crisis and its implications for regional stability, migration and the burden on CARICOM’s humanitarian and diplomatic capacity.

Haiti: Assassination and Earthquake

In the early hours of 7 July 2021, a group of approximately 28 armed men — later identified as primarily Colombian mercenaries with Haitian-American involvement — attacked the private residence of President Jovenel Moïse in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Moïse was shot twelve times and killed. His wife, Martine, was seriously wounded. The assassins escaped the residence but were subsequently apprehended or killed in a police operation over the following days. The suspects’ identities, their commissioning chain and their ultimate patrons remained under investigation as this edition went to press. The assassination was without precedent in Haitian history: no sitting president had ever been killed in office.

The constitutional succession was immediately contested. Prime Minister Claude Joseph initially claimed acting authority; an alternative candidate, Ariel Henry, had been designated prime minister by Moïse just before his death but had not yet been confirmed. CARICOM played a critical mediating role: its leaders convened an emergency session and dispatched a high-level delegation to Port-au-Prince. Through CARICOM’s facilitation, Henry emerged as the consensus prime minister and took office in late July. But Henry’s government rested on no constitutional mandate, enjoyed no popular election, and faced a security environment — dominated by gang networks controlling large parts of the capital — that made effective governance essentially impossible.

Five weeks later, on August 14, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the Grand’Anse and Sud departments of southwestern Haiti. The quake killed at least 2,248 people, injured 12,000 more and destroyed or damaged 130,000 homes. Tropical Storm Grace, arriving 36 hours after the quake, brought flooding that further hampered rescue operations. The response was complicated by gang blockades that impeded humanitarian convoy movement from Port-au-Prince toward the affected south. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs described the combination of political crisis, gang violence and natural disaster as an “unprecedented convergence.”

For Jamaica, the Haiti crisis was both a humanitarian obligation and a strategic concern. Jamaica has consistently been one of CARICOM’s most active voices on Haiti, providing diplomatic leadership, technical support and public advocacy for international engagement. The scale of Haiti’s simultaneous crises in Q3 2021 — political, security, seismic — tested that commitment and raised difficult questions about what more the region could realistically do in the absence of a functioning Haitian state.

The Fall of Kabul and Its Caribbean Resonance

The Taliban’s rapid conquest of Afghanistan, culminating in the fall of Kabul on 15 August, was a geopolitical event with few direct Caribbean implications but significant indirect ones. The twenty-year Western military presence in Afghanistan had been the defining security commitment of the post-September 11 era. Its end — hasty, chaotic, and producing scenes of desperation at Kabul airport that the Taliban’s return to power would have been unimaginable before — raised questions about the reliability of Western security guarantees that echoed in every region where small states depend on major-power security architecture.

For the Caribbean, the specific lesson was about the limits of externally imposed security solutions — a lesson acutely relevant to the ongoing debate about international military intervention in Haiti. The Afghanistan experience suggested that security missions, however well-resourced, cannot succeed without functioning local institutions and a political settlement that enjoys domestic legitimacy. The same principle applied directly to what any future Haiti stabilisation force would require to achieve sustainable results.

The Delta Wave and Caribbean Tourism

The Delta variant of COVID-19 drove a significant new wave of infections across North America and Europe through July and August 2021, temporarily reversing the optimism that had built around vaccine rollouts in the spring. The United States saw record summer caseloads in unvaccinated populations; several European countries reimposed restrictions. For the Caribbean tourism industry, the Delta wave posed an immediate threat to the winter 2021–22 booking season: American and European travellers were, in some cases, cancelling or deferring plans as domestic case numbers rose and uncertainty returned.

Jamaica maintained its approach of keeping the country open with COVID testing and health protocols rather than reimposing travel bans. The government invested in vaccination programmes for tourism workers and the broader population. By the quarter’s end, Delta appeared to be past its peak in the main source markets, and forward bookings for the November–April season were beginning to recover. The Caribbean’s experience reinforced that a balance between public health caution and economic openness was essential for island economies whose survival depended on international travel.

Energy Markets and the Post-COVID Recovery

Oil prices continued their steady climb through Q3 2021, driven by the post-COVID global economic recovery and OPEC+’s managed approach to increasing production. Brent crude moved from approximately $75 per barrel in July toward $80 by October. For Caribbean oil importers, including Jamaica, this trend was an early warning of the cost pressures that would intensify in 2022. The PETROCARIBE arrangement, which had once allowed Caribbean nations to purchase Venezuelan oil at subsidised rates with deferred payment, was effectively defunct: Venezuela’s own production had collapsed, and US sanctions had made the arrangement legally and logistically untenable for most CARICOM members. Caribbean governments were once again paying international market rates for every barrel.

Jamaica: Recovery Building

Despite the external turbulence, Jamaica’s domestic economy was performing well as Q3 2021 closed. GDP growth for 2021 was tracking strongly above pre-pandemic levels in several key sectors. Construction was among the strongest performers: housing demand, which had built up through the 2020 lockdowns, was releasing into a market that saw both NHT and private sector developments outperform projections. The housing and real estate market’s vitality was one of the most visible signs of a recovering economy. Kingston’s new commercial developments, Montego Bay’s resort expansion and the continued growth of the diaspora-purchasing segment were all positive indicators.

Remittances from the Jamaican diaspora in North America and the United Kingdom reached record levels in 2021, driven partly by pandemic-era savings in diaspora households and partly by the diaspora’s desire to support family members through an unprecedented crisis. This flow provided a significant financial cushion for household consumption and, through property purchases, for the real estate market. The Bank of Jamaica’s monetary policy was still accommodative, with the policy rate at historic lows, supporting economic recovery. The first signs of inflation were beginning to appear in shipping costs and imported goods prices, but a full inflationary cycle was not yet underway.

Looking Ahead

The fourth quarter of 2021 opens with Haiti managing an unprecedented convergence of crises, the global economic recovery gaining momentum, and energy prices on an upward trajectory that could test Caribbean budgets if sustained. The winter tourism season is beginning, and its success will determine whether Jamaica can close the 2021 fiscal year with the revenues needed to maintain its post-IMF fiscal consolidation achievements. The world’s geopolitical landscape — Afghanistan’s new Taliban government, Iran’s nuclear negotiations, Russia’s growing assertiveness toward Ukraine — is complex but not yet acute. That may not remain true into 2022.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review is published quarterly, examining how wars, geopolitical tensions and major international crises have shaped Jamaica, the Caribbean and their economies.