The US military started airlifting embassy staff out of Haiti overnight as the Caribbean island descends further into chaos.
Rival gangs have joined forces to overrun the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, in an attempt to force the resignation of the acting president, Ariel Henry.
Over the past week, Haiti’s gangs have carried out a series of coordinated attacks on prisons and police stations, breaking more than 3,800 criminals out of Haiti’s two biggest jails, while also laying siege to the country’s port and airport.
This article was written by Nicolas Forsans, University of Essex and is the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the UK Defence Journal. If you would like to submit your own article on this topic or any other, please see our submission guidelines.
The gang leader behind the violence, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, has warned there will be a “civil war that will lead to genocide” if Henry does not step down.
Haiti is already facing a humanitarian crisis. It is among the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, with 90% of the population living below the poverty line. And following the recent wave of violence, around 15,000 people who were already housed in internal displacement camps have been forced to leave again.
Henry came to power in 2021 under a deal agreed with the opposition following the assassination of Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse. Henry is widely considered illegitimate by the Haitian public and was due to stand down by February 7. But he seems to be extending his stay.
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The country last went to the polls in 2016 and there is no timetable for new elections. Over the past six years, the Haitian parliament has ground to a halt: no major laws have been passed and only one budget was voted on.
The regime is weak and lacks control over the country’s territories, leading to a situation where Haiti finds itself hostage to its criminal gangs. US officials have said they will not pressure Henry to leave, but they are urging him to facilitate the transition to a democratic government.
Turbulent history
Violent gangs are not new to Haiti. Between 1957 and 1986, Haiti was ruled as a dictatorship by the Duvalier family. Following an unsuccessful military coup in 1958, François Duvalier sought to bypass the armed forces by creating a private and personal militia called the “Tonton Macoutes”.
The Macoutes consisted of illiterate fanatics-turned-reckless gunmen acting as a paramiltary force. They were not accountable to any state body or court and were fully empowered to dispose of the paranoid president’s enemies.
The group was dismantled in 1986, but its members continued to terrorise the population. Gangs have been involved in massacres, attacks on labour strikes or peasant uprisings, and politically motivated assassinations ever since.
Haiti took its first step toward a full democratic transition in 1990, electing Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president. But the Aristide government was overthrown by a military coup the following year and the Haitian army was subsequently dismantled. The Haitian army was a highly corrupt force, but doing away with it meant the country could no longer fight organised crime.
By that time, Haitian drug traffickers were working closely with Colombia’s Medellín Cartel. They were corrupting officials and the police while shifting hundreds of tons of cocaine from Colombia to secluded docks in Haiti and onwards to the US. Drug trafficking became a little known, yet significant source of income for Haiti’s political and business elites who provided protection and logistical support for drug traffickers.
Efforts aimed at disbanding certain armed groups and even the armed forces never fully succeeded. They never disarmed and have converted themselves into far-right vigilantes such as community defence groups and paramilitaries.
Haiti was then struck by an earthquake in 2010. This allowed thousands of inmates to escape from crumbling jails and take over these self-defence groups. These younger, less politically affiliated and loosely organised gangs are developing into the criminal organisations that are wreaking havoc across Haiti today.
A state run by gangs
Gangs have grown rapidly in number over the past few years. An estimated 200 criminal gangs now exist in Haiti, and around 95 in the capital, Port-au-Prince, alone. This has resulted in massive insecurity, kidnappings, and large-scale attacks on the police, politicians, journalists and civilians.
Gangs now tend to be affiliated to two groups. The most prevalent gang structure is that of “G-9 and Family”, a federation of nine gangs led by alias “Barbecue”. Founded in 2020, the G-9 has been linked to Moïse and Henry’s Haitian Tèt Kale Party (Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale – PHTK), for whom the federation is alleged to have ensured votes.
The G-9’s focus is mostly on extortion and kidnappings. It has taken taken control of key economic activities, including the main entry and exit points of Port-au-Prince, and critical infrastructure such as ports and oil terminals, charging “protection payments” for any institutions that operate in these areas.
The recent jailbreaks were a joint operation with “G-Pep”, another gang federation that was previously linked to PHTK’s political opponents.
No end in sight
To bring this crisis to an end, Haiti needs an elected government. But holding elections in this climate won’t be an easy task, nor will it solve the deep-rooted causes of lawlessness.
