Today, Explained - How gangs took over Haiti

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Haiti’s latest crisis is being driven by something new: The country’s gangs have united, and they are demanding political power. Financial Times journalist Joe Daniels and peace activist Louis-Henri Mars explain. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Hady Mawajdeh and Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Maybe you've seen the news that Haiti is experiencing a new round of violence, and maybe you feel like you've seen this before. Haiti is generally unstable, but now is a particularly chaotic time because of something called Vive Ensemble, or Live Together, which sounds nice, but is in fact a formal alliance of two powerful criminal gangs. One of Haiti's main gangs has released a slickly produced video currently circulating online. It shows a well-armed militia, a group prepared to take on the Haitian state and any international force which might be deployed here.

I mean, they kill, they maim, they rape, they burn, they loot. That's their business. They kidnap. That's their business. They kidnap. That's their business. Together, they've seized the Capitol, blocked the prime minister from returning, looted homes, killed civilians and delivered a frightening message. We're in charge. That's coming up on Today Explained. This NFL season, get in on all the hard hitting action with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on anything from money lines to spreads and player props,

or combine your bets in a same-game parlay for a shot at an even bigger payout. Plus, with super-simple live betting, lightning-fast bet settlement, and instant withdrawals, FanDuel makes betting on the NFL easier than ever before. So make the most of this football season and download FanDuel today. 19-plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. I'm back with Joe Daniels, who covers Haiti for the Financial Times. Now, Haiti has dealt with generations of instability. And so I asked Joe,

what makes this current eruption different? Well, the main thing that has happened is that gangs that spent much of the last few years fighting against each other have now united to fight against the state. So the current escalation in violence in Haiti can be traced back to the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. Local media reporting that the assailant stormed into the president's bedroom, shooting him 12 times. His wife shot three times.

He is murdered in his mansion in an upscale suburb of Port-au-Prince, Petit-en-Ville, in the middle of the night. More than a dozen of the suspects are former members of the Colombian army. Among the suspects, two Americans. Beyond that, the circumstances largely remain shrouded in mystery. There are dual investigations taking place, one in Haiti and one in Florida. They're ongoing.

Since that assassination, we've seen the security situation in Haiti, especially in Port-au-Prince, the capital, deteriorate amid a kind of political parallel crisis. And that is due to the muddled succession or lack of succession plan put in place following Moïse's assassination. So Moïse is assassinated in July 2021.

His prime minister at the time, Claude Joseph, was the de facto leader of the country for about 13 days. In that time, Ariel Henry emerged victorious in a sort of power struggle to succeed Moise in a kind of larger longer term. The 71 year old neurosurgeon is calling for unity but he's facing a long list of social and political issues. We will create a secure reliable and stable environment to facilitate political activities throughout the country. Ariel Henry had the key backing of what at the time was called the Core Group, an international coalition led by the US, France and Canada. So Aurélien Henry emerges victorious in that power struggle. He is acting prime minister. He draws some legitimacy from the

fact that Moise, before his assassination, had named Henri as his next prime minister, though hadn't actually kind of made that official. But the Haitian public never recognised Henri. This government won't think for the people. They're unpopular. They're only thinking for the elite again. To them, he was anointed by, anointed by a coalition outside of Haiti. They saw it as a kind of puppet of the US.

And at various moments in the last 32 months, Haitians had taken en masse to the streets to protest Henri. Barricades of burning tires in the streets of Port-au-Prince as protesters took to the streets for the second day in a row. They're calling for Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign, accusing him of failing to tackle a devastating surge in gang violence. They called for his resignation a number of times and gangs had increasingly also called for it, claiming to represent the people, the Haitian people out there in the streets.

All of this is happening since Moises' death in 2021 amid a wider deterioration of the security situation in Potterprince as gangs thrive in the absence of really a Haitian state. While, of course, terrorizing the people, extorting Haitians, kidnapping Haitians, rich and poor alike, for ransoms that you hear ranging from 50 bucks to a million and beyond. The gangs are seen as kind of having thrived in part due to Henri's kind of indifference to the situation, not doing enough to clamp down on them. Prime Minister Ariel Henry is the head of the government. He has done absolutely nothing for the population.

Insecurity is everywhere. The roads are destroyed and no one can go on with their daily life. And also there are some accusations that the gangs have connections with Haitian political elites, including Ariel Henry, including Jovenel Moïse. So you're describing a lot of instability. But up until recently, the gangs were competing with each other. And then the turn here is that the gangs have united. Tell us what their motive is and what emerged from them uniting. The honest answer is we don't know exactly why they united, but it is a huge surprise that it took them so long. The consequences are plain to see. Armed gangs demanding the prime minister's resignation have attacked two prisons,

allowing thousands of inmates to escape, leaving dozens dead and wounded. They've managed to, through coordinated attacks, shut down the country. The international airport has stopped operating. No flights in or out. The timing for all of this happening right now, for the gangs coming together right now, is also quite informative of the wider situation. Ariel Henry had left the country. He left the country initially to go to Guyana, which is the seat of CARICOM, the Caribbean community, a trade bloc of Caribbean countries. He went to a summit in Guyana with CARICOM and then went straight from there to Kenya in order to shore up support for an international mission to bolster Haiti's police force.

