Mayhem Island: Rampant violence engulfs Haiti as gangs vie for power France shows no care of its former colony

Gangs have forced Haiti's prime minister to resign. The US has sent elite special forces to the island. Who unleashed the violence on the streets of Haiti's cities and what will happen next?

Let the thugs rule?

Haiti remains one of the world's most impoverished countries, and that has been a major factor in its chronic social and political tension. But the current situation in Haiti's capital, Port-à-Prince, is unparalleled even by local standards.

Since the beginning of March, the city has been the scene of large-scale hostilities between local gangs and attacks on government buildings and institutions. A state of emergency and a curfew were declared, to no avail. On March 9, the Haitian capital was encircled by gunmen. Today, they control about 80 per cent of the country, including most of the capital, the city of Port-au-Prince.

In Port-au-Prince itself, the gunmen have targeted government offices, courts, the central bank and commercial banks. The national police repulsed the assault on the Ministry of the Interior and the President's residence, killing some of the assailants. However, schools, hospitals, the ministries of agriculture and culture, supermarkets and the national police academy were all looted or damaged with at least 9 police stations destroyed or burned.

According to some reports, more than 3,000 prisoners were released or escaped from prisons. However, there are also reports of prisoners being killed. There are also reports of looting at the port, which could threaten the delivery of humanitarian aid to Haiti. Gangs attacked the international airport, the attack was repelled but air travel was cut off. The Americans evacuated part of their embassy by helicopter, and the German ambassador and all EU representatives also left Haiti. In the last week of February alone, 15,000 Haitian refugees fled to the neighbouring Dominican Republic. On 3 March it emerged that the US Marine Corps Anti-Terrorism Security Group had already been deployed in Haiti.

The fact that the Haitian army was demobilised in 1994 complicates the fight against banditry. Haiti currently has no president and no parliament. The country is governed by Prime Minister Ariel Henry of the social democratic Patriotic Unity Party. But he was not in Haiti when the violence escalated, and then his plane failed to land at an airport attacked by rebels. The trigger for the current outbreak of violence, however, was the Haitian leader's promise to hold elections in mid-2025. Paradoxically, Ariel Henry intends to return the country to democratic procedures that have sparked such strange 'protests'.

The head of the G9 family and its allies, Jimmy Cherisier, pledged to start a civil war in the country. G9 thugs kept their word. What's going on?

Politicised thuggery

The fact is that Haiti's criminal organisations are not just gangs of robbers, kidnappers and murderers. They are an important political factor in the life of the country. They are a cross between criminal gangs, paramilitary militias and political parties.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the mainstay of the Duvalier regime was the Tonton Macoute organisation, a mixture of political police, mafia and death squads, steeped in mystical voodoo cults and black racism.

In 1993, the Revolutionary Armed Front for the Progress of Haiti (FRAPH) was created to support the military junta and terrorise supporters of the leftist president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Despite its "revolutionary" name, the FRAPH was an organisation with an extreme right-wing ideology. Curiously, there is no contradiction in the fact that a country with a predominantly black population has long been controlled by far-right gangs. The desire to solve everything through violence, hatred of the left and a willingness to serve the local oligarchy, and sometimes anti-Americanism were the basis of their political platform, if you can call it that. These gangs were often closely linked to the state police.

In 2004, FRAPH fighters, along with the Cannibal Army gang (later the Gonaïves Resistance Front), took part in the repeated overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Haiti's president from 2011 to 2016, the businessman Michel-Joseph Martelly, considered FRAPH an ally.

Martelly was succeeded in the presidency by his friend, Haiti's "banana king" Jovenel Moïse.

Legalising organised crime

In this swirling maelstrom of violence and politics, the organiser of the current unrest, Jimmy Cherisier, finally came to the fore. Jimmy is also known by the nickname "Barbecue", the origin of which is easy to guess. The future leader of the "Family and Allies G9" group served in an elite unit of the Haitian National Police, but at the same time created his own gangster organisation. In November 2017, a gruesome massacre took place in a poor neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince that had been one of the epicentres of protests against President Jovenel Moïse. Local thugs and allegedly disguised police shot, hacked to death with machetes and burned alive 71 people. The UN believed that Jimmy Cherisier had organised the massacre, leading to international sanctions against him (the only Haitian) and the dismissal of "Barbecue" from the police force.

