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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | MONDAY, JULY 12, 2021 Few options Haiti’s call after leader’s for help has assassination little appeal

Amy Wilentz for Biden

WASHINGTON OPINION

For years, the United States has Difficult choice presented, adopted a wary tolerance of Haiti, batting aside the horror of kidnap- as U.S. withdraws its forces pings, murders and gang warfare. The from operations overseas more convenient strategy generally seemed to be backing whichever gov- BY MICHAEL CROWLEY, ernment was in power and supplying MICHAEL D. SHEAR endless amounts of foreign aid. AND ERIC SCHMITT Donald Trump supported President Jovenel Moïse mainly because Mr. Haiti’s request for U.S. troops to help Moïse supported a campaign to oust stabilize the country following the as- President Nicolás Maduro in Venezue- sassination of its president presents la. And in February, the Biden adminis- President Biden with a difficult choice: tration accepted Mr. Moïse’s tenuous send forces to aid a neighbor even as he argument that he still had another is trying to pare down America’s mili- year to serve despite opposition calls tary footprint overseas, or refrain and for his departure and large street risk allowing the chaos unfolding there protests. Mr. Moïse, though initially to escalate into a refugee crisis. elected to a five-year Thus far, administration officials have The killing term due to end in expressed caution about any deploy- of Haiti’s 2021, did not take ment to Haiti, reflecting both the fast office until 2017, thus pace of events since attackers killed president will his claim to an extra President Jovenel Moïse in his home on now force a year as president. Wednesday, and a broader shift in reluctant U.S. There had ap- American attitudes toward military in- administra- peared to be a tacit terventions as the 20-year war in Af- tion to focus understanding dur- ghanistan winds down. more on the ing Mr. Moïse’s rule: Biden administration officials, while country. Haiti is turbulent PHOTOGRAPHS BY IVOR PRICKETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES sympathetic to the humanitarian mi- and difficult, a bomb Fishing in water filled with mucilage, a pale, slimy film, in Canakkale, Turkey. Fishing businesses are running at a loss because their customers won’t eat the fish they catch. sery unfolding some 700 miles south of waiting to explode in Florida and mindful of the possibility of the hands of anyone a mass exodus of Haitian refugees like who attempts to defuse it. After all, the one that occurred in the 1990s, nev- why should Mr. Biden take on the ertheless show no immediate enthusi- unrewarding task of “fixing” Haiti asm for sending even a limited Ameri- when there was already an elected can force into the midst of politically president in office who could bear the Turkey’s tainted ‘sapphire’ based civil strife and disorder. brunt of criticism about the deteriorat- The administration has said it will ing political situation there? send officials from the Federal Bureau BANDIRMA, TURKEY Black Sea 300 MILES But the assassination of Mr. Moïse of Investigation and the Department of on Wednesday will now force a reluc- Homeland Security to Port-au-Prince to TURKEY tant administration to focus more Detail area assess how they might assist the gov- carefully on the next steps it wants to Slimy pollution suffocates ernment’s investigation into the murky take concerning Haiti. There are no circumstances of Mr. Moïse’s killing. SYRIA the Sea of Marmara, killing IRAQ simple options. Aegean Sea But Pentagon officials were taken off The killing has destroyed the Biden fish and coating beaches guard by the Haitian request late Friday. administration’s hopes (however far- While they said it would be dutifully re- Black Sea fetched) for a peaceful transfer of BY CARLOTTA GALL TURKEY viewed, there is little appetite among power with elections presided over by senior military leaders to dispatch U.S. GREECE Mr. Moïse. But that’s not to say that The Sea of Marmara, fabled for cen- Istanbul troops. Haiti’s future is entirely up to the turies for its blue waters and sparkling Sea of Marmara “We are aware of the request and are United States, nor should it be. When fish, laps the shores of Istanbul. analyzing it,” John F. Kirby, the chief Aegean the United States has stepped in, Its perfect form inspired a 19th-cen- Sea Bandirma Pentagon spokesman, said in a tele- Haitians have ended up worse off. tury historian to describe the ancient Misakca phone interview on Saturday, noting When President Jean Vilbrun Gui- city as “a diamond set between two sap- Canakkale that the request was broad and did not llaume Sam was killed by an angry phires.” Dardanelles 50 MILES specify numbers or types of forces Strait crowd in 1915, U.S. Navy ships lay on But the Marmara has been sickening THE NEW YORK TIMES needed. the Haitian coast waiting to quell un- for a long time, and this year, it suffered One senior administration official put rest to keep Haiti stable for American a paroxysm that choked its waters and to the tides of algae that spread in the it more bluntly late Friday: “There are business interests there. In the wake of suffocated marine life. In April, thou- Adriatic Sea in 1989 — also caused by no plans to provide U.S. military assist- the killing, U.S. Marines occupied Haiti sands of fish died and by May a natural Trying to sell a catch to reluctant wholesale buyers and restaurant owners at a fish overproduction of microorganisms that ance at this time.” and remained there for nearly two secretion called mucilage emerged, market auction in Bandirma, Turkey, on the southern coast of the Sea of Marmara. scientists have linked to warming and For Mr. Biden, the prospect of a de- decades. smothering harbors and beaches with pollution. ployment of American forces amid the Over the years Haiti has been at the its slimy film. The problem first came to light in No- chaotic aftermath of the brutal killing mercy of the United States, of course, “It’s an environmental disaster,” said and is usually consumed by other ma- the Sea of Marmara, which has been vember, when Mr. Sari was flooded with runs against his core instinct, which is to and of the Inter-American Develop- Burhan Onen, 63, as he gathered his rine life, including jellyfish and sea cu- steadily warming over two decades and urgent calls from local fishermen about consolidate America’s overseas military ment Bank, the World Bank, the Orga- crew for a night of fishing recently in the cumbers. is 2.5 degrees Celsius, or 4.5 degrees the mucilage. presence, not expand it. The request WILENTZ, PAGE 10 city of Bandirma. “We have not stopped Mustafa Sari, a professor at the Mari- Fahrenheit, higher than the 40-year av- He asked a friend to investigate. The from the Haitians came just hours after going out, but catches are down 80 per- time Faculty of the Bandirma Onyedi erage; excess phosphorus and nitrogen video his friend brought back from a Mr. Biden delivered remarks defending The New York Times publishes opinion cent.” Eylul University, blamed three triggers from pollution; and the natural stability scuba dive was alarming, he said. his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Af- from a wide range of perspectives in Mucilage, also known by the viscer- for causing the phytoplankton to secrete of the Marmara, which is an inland sea. Large globules of mucilage were visi- ghanistan after a 20-year mission that hopes of promoting constructive debate ally accurate description of sea snot, is an excess of the slimy substance, begin- Turkey has been plagued before by ble in the water, and about 100 feet, or 30 came to be ill-defined and entangled about consequential questions. produced naturally by phytoplankton ning last fall: the surface temperature of mucilage, which bears some similarities POLLUTION, PAGE 4 HAITI, PAGE 4

