Living Together: The Gangs of Haiti - Part 2: Fighting Back

Foreign.

In the southwest of Haiti, there is a department called NEEP. In 2022, a video emerged from that region showing an alleged senior member of the Fife Segund gang, the group led by the flamboyant rapper Iz. It's dark, but you can clearly see that this man is on the floor. The light of the camera shines his face and the ground around him. As they question him, there are clearly multiple people also standing over him. The man on the floor would be dead shortly afterwards.

His name was Zo Porson and he'd been tracked down not by another gang, but an armed group under the leadership of the Commissioner of Mirguan, Jean Ernest Muskadin. Muskadin describes Oporson as ezo's right hand and reportedly promised that as long as I am a government commissioner, the city of Miruguan will remain a cemetery for bandits. Izo responded by kidnapping 38 people and threatening Muskodin directly.

In an interview with a local outlet, Muskuddin said that gangs can't enter our region or set up shop here. We've put up defenses and barriers in all different towns entering the deep south so that the whole rest of the south is safe. This way, criminals can't invade us and people can live and come to the department where they can live in peace and enjoy their lives as they should.

But despite his success and significant local popularity, his actions received some criticism from other politicians and human rights organizations. And yet the response from his own constituents has been positive. A huge march took place on the streets of Mioguan in support of him and Muskuddin took aim at those criticizing him by saying, criminals who kill and terrorise people.

When these offenders are captured or killed, human rights groups defend them without questioning the lives of the people who are their victims. They don't talk about that. Are they honest and serious people? That's a question to ask. Welcome to Deep Dive from the Global Initiative Against Transnational

Organised Crime. I'm Jack Meaghan Vickers and this is Living Together. The Gangs of Haiti Part 2. Fighting back. During the 80s and early 90s, Pablo Esquire's Medellin cartel was looking for ways to move cocaine into the the US and saw an opportunity in using Haiti as a transit point, utilizing the chaos in Haiti at the time.

After the removal of Jean Claude Duvalier from power, the son of the Haitian dictator Francois Duvalier, the cartel began working with a military man named Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Michel Francois, who was tasked with protecting and monitoring an airstrip outside of Port au Prince where cocaine laden planes would land and take off. He earned millions from this. A new president was elected in 1991, Jean Bertrand Aristide. But just a year later he was ousted in a military coup.

One of those that led that coup was Lt. Col. Joseph Michel Francois, who was then appointed as the head of police in Port au Prince and hired his own people to run the ports and the airport. Cocaine seizures in Haiti plummeted to zero. The Fox was in charge of the hen house. He then turned to a little known gang run by a guy called Bourdoin Quetto, known as Jacques, who handled a transshipment to the us.

Now I just want to mention one other name here because he will be important for later in this story. Guy Philippe. Guy Philippe was trained in Ecuador by the US Special Forces and he became a commander in the Haitian National Police back in the 90s in Cape Haitian, which is an important port in the north. He was dismissed in 2000 because of his alleged role in the first coup against Aristide. He fled to the Dominican Republic and we'll be hearing again from him later.

Anyway, the military junta collapsed in just a few years and President Aristide returned to power to finish his term. Fast forward to 2003 and Jacques, the man Lt. Col. Joseph Michel Francois had put in place, had risen to become a powerful player. It's also alleged that he was the godfather to one of President Aristide's daughters and possibly helped finance his political career.

From his hilltop mansion above Port au Prince, Jacques and his network worked with Colombian cartels to move tons of cocaine into the US reportedly earning around $13 million a year. By this time, Aristide had again returned to power and under pressure from the us, he expelled Jacques, who was extradited to the US to face trial for cocaine trafficking. Another cocaine trafficker called Jean Helbert jasmine, known as Eddie1, who was also expelled by Aristide and then became a witness for the us.

He spoke about how they would move cocaine from Colombia to South Florida via Haiti, either through airplanes or boats. Now, when Jacques was facing trial in the us, he made some pretty extraordinary accusations against the President, claiming that he could not have operated his cocaine business without paying huge bribes to President Aristide, and then went on to accuse the President of being a drug lord and turning Haiti into a narco state.

President Aristide denied all allegations and accusations. That being said, a number of people surrounding the President were convicted, including his security chief from the Presidential palace, Oriel Jean, who flipped and turned witness helping to convict another prominent Haitian cocaine Trafficker Serge Edouard. In 2005, 10 years after his release, Oriel Jean was assassinated in Haiti by two men on a motorcycle in 2015.

