On April 22, 2024, UNICEF warned that 58,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition would not be able to receive assistance due to the intensification of gang violence in Haiti and the near-total blockade of the capital Port-au-Prince by armed gangs, Xinhua news agency reported. On April 1, local time, Haitian gangs launched an attack near the presidential palace in the capital Port-au-Prince and engaged in a shootout with the Haitian National Police. On the same day, gangs also attacked the Pétionville and Delmas districts of Port-au-Prince, killing at least five people.
The unrest was part of a violent protest organized by Haitian gangsters. Since 29 February, Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, has been hit by a new round of gang attacks, with armed attacks on police stations, police academies, ports, airports, prisons and other places. Jimmy Selizye, the leader of the leading gang G9 coalition, has called for a boycott of acting prime minister Ariel Henry, signaling an escalation of violence.
On April 22, 2024 local time, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, police inspect cars on the street. (Visual China/Photo)
Internal affairs are chaotic
Since the killing of then-President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, the Haitian presidency has been vacant for a long time, and Henri has assumed power as prime minister of the transitional government. On February 7 this year, Haiti was scheduled to hold a general election, but it did not take place as scheduled, causing social discontent.
On March 11, Henry resigned as prime minister. According to the Haitian Times, CARICOM has called for the immediate establishment of a transitional presidential council to restore democratic order, including the organization of elections and the deployment of a multinational mission, in order to combat escalating gang violence in Haiti.
According to an analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in the United Kingdom, the collapse of Haiti's domestic governance system and the escalation of armed violence have contributed to the ongoing unstable security situation. The assassination of former Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 led to a long-term lack of functioning of the Haitian government and the lack of legitimacy and authority of Acting Prime Minister Henry, further leading to a nationwide political failure and institutional paralysis of the Haitian judiciary and parliament.
In February 2022, only five of the 12 justices remained in office at the last session of the Supreme Court, and in January 2023, the last 10 remaining senators of the Haitian parliament officially left their posts. The political mandate at the local level also expired in 2020, and there is no constitutional representation at any state level.
Haiti's general elections have been postponed from November 2021, and in 2023, the Haitian interim government operates within the framework of the National Consensus for Inclusive Transition and Transparent Elections agreement to determine the new general elections. However, the inauguration of the new government, scheduled for February 7, 2024, was cancelled, and the general election was again postponed until August 31, 2025.
Haiti's domestic security forces are weak. According to the International Crisis Group, more than 1,000 police officers resigned in 2023 alone. According to the United Nations, there are currently about 9,000 police officers in Haiti, but more than 11 million people need to be protected.
With the ouster of Henry, Haiti has fallen further into anarchy, and the new round of elections and the construction of democratic politics are also facing greater uncertainty.
Second, Haiti's politics and crime collude, and the power vacuum of the government has exacerbated the expansion of gangs' spheres of influence, resulting in large-scale control and disruption of the country's resources by gangs.
Haitian gangs emerged in the early days with the support of the government to cooperate with the government's crackdown on the opposition. Subsequently, various politicians began to use gang members in elections to ensure that political resources were obtained through force and intimidation.
Wang Zihan, a researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said that successive Haitian presidents have recruited, connived, sponsored, tolerated or ignored criminal syndicates and lawbreakers active in various places to varying degrees, thus contributing to the rise of gangsters.
In the aftermath of Moïse's assassination, the gangs accelerated their expansion of influence to fill the power vacuum left by the absence of a president. According to the United Nations, there are currently about 300 gang groups in Port-au-Prince alone, and about 8,400 people died in gang-like violence across Haiti in 2023, more than double the number in 2022.
In the process of striving for political autonomy, large-scale gang forces have gradually taken control of large amounts of domestic resources. Since June 2021, Haitian gangs represented by the Grand Ravine, the Five Seconds and Ti Bwa have taken control of key corridors between Port-au-Prince and southern Haiti, severely hampering residents' daily travel and transportation, The Haitian Times reported. Among them, the Grand Canyon and the Five Seconds are youth gangs from the favelas of Port-au-Prince, and Tibois is a traditional force of Haitian gangs that control much of the area along the country's Route 2.
In November 2021, Haiti's leading gang, the G9 Alliance, also took control of a major fuel cargo terminal called "Varreux" to control the Haitian economy by halting fuel supplies, disrupting food shipments, and blackmailing companies involved in port operations. The alliance, made up of nine powerful gangs, is currently the main criminal syndicate in Haiti.
In addition, gangs controlled the food supply, leading to widespread famine. As of 2021, more than 60% of the Haitian population relies on gangs for food. Gang persecution of local residents is also widespread, with gangs tightening local control through systematic rape to force the public to pay ransoms.
Sun Yanfeng, executive director of the Latin American Institute at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, told Southern Weekend that if Haitian gangs grow so powerful that they can paralyze or even expel a government, some Latin American countries will also face fierce domestic political infighting and increasingly rampant organized crime, which may have an indirect imitation effect at the psychological or public opinion level.
On April 22, 2024 local time, a public school converted shelter in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is used to accommodate people displaced by armed conflict. (Visual China/Photo)
External intervention
According to CCTV's "International Online", recently, James Foley, the former US ambassador to Haiti, publicly stated to the media that the current chaotic situation in Haiti is closely related to the involvement of the United States, "This is exactly the evil result we have planted." Welfare said.
The United States has repeatedly launched military interventions, financial controls, and electoral interventions in Haiti, causing long-term political instability in Haiti and undermining Haiti's democratic political and financial foundations.