In 2020, Jimmy Cherisier announced the creation of a new criminal organisation, the G9 Family and Allies, on the G9 YouTube channel. At the time, he even demanded legal recognition for his organisation. To achieve this, he organised an armed demonstration on the streets of the capital. Initially, the G9 grouping included 9 gangs, but the list has since expanded. The gang alliance led by Jimmy "Barbecue" has become the most powerful criminal alliance among Haiti's 95 gangs.

Between 30 and 50 per cent of gang members are minors, and gangsters are drawn from poor neighbourhoods plagued by chronic poverty and social hopelessness. The mainstay of organised crime in Haiti is kidnapping, arms and drug trafficking. Kidnapping has become a lucrative business, with up to 5 people kidnapped every day in Haiti recently. At the same time, experts believe that in most cases, the relatives of those kidnapped are afraid to go to the police because of threats from the kidnappers. No one, rich or poor, nun or priest, is immune to kidnapping. More than 300,000 Haitians have become internal refugees, forced to live in gymnasiums and other places because of the gang wars. Humanitarian aid had to be delivered to them by helicopter; if it was delivered on the ground, it was seized by the gangs.

But Jimmy is not only a gang "authority", he also claims to be a social leader in the districts of Port-au-Prince under his control. For example, he is in charge of food distribution to the poor in the city's slums. This fits in with the popular image of the "people's bandit" in South America and other parts of the world. The neighbourhoods in the group's sphere of influence are also some of the most densely populated, making them highly electable. Control of the municipalities adjacent to Port-au-Prince allowed Jimmy and the G9 to blockade the Haitian capital, which he would later use.

Meanwhile, the Family and its allies were blamed for several other killings, either as part of gang wars or to intimidate opponents of Moïse. The opposition accused Jovenel Moïse of a corrupt oil deal with Venezuela and of illegally extending his term in office. The G9 family and its allies' links to President Moise were cited as the reason why the police had not opened criminal proceedings for these crimes. Justice Minister Lucman Delille, who had spoken out strongly against the G9 and their allies, was sacked by President Moïse.

Death of the President

Suddenly, however, the leader of Haiti's most powerful gang confederation is himself at loggerheads with the incumbent president. On June 23, 2021, surrounded by masked young men with automatic rifles and machetes, Jimmy recorded a video message. He pays tribute to the heroes of Haiti's national liberation struggle. And he calls for an "armed revolution" against the state, the government and even the existing opposition.

Cherisier invites people to join his organisation, which is the only one capable of filling the void created by a weak government. Jimmy "Barbecue" declared that his enemies were the country's entire elite, including the Haitian oligarchy and bourgeoisie. The militants enthusiastically applauded their leader, some of them banging their palms on the flat part of the machete blade. At the same time, the opposition sounded the alarm, taking the threat of an "armed revolution" personally. The G9 leader called for President Moïse's resignation, but also for a "national dialogue" to save the country.

Two weeks later, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated. A group of assassins seized the head of state at his residence. The attackers told the guards that they were from the US Drug Enforcement Administration and were conducting an operation. After brutal torture, the Haitian president was shot with a Colt pistol, wounding his wife, who was taken to hospital with serious injuries. It was leaked to the press that some of the attackers spoke English with an American accent, while some of the mercenaries were Colombian.

A few months earlier, a group of US lawmakers had sent a letter to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken expressing "concern" about the Jovenel Moïse government.

The day before the assassination, President Moïse appointed Ariel Henry as prime minister, with new presidential elections to be held in two months. Henry continues to head the government to this day, and the elections never took place. The chief prosecutor of Port-au-Prince accused Ariel Henry of assassinating the president, but he was soon removed from office. In 2022, a war broke out between the G9 and the rival G-Pep gang for control of a Port-au-Prince neighbourhood. The leader of the Family and Allies later said that they had stopped fighting and had become "one with G-Pep". That same year, Jimmy organised a fuel blockade in Haiti, demanding the resignation of the prime minister and amnesty for his group, as well as positions in the government for members of the G9 gang. To be fair, the port blockade involved not only gangsters but also ordinary people unhappy about the removal of government fuel subsidies.

And the following year saw an even greater outbreak of street violence. According to the UN, 4,789 people were killed and 2,490 kidnapped in 2023. More than 40 people were killed per 100,000 Haitians, more than double the rate of violent deaths in 2022.