The conditions for free and fair elections do not currently exist, and the infrastructure that would make them possible is absent. Equally, any free and fair election should take place in a context where gangs do not intimidate voters to vote in a particular way.
In October 2023, the UN Security Council voted to send a Kenyan-led multinational security force to Haiti to reign in the gangs and their spiralling violence. However, the peacekeeping mission has been delayed and no other countries have come forward to provide the resources required to restore peace.
But an election is long overdue, and the status-quo will not solve anything.
Nicolas Forsans, Professor of Management and Co-director of the Centre for Latin American & Caribbean Studies, University of Essex
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Given the narrative’s point that elections won’t solve the lawlessness, why the insistance that free and fair elections are needed?
15,000 police in Port-au-Prince and an army twice the size, that I’d understand. An electricity infrastructure reaching all of the country. Roads, hospitals, schools, ports, courts, a stable currency, and a culture of rebuilding to withstand the next earthquake. All these I can understand. Why pick on elections as necessary? What will that crack open?
Nothing, but it’s the emotional feel good story western journalists latch onto now. It’s a low effort analysis.
That was my immediate thought on reading this. Clearly it makes no difference to the lawlessness whether a government is democratically elected or not. To put a stop to it there needs to be a governing authority of whatever description that is able and willing to enforce law and order consistently.
French left two centuries ago. Don’t expect their boots back on the ground any time soon.. oh wait
We in the west do tend to default to a “free elections sort everything out” paradigm when actually free elections are the product of a society in which massive changes have occurred and are really profoundly stable…it took the UK and the European democratise many hundreds of years to put in place the cultural and societal changes needed to have robust universal suffrage…..the British empire tended to transfer and work up the same changes in its empire..where as the French empire did not shall we say follow the same ( a higher percentage of British imperial possessions converted to democracies… Read more »
How Haiti become a failed state: Haitians ? Unless the culture is changed nothing will change, unless the gangster stop being rewarded nothing will change. So how to change the culture and change the gangster rewards? A full blown military intervention and Colonialism. But no one wants to do that, the way journalism work you will be even punished for your good deeds. Gangsters set up a protest, fire is exchanged and in the end your force kills a dozen civilians in self defence… Look at Israel protecting their civilians, for every Israeli that do not die in a rocket… Read more »
Interesting. On the other hand if the UN security council were working correclty an intervention could be approved and a multi-national force could take over the country for the benefit of the people and run the country going forward.
And that will be Colonialism by the UN.
Hmmm I see your point however the population of Haiti might see it more positively. Especially if the world builds them a modern country.
If you want a colonial intervention then it would need to be in the material interests of whichever power(s) are providing the troops. In the case of Haiti that seems unlikely.
Colonial has negative conotations and in my view does not match the intention. You are correct in saying that countries taking a risk should be able to see a potential reward. Haiti has a GDP of $20 Billion whereas the Dominican Republic is $116 Billion which shows a little potential. This might be contraversial however failed states in central and south america, africa etc. might benefit from a little intervention with their populations & neighbouring countries benefiting from better amenities, carbon free energy etc. The UN Charter always allowed for the possibility of the major powers actually agreeing with each… Read more »
It seems so unfair that two babies born on this same island but on opposite sides of a fence have very different lives and life expectancies. I can’t think of any island in the world split across two countries and everything has been harmonious and ok.
West Timor- Dutch / East Timor – Portuguese
Hi AlexS. I can’t tell if you meant that as an example of bad or good, but you can read about the East Timor Genocide in 1975, so not that great really.
I know about the massacres. But just pointing out that for about more than a decade there is peace in both sides.
Russia and China are doing their best at recolonisation of Africa, in case nobody noticed.
Very much noticed. I wonder if some African nations would prefer to be under the control of a bunch of democratic nations or a bunch of autocratic nations.
Significant parts of colonialism were a negative investment for the colonialist countries. Lots of territories were taken and hold for “prestige” and power competition.
I read somewhere trhat Haiti has been ‘independent’ since 1804. That pre-dates a lot of classic European Colonisation.
Unfortunately, the last time the UN got involved, there was well-publicised abuse of Haitians by the UN forces themselves (how wide-spread it was compared to how it is perceived by Haitians, I don’t know). So, at least initially, there will likely be a great deal of resistance to it until/unless positives are seen by the population.
On top of all that, it brought cholera into the country, which is a recurring problem when the rainy season starts ever since.