Jacques was released that same year and deported back to Haiti, where he appears to have drifted from the public consciousness. President Aristide was again toppled in a coup in 2004. The coup was supported by the Front for National Liberation and Reconstruction, a paramilitary group set up by former police commander and US Special forces trained Guy Philippe. The people that are in the streets, in Capitian, in Hans, in Gunaev, in Port au Prince, in my side, all over the country, I am the chief.

I'm sorry, say that again, please. I am the chief. Every time we have a good president, they kill it. They kill him. They want to take all the power here so they can keep on stealing the country's money, and they have some contact with the international community to come and give people that wants, that really want to help, to give us pressure. But this time, we want to take this pressure. If they want to kill me, I'm ready. They can come and kill me. I'm ready to die for my country

now. At the end of part one, we talked about extortion and how this is where the Haitian gangs make the majority of their money. But there are those within the Vivons Homme alliance that have international connections within markets like cocaine, people smuggling and firearms. And so if we start with cocaine, obviously, despite the risks and scrutiny associated with it, cocaine is obviously still a very attractive illicit market for organized crime.

And it's no different in Haiti because the rewards can be huge. His remain, but this is a very. Very small portion of the gangs that actually control and have access to international cocaine trafficking. And those gangs therefore, are even more rich than the others because they have access to this incredible source of income which is unbeatable, unparalleled, which is cocaine money.

So those gangs, which are again, like a very small portion of them, will get money from extortion plus cocaine money, putting them in a very, very different dynamic because they have more money than the rest. And the international connection they do have, therefore, and this has been apparently very well implemented through Vivonson, is that you therefore have a small proportion of gangs that have connection with international cocaine traffickers. For example.

This is like one very precise section of the gangs.

And you must have connection with Colombian traffickers in that case, and then a number of other regional traffickers or intermediaries from many countries, Venezuela, small islands in the Caribbean, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, et cetera, because you need to coordinate the international Trafficking of cocaine because cocaine doesn't go for Haiti, Haitian market, like it just comes and goes and ends up like in massive shipments that have to go to Europe mainly, or maybe a bit.

To the US There have been rumblings that the chaos in Haiti could see it becoming an increasingly important node on the cocaine trafficking route to Europe or the us. Indeed, Eddie Wong, the Haitian cocaine trafficker we mentioned a minute ago, the one who became a U.S. witness in 2004 who helped to prosecute at least 17 other former Haitian officials, police officers and traffickers, was released early due to his cooperation.

Now, you perhaps assume that Eddie would turn his back on the cocaine business that had landed him in jail, but no. After his release, Eddie Warne quickly jumped back into the business. In 2020, he was arrested in an operation by the Haitian National Police in Port au Prince, who caught him with 83 kilos of cocaine and weapons. A Colombian national was also indicted in that same conspiracy.

But that being said, the vast majority of gangs in Haiti are very much local and they rely heavily on extortion for their existence. Haitian gangs are not like Mexican drug cartels. They don't have the ability to run a tri continental network of purchasing and distribution of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl between like Europe, Latin America and the U.S. for example, like the Mexican drug carousels do. Haitian gangs are a very powerful and yet very, very localized criminal actors.

They operate on small turfs, small territories in Haiti and are extremely grounded. They're not like, in a way, of course, they're transnational criminals because they have access to different markets, but they're not Mexican drug cartels.

And the fact that they rely on very grounded activities also goes back again to the issue of extortion, that basically their revenue and their business model is based on the fact that you need to be grounded if you want to extort people and economies, you need to. Be there, away from cocaine. The focus is on weapons. The first example of this is the so

called guns for ganja trade. Here's Jacqueline. This involves Jamaica, ganja, marijuana, and that there's trading going on, you know, in exchange for marijuana to get guns or in exchange for guns as marijuana. We have seen, for instance, in the Turks and Caicos, which is not far off the northern coast of Haiti, that boats that are bringing in migrants.

There's been, I think, a $2 million bus, a marijuana bus that was recently, in the last year that was discovered and I think there was another one, two separate bus. The belief is there is that it's Coming in from Jamaica to the southern coast of Haiti, and then it is making its way to the northern coast. It's unclear if it's by road or by sea. Probably by sea. And then it's getting on these boats that normally would be used to smuggle people.

According to reports, different weapons are worth a certain weight in cannabis. So 30 pounds of cannabis will get you an assault rifle, 10 pounds, a handgun, a kilogram of cocaine can get you three rifles. Local fishermen are often used as the smugglers, and their vessels are often kitted out with better engines supplied by the Jamaican gangs. The boats usually carry up to 3,000 pounds of cannabis.

