Geneva, Feb 14 (EFE). – Criminal gangs operating in Haiti, which control 80% of the capital Port-au-Prince, including the entrances and exits of the city, are much better organized and armed than those of previous decades, warns a report to the international UN mission.
The study, released this week by the Global Initiative against Transnational Crime, a Geneva-based think tank, says some 200 gangs operate on Haitian territory, some of them “well-structured, well-armed and operationally competent,” with increasing self-financing capacity and growing autonomy from the politicians and businessmen they once served.
“Over the past years, gangs have undergone a radical evolution, going from rather unstructured actors dependent on resources provided by public or private patronage to violent entrepreneurs who have been able to convert their territorial power into governance capabilities,” the report says.
“This shift has been fueled by the gangs’ unprecedented access to firearms and the Haitian state’s inability to halt their expansion, professionalization, and propensity to impose their rule over ever-larger territories, as well as by ongoing collusion by elements of the country’s political and economic elites,” it adds.
According to the report, the gangs pose a challenge to the long-awaited UN-backed international force that Haiti’s unelected government requested in October 2022 to support its under-resourced police force and alleviate the humanitarian crisis.
The report notes that the existence of gangs in Haiti dates back to the time of François Duvalier’s “Papa Doc” dictatorship between 1957 and 1971, with his notorious Tonton Macoutes, a paramilitary and secret police force.
For decades, these groups were largely disjointed and weak, but the report says that has changed radically.
“These ‘young veterans,’ as one interviewee called them, have learned from the mistakes of their former bosses and are running much more sophisticated organizations than their predecessors,” the report says.
“They resemble… relatively sophisticated drug cartels, militias, or paramilitary groups, rather than the low-capacity gangs that operated in Haiti in the 2000s and early 2010s,” it said.
At least 23 major gangs, some with thousands of members, operate in the capital, forming two major coalitions, one of them the “G9 Alliance,” led by ex-cop Jimmy Chérizier (aka Barbecue) and originally linked to one of the country’s main political parties, the liberal-conservative Tet Kale.
In opposition, with frequent armed clashes between the two, is the G-Pep coalition founded by Ti Gabriel.
The report underscores the tight control the gangs have over the capital, to the point that “to travel in and out of Port-au-Prince, one must take the risk of driving through a criminal checkpoint; the alternative, for the few who can afford it, is to board a small plane.”
The Armed Groups Research Organization also warns of the rapid spread of gang violence into rural areas of Haiti, such as the province of Artibonito, the country’s main food production center, where more than 20 criminal groups operate.
Murders and extortion in this area north of Port-au-Prince have caused crops in Artibonito to drop by more than half in five years, contributing to the food and humanitarian crisis in this neighboring country of the Dominican Republic.
Gangs also terrorize travelers on the country’s main artery, National Highway 1, which connects the capital to the main cities in the north, and where hundreds of people have been kidnapped.
According to the UN, 4,789 people were killed, 1,698 injured and 2,490 kidnapped in Haiti in 2023, with the country’s homicide rate at 40.9 per 100,000 people, double that of the previous year and one of the highest in the world.
The deployment of the security mission in Haiti is facing delays, as the plan has been blocked by Kenyan courts, which declared the measure unconstitutional. EFE
abc/mcd/ics