Kenya's government first pledged 1,000 officers to lead the security mission last July. But the initiative had been tied up in court challenges ever since. The gangs may have seen that as a kind of opportune moment to launch their strikes. Strikes which have been described as a preemptive strike on any possible mission that could arrive to try and kind of quell the violence in Haiti. Who are the gang leaders? Well, the most prominent gang leader is Jimmy Trussier. Once a Haitian police officer,

he is now the leader of a powerful confederation of gangs called G9, which controls much of Port-au-Prince and its suburbs. Better known by the alias Barbecue or Barbecue. He claims that that nickname

comes from his mother's roadside chicken restaurant. Analysts say it could well be due to his tendency for burning victims alive. Yes, he's a gruesome figure. He is the youngest of eight children. He's from an impoverished neighborhood of Port-au-Prince called La Saline. He's very media savvy, very charismatic, paints himself as a revolutionary, has a kind of almost a social media operation. He gives kind of press conferences from the slums of Port-au-Prince, surrounded by his footmen in balaclavas holding assault rifles. Cherizier says he wants revolution.

Now our fight will enter another phase to overthrow the whole system, a system that is 5% of people who control 95% of the country's wealth. Can the Haitian government such as it is, can it do anything? That's not an easy question to answer. It's not even that easy right now to kind of have a clear idea of what the Haitian government is. Ariel Henry, the acting prime minister, is out of the country. Ariel Henry says that he will step down once a transitional presidential council is created. He has been stranded in Puerto Rico since armed gangs unleashed a wave of deadly

violence. He appears unwilling or unable to return. His life would certainly be in danger if he does manage to return. In his stead, his finance minister is now acting PM. We see a power vacuum there that really kind of gets projected across the whole country. The Haitian state for decades hasn't been able to really exercise sovereignty over all of its territory. And so the government as such is very much unable to get the gangs under control. That is why this international mission was initially requested by the Haitian government, by Ariel Omri. The police force nominally is around 9,000 members. In reality, that number is likely much smaller. Many Haitian police would have migrated

or just melted away into the communities. So the prospects for the Haitian government alone being able to bring the gangs to heel is wildly unlikely. There is a plan for a government, right? Yes, that's correct. There is a plan for a government, right? Yes, that's correct. There is a plan for a government by council. Now the United States and countries in the Caribbean CARICOM trading bloc are pushing for a transitional council made up of the country's political parties to appoint a new interim prime minister and lay a roadmap for elections. The gangs have already said that they won't recognise the council or any body that is kind of mediated or put there by the international community.

Cherizia, talking to Al Jazeera, rejected that council. We're not going to recognise the decisions that CARICOM takes. I'm going to say to the traditional politicians that are sitting down with CARICOM, since they went with their families abroad, we who stayed in Haiti have to take the decisions. It's not just people with guns who have damaged the country, but politicians too. Within the council itself, there appears to be little consensus. It will be made up of members of Haiti's political class

as well as the private sector and the church. And that committee so far hasn't kind of been able to land on the names that it will be made up of. So the ability for it to then convene elections against a security backdrop as bad as Haiti's really looks like a tall order at this moment. The United States has over the years at times intervened in Haiti's politics. Where does the U.S. stand today on Haiti? Well, the U.S. has backed Ariel Henry since he assumed power in July 2021. That changed this month with these attacks back in Haiti while Henri was out of the country, with the US explicitly calling for Henri to expedite a transition towards elections.

And the US has backed the plan drafted by CARICOM, the Caribbean Communities Trade Block, for a transitional presidential council. The UN supports that. So the US is still very much an active participant in mediating Haiti's political crisis. The argument that the gangs are making is, we don't want international observers. We don't want international police forces. We want Haiti to be left alone. Now, Haiti's been in crisis for generations. There's been a lot of international intervention in the meantime, and not a lot of it seems to have worked. Is anybody responsible making the argument that perhaps it's time to let Haitians deal with Haiti? Well, absolutely, that argument's being made,

and that argument's being made by people in Haiti at all levels. The US has called for a Haitian-led solution, of course, while itself having a stake, but has said that the solution needs to be led by Haiti. The question analysts have is, to what extent can international actors support a Haitian-led solution in a way that actually supports a Haitian-led solution and doesn't become its own problem and doesn't end up supplanting Haiti's ability to build up its own state. There was Joe Daniels with the Financial Times coming up what gang violence in Haiti looks like from a man living through it just outside of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. Thank you. digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift,

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it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting aururaFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Do apply. on business spend. I don't know what any of that means, but Ramp might be able to help. Ramp is a corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your back pocket.