These weapons then end up in the hands of gangs in Jamaica, which has its own significant problem with gangs and one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America and the Caribbean region. Now, the weapons that are trafficked from Haiti to Jamaica are sometimes known as rusty guns, which means they're a little old. They've often come from ex Soviet stocks originally shipped to Central and South America, but some can even be traced back to stocks from Europe. But overwhelmingly,

the weapons that are swamping Haiti come from the US and are purchased through brokers who often use straw buyers. In fact, the vast cachet of arms and weapons are so potent and diverse. That it far surpasses that of the. Country'S own police force. Now, ironically, Haiti does not produce any weapons. It has no firearms or ammunition manufacturing facilities or. Or capability. So how are these gangs getting these deadly weapons?

A UN report in January stated that guns and ammunition were being smuggled into Haiti by land, air, and mostly by sea from the United States and in. Particular from the state of Florida. His bill.

Yeah, this is a real scandal, actually, because the UN Security Council, in addition to creating the multinational force and in addition to creating a sanctions committee to put sanctions on people responsible for the violence, whether that's a gang leader or a politician or a business person, or all three in one. They also imposed an international arms embargo on Haiti, and that embargo is being violated right and left. Most of the weapons come from the United states. It's over 80% for sure.

Probably 90% come from the United States. They come directly, a chunk of them from Florida mostly, but also from Texas and Louisiana, it seems. And they have buyers, straw buyers, which. That is illegal even in the United States. You know, some of these purchases are illegal, and it certainly is illegal to send that kind of weapon outside the country without proper licensing and permits. So that's clearly illegal.

And they have buyers, often members of the Haitian Diaspora who are linked with gangs, and there are, tragically to say, in the United States, and they facilitate these purchases and the shipments. Some of the weapons also come through the Dominican Republic across the border. So they, again, mostly starting in the US but then going to the doctor and then across. They are very heavy weapons. You're right. In most cases, most times, the gangs have more firepower than the Haitian National Police.

And obviously that's a huge disadvantage. So there's a problem, obviously, on the US Side of it. There is a failure to inspect, a failure to enforce US Laws to catch these weapons as they leave. There's also clearly a failure with Haitian customs at their ports to inspect what's coming in. In March this year, Dominican customs officers seized a huge quantity of ammunition, 36,000 cartridges and 23 firearms which were sent from Miami and destined for Haiti.

This came just a short time after the seizure of 37 weapons sent through the same port in santo domingo. In 2024, a senior Dominican police officer, alongside nine other officers, was arrested as part of an investigation that had seen 900,000 projectiles sent over the border into Haiti. He allegedly received cash stuffed in a bag after each delivery. After the emergence of Vince Hommes, the whole process of purchasing firearms has been streamlined.

Ironically, there are more illegal weapons in Haiti now than ever before, despite a UN Arms embargo. Here's Romain. What we see is that since the installation of Vivre Ensemble, apparently the gangs have been very good at coordinating the effort to get weapons and ammunition. Meaning that it's not like all the gangs get on the market and start buying weapons and ammunitions.

Is that you have certain gangs that have the contacts and the ability and the networks and the money to acquire weapons and ammunitions and then resell them or redistribute them among other gangs that go through them to actually buy them from international markets. And those come again from the US they come from the Dominican Republic with the complicity of corrupt army, corrupt police officers, corrupt custom officers.

And this has been documented and proven even by the Dominican court and Dominican justice that have been, you know, prosecuting police officers, army officers, and customs officers over the past weeks and couple of months on cases of massive shipments of weapons and ammunitions going to Haiti. And this is also critical for gangs because gangs have always been interested and organized around key points of entry to the Dominican Republic.

And over the past year, they have been able to push into that and to actually control lots of regions that are official points of entry and transit at the border, but also a Couple of illicit places. So the gangs have been very good at moving towards the border because they know that from the border you control weapons trafficking, drugs trafficking, human smuggling, and any other sort of contraband that happens between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. So they do have that connection as well.

Earlier I very briefly mentioned the former leader of 400 Mawazo called Jolly Germain, known as Yon Yon. He was extradited to the US in 2022 and sentenced to 35 years in prison for his crimes. One of the most interesting things to come out of his trial related to weapons because he smuggled firearms into Haiti from the US for the gangs. Kalashnikovs, AR15s, M4 carbines, M1As, and even a.50 caliber rifle.

And they were paid using laundered money that had come from the ransoms received from kidnapping. Alongside Germain, his US girlfriend, Elianda Tunis, who styled herself as the queen of 400 muazo, was also sentenced to 12 and a half years for her role in the conspiracy.