Already in 2022, Prime Minister Ariel Henry requested international military assistance to fight crime. In August 2023, Jimmy said he would welcome foreign troops to arrest the prime minister and corrupt politicians and police officers and to ensure the country's security and revival. But if the peacekeepers turn violent, as they have in previous interventions on the island, the Haitians will revolt.

And in December 2023, Guy Philippe, Haiti's former police chief under Aristide and the mastermind behind the 2004 overthrow of this progressive president, and the leader of the far-right Front for National Reconstruction party, formed in part by the paramilitary group FRAPH, returned to Haiti. In 2017, despite his senatorial immunity, Guy Philippe was extradited to the US and sentenced to nine years in prison for drug trafficking. But he has now been released early and has declared his intention to lead a "peaceful revolution" in Haiti. Since the beginning of 2024, violence in Haiti has reached a peak, with an average of 18 people killed in the coming year.

A long change

In February this year, Ariel Henry's term as Prime Minister came to an end. On 29 February, the G9 and G-Pep gangs signed an agreement to form a single organisation, Vivre Ensemble (Living Together). On March 1, Prime Minister Henry signed an agreement in Nairobi to send a thousand Kenyan peacekeepers to Haiti. The UN decision to send a Kenyan contingent to Haiti had already been taken in the autumn, but for some reason, it was delayed long enough for the US to provide the funding and logistics for the operation.

Taking advantage of the absence of the head of government, the gangs revolted and demanded Henry's resignation. Likely, neither Jimmy Cherisier nor his groups nor the forces behind him liked the idea of elections being held by the current government. On March 5, the leader of the G9 Families and Allies called on the Prime Minister to resign, threatening a civil war that would "lead to genocide". On March 6, the United States urged Henri to "accelerate the transition" to a new "government structure" and to organise "free and fair elections". On March 7, Secretary of State Blinken personally telephoned Henry and suggested that he speed up the "political transition".

The Haitian opposition has described the gang members as rebels and has drawn up its own plan for the transfer of power. It proposes that Guy Philippe be appointed president of the transitional council. The transitional period would last 18 months. Around the same time, the Caribbean Community promised to hold elections by August 31, 2025, but the opposition rejected such a timeframe.

On March 11, an extraordinary meeting of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) was held in Jamaica, attended by representatives of the US, France, Canada and the UN. The main topic of the meeting was the situation in Haiti. Washington was represented at the meeting by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. But Prime Minister Henry was not in Jamaica - he remained in Puerto Rico (USA) under FBI protection and communicated with the participants of the meeting remotely. On the same day, the Haitian Prime Minister informed Anthony Blinken of his resignation. The Secretary of State responded by informing Henry that he could remain in Puerto Rico.

On March 12, 74-year-old Ariel Henry himself announced his resignation, not without pathos, saying the following "The government I lead cannot remain indifferent to this situation. As I have always said, no sacrifice is too great for our homeland, Haiti." The current government will remain in place until the interim recommendations are implemented. A transitional council will then be formed, "including a broad group of Haitian civil society". Whether this will include representatives of the gangs has not been reported.

But Jimmy Cherisier was not satisfied. And despite the relative calm that prevailed in the Port-au-Prince district on March 11, he issued a fresh warning against the use of traditional politicians and foreign troops to try to resolve the crisis. The gang leader said: "Today it is clear that it is the people in the working class neighbourhoods and the Haitian people in general who know what they are going through. These are the same people who must take their destiny into their own hands and choose their leaders...".

According to Cherisier, Haitians will only be able to do this with the help of the Vivre Ensemble gang alliance. But it looks like a foreign armed contingent will still arrive in Port-au-Prince to support the national police. After all, the US has pledged $100 million for the operation.

But, of course, the problem of rampant violence and crime in Haiti can only be truly tackled by eradicating abject poverty, creating a viable national economy and a more equitable distribution of income.

Haiti, incidentally, is a former French colony and the only predominantly French-speaking country in the Western Hemisphere. But Paris is not particularly interested in what happens in Haiti. The United States plays a leading role in the political processes there. French representatives attended the CARICOM meeting in Jamaica on March 11. It was Chrysoula Zaharopoulou, the Secretary of State for Development, Francophonie and International Partnership, and not the Foreign Minister. And French participation in the emergency meeting seems limited to general statements of support, etc.

There are 1,388 French citizens in Haiti, and the Haitian community in France is 87,000 strong. But perhaps Paris is more interested in interfering in sovereign states' affairs in the South Caucasus and elsewhere.