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I'm a founding member and the executive director of La Coup La Paix, which is a conflict transformation and peace-building community and organization located in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I live in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince, in a town called Pétionville. Residents of Louis' neighborhood, him included, were nervously waiting on Friday when we talked as the gangs moved closer and closer. Well, first of all, we're experiencing a tremendous sense of insecurity. This morning, I was thinking, I've been thinking a little bit about the fact that if my own neighborhood was attacked like other neighborhoods are being attacked, you know, what am I going to do? Yesterday, the chief of police home was ransacked and looted. Yesterday, also 15 minutes away from

my own home, there's the Vitellum gang who ransacked a row of houses, looted them. So they're 15 minutes away from me. Vitel Om Innocent is a notorious Haitian gang leader wanted in connection with kidnapping 16 American missionaries in 2021, along with an American couple in 2022. I fled my neighborhood when my husband was killed in front of me. But then they set fire to my house again. I'm 62.

I can't take it anymore. If they come over to my side of the town, what am I going to do? Am I going to run? Am I going to resist? Am I going to try to talk to them? As a peace builder myself, my personal tendency would be to try to talk to them. As a peace builder myself, my personal tendency

would be to try to talk to them. But I have family, I have friends, I have relatives, and they're saying, get out, let them loot, you know, don't risk your life. They're not about talking, they're about killing and burning and maiming and raping. This woman's sister sister shot and killed. This one's husband burned alive inside their home.

This woman tells us she was raped. So I hear you saying, I'm in my house, and I understand that if these men get close, I could be in the same position as the people whose houses were looted and ransacked. How are you watching hour by hour to know where these fellas are? There's a lot of news on social networks, on WhatsApp. And we keep tabs to the telephone, what's going on. So I know people that live in the areas that Viti Lom is attacking right now. And I touch

base with them to see how the night was. And from my home, I can hear the staccato of gunshots in those neighborhoods throughout the night. Do you have family living with you? Are you alone in the house?

Actually, we have a family compound with several houses. It's a historic family compound. It's called a laku. And laku lape, the name laku lape is basically talking about a yard, a peace yard. Haiti should be a big family yard where everybody is living in peace. That's the idea behind La Coulapé. So I have cousins that are here. We have actually moved the La Coulapé office in the LACU

so that we don't have to go into the streets to get to work. And my children had chosen to stay in Europe and in the United States. They can't even come in and I can't even go see them because the airport is closed. We are in an open prison right now, open light prison right now, because you can't go out to the provinces by the road. You can't go out of the city by air. So we are totally encircled. And the humanitarian situation is growing even worse, first of all, because a lot of

people have been displaced from their homes and they have nowhere else to go. Whichever neighborhood they go into, they're going to be displaced again. People are moving from one neighborhood to another. When they're in that other neighborhood, there's a gang that's moving in in that neighborhood and then they have to move to another neighborhood. I want to ask you lastly, what you think should be done here? You're obviously somebody who spent a lot of time thinking about what Haiti needs and also maybe what Haiti does not need. If someone were to hand you a magic wand and say, you can fix this, but it's going to take a really good idea to fix this. What would you want done? There needs to be a military or police counterweight to the tyranny, the armed tyranny of the gangs. There needs to be the cutting off of the supply of guns and ammunition that are coming from the United States.

A recent U.N. report states that the principal source of guns in Haiti is Florida. Handguns sold at Florida gun shows for $400 to $500 draw as much as 20 times more in Haiti. There needs to be a cutoff of that supply. And for me, the best way to do that is to reinforce Haitian customs, reinforce the Haitian border. Once the supply is brought to a trickle, then the gangs will be more disposed to negotiate also. The structural violence that exists in this country has to be transformed,

but it cannot be transformed by more violence. We've had 200 years of violence in this country. It's not working. It's never going to work. What we need to do as a society is talk to each other and decide that we are becoming a different society. We have to break those cycles. That was Louis-Henri Mars in Haiti. Special thanks today to author and journalist Michael Divert.

Today's episode was produced by Miles Bryan and edited by Matthew Collette. It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Hadi Mouagdi, and our engineer is Patrick Boyd. The rest of our team includes Amanda Llewellyn, Victoria Chamberlain, Avishai Artsy, Halima Shah, Jesse Alejandro Cottrell, supervising editor Amina El-Sadi, executive producer Miranda Kennedy, and my co-host Sean Ramos-Firm, whose BBL looks fantastic. Sean is back tomorrow. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you