Two more Haitians residing in Florida called Jocelyn Dore and Walder St. Louis, acted as straw purchasers for Germain and bought 24 firearms, claiming they were the legal owners of the weapons, when in fact they would be sent on to Haiti. The weapons were smuggled in containers labeled as food and household goods. Here's Jacqueline. The trafficking of arms have come from Florida, particularly Port of Miami.

We have the Everglades, but what we've also started to see recently is that traffickers are looking for new routes. You know, one particular story that at the Miami Herald we did a couple of months ago, it involved when some guns arrived in Cape Haitian, which is the second largest city. And this is because the port in Port au Prince was shut down at the time. And they found these guns in a container.

And so in this particular scenario, and I think that unfortunately it happens more than we know, a gentleman pulled up to a lot where they were basically the gathering boxes to fill out a container to ship to Haiti. And the gentleman said, I have a box and a casino table that I would like to send. How much is it? And the person who was doing the container gave him a price. He gives. His box is already taped up.

He gives the container a table, he gets a receipt, gives the person that needs to get his information when you arrive. And a couple of weeks later, the police officers that are in Cape Town, they're there, but they're actually having to go through everything by hand in the hot sun. And they see that there's a worker, an official that's there who shows up and says, hey, you know what? That box that casino table goes are mine. You could just give it to me.

You don't need to, you don't need to check it. And so the police officers, they got very suspicious. And these are actually like anti drug trafficking cops who are now having to go through, you know, custom stuff. And they're seeing this customs officially and they're like, this is strange. And. And the guy is insistent. He's already have one box in his vehicle. And so thank goodness for police training because they said something's not right.

And they started to search and that's when they found weapons. And it was a cachet of arms that they discovered. And then the next week they discovered some more. There is no scanner in the entire country to scan weapons. And on the side of the United States, they tell us that they only search shipments if there's a tip. So a lot of this is going in by sea, it's going in by boat, by containers, and it's getting curved again. We've seen the strategic thinking of the gangs on the Vivonson.

As Romain said, they have pushed out into the border areas with the Dominican Republic because securing those entry points makes the likelihood of weapons getting into Haiti much easier. And this is actually a good marker in how the Haitian gangs have developed and evolved because until recently, it was much more difficult to get hold of weapons. Right before the assassination of President Jovial Moise.

In my investigation with my colleague Jay Weaver, you know, what we have found is that some of the alleged people who were involved, they were having conversations with some of the gang members and they were trying to get the gang members on board. And at the same time, they were also calling around town trying to get access to guns because they didn't have enough guns and they couldn't ship the guns in.

Today, if you were to think about trying to repeat this scenario, they don't have to call anybody. The guns are there. You know, there's not a desperate reach for arms. So if you want to talk about what the before and after, you know, before you didn't have as many guns. And so these guys were there, they were more menaced than threatening. But today they have military grade weapons. Today they are flooded with weapons. And so what do they need the politicians for?

They've been able to function up until this very moment in the last three years with the total absence of any elected official. This proliferation of weapons in Haiti has caused some concerns in the region with other Caribbean nations stating that migratory Flows could be used to smuggle weapons into their countries. Indeed, that's one thing that's been happening in places like the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Routes originally used for the movement of people are now being used for weapons and drugs as well. And gang violence has increased there as a result. In mid August, the Turks and Caicos Islands police force were responding to a call about the illegal landing of 15 Haitian migrants. They also found $131,000 worth of marijuana. You see, this is a common route for migrants attempting to illegally enter the US or Canada.

They go from Haiti to the Turks and Caicos Islands or Bahamas before trying to enter the US or Canada. But that being said, according to a report for the UN Security Council, over 330,000 Haitians left the country in 2023 alone for over 20 different countries.

So during this investigation into the situation in Haiti, we've tried to show the different ways that gangs control their territory through things like extortion and kidnappings. But one absolute staple for a criminal gang attempting to control an area and population is the threat of violence. And in the case of Haiti, that violence is often more than just a threat. It's a reality and it's brutal. And this is an ever changing situation.

Life can look very different depending on which gang controls the territory. So with that in mind, what's it like to live in these areas that are under the heel of the gangs? Two years ago, I remember being in the eastern part of the capital in Tabar and where you have the major gangs, Katzamaozo, Krasibarrie with and then you have another gang, Shimon.

And what people were saying to me, for instance, like people who lived in the area of she Michon, that if people had a dispute with their neighbors, it was the gang leader who basically adjudicated that dispute and basically gave whatever the punishment or whatever that was going to be, we've heard and we've written about with Tata Mozo. They started off as, you know, sort of stealing cattle and extortion.