A new sense of what Somalia can be

PROFILE process of rebuilding the wounded city. even this challenge where even the pro- In his four years in Somalia, he has fessors would say, ‘Oh, you speak very created through architecture a new good Italian,’ giving you the reminder style and sense of what the country is that you don’t belong.” Prepare today’s college students Architect aims to reimagine and can be after decades of civil war and His parents wanted him to study terrorism, mixing traditional themes medicine, but that dream died after his to become tomorrow’s global citizens. capital city his parents left with more modern ones like sustain- mother cut her foot one day and he before he was born in Italy ability. couldn’t bear the sight of the blood. He Get campuswide access to The New York Times. “I wanted architecture to bring back liked to sketch, though, so he pursued Learn more at nytimes.com/campuswide. BY ABDI LATIF DAHIR the sense of belonging that was de- bachelor’s and master’s degrees in ar- stroyed in the war,” he said in a recent chitecture at the Polytechnic University The first time Omar Degan set foot in telephone interview. “I wanted people to of Turin, where he specialized in emer- Mogadishu, in October 2017, he quickly take ownership of a space and feel gency architecture and post-conflict re- grasped that it bore little resemblance to proud. I wanted to bring back this sense construction. the picturesque cityscape his parents, of Somali-ness and manifest that Although Somalia was on his mind Somali refugees who had fled to Europe, through design and architecture.” when he chose that focus, he said he was had described to him as he grew up. That sense was something he had also also influenced by a drive to find mean- Instead of an idyllic scene of white- been yearning for personally. ing in life and to learn skills that he could washed buildings and modernist archi- FEISAL OMAR/REUTERS Mr. Degan was born in June 1990 in use for the common good. tecture set against the turquoise waters Omar Degan wants to bring back cultural Turin, in northwest Italy, to parents who Despite that underpinning, he said he of the Indian Ocean, he found a new Mo- aspects destroyed by Somalia’s civil war. had left Somalia a few years before the didn’t consider taking his work to Soma- gadishu, one that had emerged in a rush war flared up. Growing up there, he lia out of security concerns. Instead, he to rebuild after Somalia’s civil war. Con- says, he never felt that he fully belonged worked for several years in West Africa, crete roadblocks and blastproof walls For Mr. Degan, a 31-year-old archi- — caught between his identity as a So- Latin America and Asia before moving remained pervasive, and camps for dis- tect, that dissonance echoed a loss of mali man with roots in a war-torn nation to London for an intended career break. placed people abutted multicolored con- cultural identity that he has since and a Black Italian citizen in a country There, he shared quarters with a cousin dominiums with barely a hint of local worked to restore and that he hopes oth- that didn’t fully embrace him. who was looking for help building a com- styles or heritage. ers will increasingly embrace in the “In university,” he said, “there was SOMALIA, PAGE 2

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