I didn’t know that, certainly not a good way to make a first impression…
No, certainly not. Nepali soldiers brought it with them, which begs the question whether resource poor nations like that should participate in missions at the other end of the world at all. (But let’s not digress too much.)
Point taken. Interventions are by their very nature acts which ignore the wishes of the population at the time. Recording / policing the actions of the forces is relatively easy nowadays and is perhaps something which should routinely happen to eliminate such actions or accusations. This issue does not invalidate the potential benefit of the strategy should it ever become possible.
Sorry, don’t get me wrong- I frankly agree that an intervention is about the only thing that’ll get Haiti back to any semblance of stability. It was just an observation that any intervention force will face more of a struggle to get the populace on side than may otherwise have been the case, unfortunately.
Also weren’t member of charities brought in by the UN exploiting the local population for sex?
Yes, pretty awful when they’re there to help…
Unless gangster stop being rewarded nothing will change….. hmm certainly signs of that happening in the UK. Many crimes now going unpuinish and criminals are now ‘victims’ and the crimes they commit are becuase of others and not them. So we’re now effectively rewarding crime and normalising it. Many no longer report what was a crime 30 years ago becuase no action would be taken. Its nothing to do with government funding, its ideology. The criminal is protrayed as the oppressed so therefore stealing from someone who has more (ie big supermarket) is seen as liberating or fighting oppression and… Read more »
i have not doubt that certains parts of West will not be much different than Haiti in the near to medium term.
Failed state? That happened a long time ago.
The historical narrative in the article leaves out the primary cause of Haiti’s poverty and thus the political instability. I suggest a Quick Look at Wikipedia or GOOGLE search of Haiti’s history, and especially the imposition of sanctions (essentially an economic and political blockade on the country for nearly 122 years by the European powers and the USA from the time it gained independence from France in 1804 after a successful slave revolt), until the nation completed making reparations to France and USA banking interests (that ended in 1947). Continuous outside interference has brought Haiti to where it is. It’s… Read more »
Irrelevant and the usual anti western hate. I can write almost a dozen countries that were very poor by 1947 and wrecked and now are good enough to live- lets talk for example Singapore, Israel and South Korea.
You can set up a livable country in 30 years if you have good culture.
Completely agree, on flip side you have good countries going bad in the same time scales through miss management. Argentina is a great example
Britain is another going that way.
Elections would be a waste of time. What Haiti needs is firm government by benevolent dictatorship which will not spontaneously appear without outside intervention. Her stable neighbour, the Dominican Republic needs to get involved along with some outside assistance and wage war against the thugs who are destroying what is left of the country. Sometimes Democracy is it’s own worse enemy-a perfect case in point is the UK and USA’s inability to stop people just arriving on their doorstep because various organs of state and immutable laws plus International Agreements, won’t let them do what is crystal clear to the… Read more »
Maybe a wee bit too close to the USA’s door step but has China offered any of its “security assistance”? Or, what about a coalition of some South American and/or Caribbean countries?
Hi Quentin. Such a coalition would be ideal, but China never comes without big strings!
For the Chinese they come with a bucket and spade searching for sand and other stuff.
Why go for dictatorship when there is a perfect example of a free democratic way to prosperity in central america as Costa Rica? The problem with benevolent dictators they tend to turn against the population. You can never tell beforehand what someone is going to do with it Papa”Doc” Duvalier was a dedicated doctor fighting disease before he became involved in politics. Dictatorships often lead to revolutions and often the revolutionaries become more ruthless than the dictatorship in order to overthrow it. So then when they get into power they are often worse than the government they replaced. Democracy works… Read more »
Hi John. I didn’t really clarify what I meant. A free and fair election in the chaos of Haiti as it is now would not be possible and even if it was, the organs of State are too weak to support a popular Government. A shortish term of benevolent dictatorship would be needed to knock some heads together and strengthen the Army and Police properly before infant steps toward Democracy.
You don’t have human capital to have a democracy in Haiti.
Second go…We in the west do tend to default to a “free elections sort everything out” paradigm when actually free elections are the product of a society in which massive changes have occurred and are really profoundly stable…it took the UK and the European democratise many hundreds of years to put in place the cultural and societal changes needed to have robust universal suffrage…..the British empire tended to transfer and work up the same changes in its empire..where as the French empire did not shall we say follow the same ( a higher percentage of British imperial possessions converted to… Read more »