And now they've basically taken over people's businesses and they burned people's businesses to the ground. And that has become a very, you know, serious issue. We have seen the UN just recently issued a report just said just such a Last year there were at least 60500 gender based violence incidents and 2/3 of those were rapes and 2/3 of the rapes were being carried out by armed gangs. So what does this tell you?

This tells you that in these poor neighborhoods where people are living, where gangs are either fighting for control or in control, that it's the very people in their territory that are being terrorized, that are being killed, that are being raped, that are having their access to health care, to hospitals, to schools, all cut off or worse, destroyed.

So you know, yes, the gang members often you will hear when they project themselves and they talk about the pain of the population, they talk about the inequality that exists. But unfortunately, the evidence of being their, of their actions doesn't fit their words. Like we've seen in other parts of the world, the gangs control the routes in and out of areas with checkpoints set up all over the place. The fundamental reason behind this is it's another form of rent extraction.

Now, according to one business owner operating in Port au Prince who was moving goods through the port, he called Haiti a checkpoint society and that they've been living this way for decades. And research carried out by the GI has shown that the business of checkpoints in Haiti has in some cases become highly structured and bureaucratized. For example, if you are someone who regularly passes through checkpoints, you can ask for a pass that allows you to pay a lump sum just once a week.

Rather than deal with the daily delays that checkpoints create, the driver has to present himself to a person known as the tutor, who is stationed in a nearby office. Over the course of a day, some checkpoints can make up to US$8,000. And given the GDP per capita in Haiti is around $1,700 annually, you can see how much money these checkpoints are generating. In relative terms, as we've heard, according to estimates, gangs now control around 85 to 90% of Port au Prince.

And with that level of control, much of the violence committed by gang members is met with no justice because the levels of impunity are so high. Who are you going to complain to? Here's Bill. When I interview these survivors of sexual violence, I had to ask the question, even though I know the answer. I said, did you report this to the police? And they said, what police? What do you mean there's no police? I said, did you go to the courts? You know what court?

They looked at me like I was crazy. And so that's the reality, the dire, dire reality. And that has to be fixed. It really does. It's probably worth mentioning at this point that away from the gang leaders who comprises the gangs themselves, because like other parts of the world that suffer from these urban gangs, the makeup of them is young, Many of the members are children.

What they've told me directly and what I've you know, talked to others about who are following this very closely in Haiti is that they basically, they coerced the children to join in different ways. So one is the softer approach, so to speak, of, here's some money. We're going to feed you a hot meal every day. You're going to have a gun. You'll kind of be a big shot in your neighborhood. I asked him, why did you join? And they said, well, you know, we had nothing else.

We went to school, we did whatever grade they finished, but there were no jobs, nothing, no future. And one of them said to me something I'll never forget. He said, and when you're hungry, you don't think about fear. The other way is much more brutal in that they will be threatened. Gang members will go up to a young person and say, essentially, join or else join this gang or else we'll kill you, rape your sister. Then you have to prove yourself. And again, this is not unique to Haiti.

So you might start out, okay, you're a lookout. You know, you're just at a corner and you watch and you report, are the police coming? Or is this guy? Where is that guy going? Or this license plate? And then maybe you become a messenger. You know, you take something from gang leader A to outpost B, and then it graduates from that to then maybe you are involved in an operation, and then you get involved with violence in some way.

And so then you kind of are almost entrapped at that point because you've been sucked into this. So I think it's a combination of. Of methods that they use, but they are preying on an extremely vulnerable. That's the key. I think if. If these kids had any other option, and this is what they've also said. There's a nun I. I work a lot with who one of the worst gang areas. She told me she'll have some of the gang. The kids come up to her and say, sister, help me get out of this.

I don't want to do this. Please, this. Is there something else? I just can't stand it. And she said, that happens all the time, and it's hard to leave, as you know. You know, with gangs, once you're in, they don't want you to leave, and it can be dangerous to leave. And the number of kids that are part of these gangs is astounding. Is Whitlaw, according to a UN entity, more than, you know, 50%.

I'm seeing numbers up to 70% of gang members underwent kids that are forced to be enrolled in these criminal Organizations. Now, when a gang controls everything from movement to life and death. In these brutal little fiefdoms, women and girls often suffer the most. There are now over 1 million internally displaced people in Haiti living in temporary camps. According to a UN report, 90% of women interviewed had no source of income at all.