Militarily, the United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, and the forced labor system was widely practiced in Haiti in the name of restoring political stability. In 1994 and 2004, the United States intervened again, causing disruption to the local order.
Financially, Haiti had owed France 150 million francs in compensation in exchange for diplomatic recognition. Subsequently, the United States provided Haiti with a debt consolidation loan, becoming Haiti's new creditor, and it was not until 1947 that it ended its financial control of Haiti and depleted Haiti's gold reserves.
Politically, the United States has supported the dictatorship under François Duvalier, which undermined Haiti's democratic political climate. During the 2010 Haitian election, the United States also threatened Haiti with revising the official election results, citing the suspension of post-earthquake aid.
The United States has also been repeatedly confirmed to be a major source of firearms and ammunition for Haiti, fuelling the armed criminal forces of Haitian gangs. According to Rosie Auguste Dossena, project director of the Haitian National Network for the Defence of Human Rights (RNDDH), there are no weapons or ammunition factories in Haiti, so the weapons and ammunition circulating in Haiti come from overseas, most of them from the United States.
The UNODC report also states that "between 2020 and 2022, more than 80% of the weapons destined for Haiti seized and traced by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were manufactured or imported from the United States." ”
On March 26, 2024, Al Jazeera detailed the smuggling routes of US weapons in a report titled "How U.S. Weapons Fuel Deadly Gang Violence in Haiti." The group, codenamed "Scarecrow," is responsible for purchasing guns from licensed dealers in the United States and subsequently smuggling them into Haiti by land, air and sea, the report said. Since Haitian gangs control the main entrances and exits and distribution points throughout the country, weapons can be clandestinely transferred to gang networks.
Haiti's National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration estimates that Haiti may have had as many as 500,000 legal and illegal weapons as early as 2020. In March 2024, the American newspaper The Hill analyzed that due to government corruption and institutional collapse, once weapons flow into Haiti, it is almost impossible to stop the flow into the hands of gangs. Alexander Coswell, an analyst at the Caribbean Policy Institute, also told The Hill that the large number of guns in the United States has caused "pure anarchy" and its spiral in Haiti.
The government that can't be supported
On 31 March, the UN Security Council reported that in response to the current situation in Haiti, Council members welcomed the arrangements of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) for the Transitional Presidential Commission and stressed the importance of the Overseas Security Mission.
These two political and military deployments are expected to bring about a certain improvement in the future security situation in Haiti, but the current slow progress also indicates that the feasibility and practical effectiveness of the plan are questionable.
On 11 March, CARICOM announced that it would establish a Transitional Presidential Council, temporarily exercising specific presidential powers, to appoint a new interim Prime Minister and to organize new general elections for Haiti. The Haitian Times reported that the commission was seen as "a beacon of hope to guide Haiti through the transition."
At present, the Transitional Presidential Council has finalized its membership and issued a press statement on 27 March stating that it has agreed on the criteria and mechanisms for electing the chairman, appointing a new Prime Minister and cabinet ministers, and that the Commission is finalizing an official document detailing its modalities of operation.
However, the statement was not unanimously signed by the representatives of the Committee, which means that there are certain internal divisions in the Committee. Previously, two committee members had announced their withdrawals, and another member had raised objections on issues such as the election of the committee's leadership, resulting in slow progress in negotiations on many of the committee's core issues.
From the perspective of the composition of the committee, Sun Yanfeng analyzed that the committee is still dominated by the original political forces in Haiti, and past practice has proved that these political forces do not have the ability to govern the country and form a general consensus, especially the traditional political forces in Haiti are frequently rumored to be suspected of colluding with gangs, so the international community has doubts about whether the committee can effectively crack down on gangsters after its establishment.
In addition, Haitian gangs have repeatedly opposed the Commission, which has to some extent hampered its ability to assert its authority and carry out its duties.
Gang leader Jimmy Selizye said at an impromptu news conference that he would not recognize any government that had been discussed by the Transitional Presidential Council. At the same time, according to the UN Security Council, due to the widespread presence of gangs in Port-au-Prince and its environs, members of the Transitional Presidential Council were unable to organize offline meetings, seriously affecting their work process.
In terms of international security assistance, Haiti has received peacekeeping commitments and financial support from some countries, but the deployment of personnel on the ground remains to be seen.
On February 29, according to the spokesman of the United Nations Secretary-General, Dujarric, five countries, including the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin and Chad, have officially notified the United Nations that they will send personnel to Haiti to participate in peacekeeping operations, which is expected to supplement Haiti's security resources.
Kenya has also pledged to send security support to Haiti, and on March 11 this year, Kenya signed a reciprocal agreement with Haiti to deploy 2,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti, but the agreement was put on hold until Haiti appoints a new interim prime minister.
On March 6, the Miami Herald quoted experts and Latin American officials as saying that Latin American countries are reluctant to assume the moral responsibility of security assistance because they have their own security problems, the police force is insufficient, and the current violence and political crisis in Haiti are more serious than in the past.
Sun Yanfeng said that the UN Charter stipulates respect for the sovereignty of all countries, that is, no military interference in the internal affairs of other countries, but the history and current situation of Haiti's domestic governance failures show that it is difficult to form an authoritative government with legitimacy and universal control, and the international community is limited by UN regulations and cannot help Haiti establish a government, so it can only rely on its own strength. This contradiction between international law and international reality threatens to deepen Haiti's predicament.
Huang Yujie, a special researcher at the Southern Defense Think Tank
Editor-in-charge: Yao Yijiang