A significant proportion of those had resorted to prostitution. Alongside this, gangs control access to aid and often rape is being used in most camps as a deliberate tactic to control access to humanitarian assistance. There was this one story where a gang launched an attack in City Sale. And the woman interviewed said that people were being shot, houses were being burned. So she and her husband decided they needed to leave with their children.

They walked for hours before eventually being stopped by a gang. They separated her and the children from her husband who was talking to the gang members. They proceeded to rape her in front of her two crying children. After this ordeal, she asked to see her husband and she was taken by a gang member to his badly beaten body and she was knocked unconscious. When she woke, she saw the burning remains of her husband's body lying next to her.

She was raped again about two weeks later by three men as she was out searching for food for her children. In a separate incident, her own daughter was raped by two gang members at the age of nine. Here's Bill. The UN Human Rights Bureau within the UN Mission in Haiti basically stopped giving statistics because they said whatever statistic we give would be so misleadingly low. We don't want to do it.

We can't keep up with the number of cases and we know there's a huge amount of under reported cases because of the stigma and because, and I've asked, I, I interviewed again, I interviewed some survivors of sexual violence and these were not women who were recruited in the gang. These are women who were sexually abused by gangs, which is, you know, that's really common and that's a tactic. I mean that's systematic. When I talk about the systematic policy of gangs, that's one of them.

Again to show control. We dominate this area. Especially when they take over a new area. Sexual violence goes off the charts. But the girls who end up in the gangs often are sexual slaves essentially and they'll also do cooking, you know, cleaning up around the headquarters, that kind of thing. But it's pretty horrible. And then the other danger that they all face, as I said, it's, it's hard to leave a gang. It's hard for.

Another reason I haven't mentioned is that there are these self defense groups, the Bois Calais who It's judge, jury, executioner, literally. And some women. There have been cases where women who were suspected of having been a gang member, a girlfriend or whatever of a gang member or leader, they've been killed. If they've lost that protection for whatever reason.

And certainly young men or anyone who's in a neighborhood where they're not recognized now, they don't have an ID or if they have a certain tattoo, they are killed on the spot and the body's burned, and that's increasing and that's very worrying.

What bill is talking about here is something known as boa kaile in Haitian creole, which means something like bare stick. Now, vigilante groups or self defense forces have been around in Haiti before, but the current bukele movement emerged in 2023 and one incident made international headlines. The Haitian national police stopped a minibus carrying 14 passengers and subsequently found automatic weapons and ammunition. The passengers were taken to a local police station.

But local residents who'd been terrorized for years by gangs discovered this and stormed the police station, overpowering the officers and dragging out the alleged gang members who were then stoned, lynched and set on fire. The video of this event went around the world showing a pile of bodies smoldering away. This led to a series of reprisal attacks against other suspected gang members from communities that had had enough.

In the rural region of Artiponit, Izzo sent members of his 5 2nd gang to a place called Mirabale in 2023. This led to a battle between a local defense force and the gang members. 30 people were killed and a number of others were injured. 800 people fled their homes and the gang members that fled were pursued and caught by a wakele group and subsequently lynched and burned alive. Few gang members make it as far. As a place police station, and even those that do aren't safe.

The symbols of bois calais are the machete, the tire, gasoline and matches. It began April 24 when police captured over a dozen gang members and a crowd gathered demanding revenge. Word spread. Sharpen your machetes. And even in the churches, pastors called on their flocks to take action. Haiti's Canadian backed prime minister has condemned the move to but he's been widely ignored even by his own police force.

Since April 2023, there have been over 600 cases of public lynchings and executions allegedly committed by bukele groups. Here's whidlo. Buakale is the latest example of the privatization of the states functions. Basically, in Haiti today, almost everything from electricity to public Safety to health, to education. Most things are privatized.

And because the state is dysfunctional and incapable to provide those services, the Haitian population has to take matters into its own hands and give themselves security. And since this movement started, and in a nutshell, the movement is young people and sometimes elderly, and often some police officers get together and they try and protect their own neighborhoods because the Haitian state is incapable of doing this.

And if you come to Port au Prince today, it is the manifestation of this is different gates everywhere in the city. Everywhere you go, you will have to front young folks asking you for your ideas, asking you, who do you know in this neighborhood and why you were here? It is a disintegration of the public sphere. And any foreigners, anyone you don't know, is considered a danger.

And in some instances, you can witness cases of assassination, basically of people who do not have ideas with them but are not necessarily affiliated with gangs. More than a million people do not have a birth certificate in this country, and hundreds of thousands do not have IDs because the state is unable to provide them one. Right. So it's one way for the rest of the capital so they don't fall into the hands of the gangs.

But at the same time, it causes its own issues when it comes to, you know, the fear of the others. When it comes to what we call in French de rapage, where people who are not necessarily gang members, who are not necessarily affiliated with gangs, can be cut and die. The groups put up checkpoints and block access to their safe neighborhood. Small groups armed with sticks, stones and machines, machetes, patrol the area. Some now carry firearms.

If someone considers something a threat, a quick message In a community WhatsApp group brings the numbers out onto the street to combat the perceived danger. You can understand this reaction. Not only do people not feel safe, the reality is that they often aren't. According to Binu, the United Nations Integrated office in Haiti, 4,789 people were killed in 2023, including women and children. In 2024, that rose to over 5,600. The homicide rate in Haiti is 40.9 per 100,000.

The vast majority of these are committed by the gangs. But beyond the numbers of people killed, these numbers don't take into account the misery inflicted by the gangs on the wider society. Now, there is one other person worth talking about here, Guy Philippe, the former chief of police in Cape Haitian involved in the coups against President aristide in the 90s and early 2000s. Well, as promised, his story didn't end in the early 2000s.

He was confidentially indicted by the US in 2005 for money laundering and trafficking cocaine into the US at the same time, he was seeking the presidency, which was wildly unsuccessful after receiving around 1% of the vote. A theatrical moment came in 2007 when the Haitian National Police, supported by the DEA, launched a dramatic raid on Philippe's home in Lakia, Black Hawk helicopters and all.

But somehow he escaped, and it was alleged he enjoyed the highlights of the raid on a TV from a nearby town. He was eventually caught in 2015, just a few days before being sworn in as a senator. He admitted to money laundering and taking bribes from Colombian traffickers in exchange for protecting the drug shipments and ensuring that they continued their journey to the US. He was jailed for nine years, but released after six and returned to Haiti in November 2023. So why am I telling you this?

Well, it's because Guy Philippe quickly threw himself back into the chaos, organizing demonstrations across the country, including the capital, the border area with the Dominican Republic, and in the western area of Jeremy. He urged revolution and civil disobedience to to free Haiti. He also called for the embattled Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign. But what was most interesting was that at his demonstrations, Philippe was flanked by heavily armed men in uniform and plain clothes.

Many were members of the Protected Areas Security Brigade, a government agency originally tasked with protecting environmental and ecological sites. There are reportedly between 2,000 thousand and 6,000 members of the BSAP. And the strange thing is that no one seems to know how these agents are recruited, trained and paid for. They appear to be both part of the state, but not under its control.

But what's been reported is that Guy Philippe and his support in the BSAP have joined with Commissioner Muskadin. What the story of Muscadine and Phillipe show is that certain individuals are able to operate politically with the support of armed militias, posing a further threat to the authority of the Haitian government.

One reason these black LA groups have emerged is due to the state's inability to protect its own people. And a lack of Haitian national police is part of the problem. In somewhere like New York, you have a population of around eight and a half million. And the NYPD has numbers of around 36,000 officers and another 19,000 civilian employees. Whereas the entirety of Haiti, with a population of 11 million on paper, has just under 14,000 officers.

But in practice, those available for active patrolling is thought to be around 3,300. Here's Bill that is way below any internationally accepted ratio of police per 100,000, I think it's under half. Actually. The last I checked, Haiti should have for 11 million people, more like 30,000 police at least. So you have a huge, literally vacuum there of the police. Simply can't be everywhere and they don't have enough of anything.

Vehicles, radio communications, they can't move by air, which is really important in gang controlled areas which are densely populated, narrow streets. I mean, gangs could easily blockade the streets and, and monitor who's coming in and out. Then you have the distrust, the other element. That's correct, quite strong. Let's say if the police were to arrest some gang members and not kill them, or if they don't, they, they will somehow get away with it.

They'll get, they might end up in prison, but they'll escape or they'll run the gang from the prison. There's a huge distrust of their institution. So they, they see it. And I understand, I believe it's one of those times where you say, I, I don't condone it, I don't accept it, but I understand it. Where they're saying, if we don't deal with this ourselves, it's not going to be dealt with.

You see, as Bill said, you completely understand why some Haitian communities have rallied together to protect their neighborhoods from the scourge of the gangs. The problem lies in the fact that if these groups are committing violence, they are contributing to the ever expanding violent ecosystem. But as Widlaw said, these people got together because the Haitian state is unable to protect them. So I would ask, what would you do if you were in this same situation?

There is distrust in state institutions, including of the police, both from the general population, but also from within the force itself. And so it's hardly surprising that there is evidence that the Boa Kaili Self Defense or vigilante groups have collaborated with police officers committing retribution on gang members. Here's Jacqueline. I think that there is overall a desire by the average police officer to, to shut this down, to restore law and order. They live in these communities.

They've been personally affected by this violence and they want peace. But I think the problem is, how does that translate? A couple of months ago, Doctors Without Borders here, you know who have been through, in HAITI what, over 30 years, through every major disaster I've covered, I think they have been key. They announced the closure of several of their hospitals and they weren't taking any new patients.

And it was in temporary, but it was in protest for the fact that police officers were carrying out extrajudicial killings with the assistance of Some of these vigilante groups and they were attacking their staff and attacking patients in their ambulance.

The United nations, in the most recent report the Secretary General gave the Security Council, they highlighted the fact that there are a disturbing high number of police officers who were involved in extrajudicial killings or people who have been killed during police operations. Truth be told, for those police who do want to go after the gangs, having a potentially friendly self defense force running a neighborhood helps in that fight.

Indeed, as we just heard from Jacqueline, some serving police officers have been directly involved, involved in the vigilante groups. In addition to that, these same groups can work with police for intelligence purposes or provide support where needed. The problem lies in the medium term.

As these groups and those who lead them gain more power and influence in an area distributing justice and settling disputes and so on, they are performing the task that the state should be leading to a further disconnect between the people and the institutions of the state. In addition to that, there is also a risk that the self defense group slowly morph into the very thing they are fighting against.

Haiti has had security problems for a while, and as a result, the UN has engaged in the country a number of times. But as you can probably tell, these have not only been unsuccessful, but also in fact, rocked by scandal. Given the length of this episode, we'll probably focus on the post 2004 intervention, which was just after President Aristide was ousted for a second time in a coup.

The force that went into the country was called the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, known as Minusta. So it was in Haiti from 2004 until 2017, quite a long time. At its height, it was around 13,000 military and police. This is Sophie Rutembaugh, a visiting scholar at the New York University center on International Cooperation. The goal was very much to try and address the kind of underlying causes of the sort of fragility of the Haitian state.

And so it had efforts kind of, you know, working on rule of law, working on justice, working on reducing violence in communities. So it was a pretty kind of large mission with a pretty ambitious mandate. Led by Brazilian forces, the mission undertook some pretty robust actions against gangs in different parts of slum areas of Port au Prince City, Soleil most notably, and in a sort of robust way that not a lot of peacekeeping operations had done before that.

The experience of Minustah can almost be split in two pre earthquake and post earthquake. In January 2010, a huge 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck with an epicentre just 15 miles from the Haitian capital of Port au Prince, 220,000 people were killed in the quake. Large swathes of the capital was reduced to rubble. It was at a point where they were starting to think about sort of winding down in kind of 2009-2010 with the election and preparation.

And then the earthquake hit in January 2010 and the damage was just so massive that to sort of assist with the recovery, minusta was increased in size and ended up staying for several more years. And I think that's really where the reputation of Minustah, you know, was sort of. There were concerns about sort of its use of force and the harm caused to bystanders and innocent civilians and some of its efforts against gangs.

Before the earthquake and then after the earthquake, you have cholera and you have ports of sexual exploitation and abuse and. And I think those have just sort of tarnished the whole image of not just peacekeeping in Haiti, but also the UN in general. Lets just linger on these points for a moment. Cholera, something Haiti is still grappling with, had not been present in the country for nearly a century until this point.

Investigations revealed that it came from a specific UN peacekeeping camp where sewage was discharged from the base into the Artabonite river and its tributaries, the waters of which were used for washing, bathing and drinking. Here's Whidlore. When debate that is coming to maturity today in Haiti is the fact that we've had peacekeeping mission from 2004 to 2017 in the country. And if they were able to stabilize this place for a moment, they also brought cholera to displace.

More than 10,000 people were killed and you know, close to a million were infected by the disease. And initially the United nations refused to recognize that, you know, UN peacekeeping soldiers brought the disease to this country. That's right. For many years, the UN denied that one of its camps was the source of this huge outbreak until protests in Haiti forced the organization to issue a public apology. But the UN did not accept legal responsibility, citing diplomatic immunity.

Those impacted have still yet to receive any compensation, and the money from the UN for improved infrastructure has been minimal. According to estimates, 4,000 people died within the first six months of the outbreak, reaching around 10,000 people. According to the US center for Disease Control, between October 2010 and March 2011, 820,000 people were infected with cholera. And the island nation is still suffering from this infectious disease.

From October 2022 to April 2024, another 82,000 cases have been reported. There is also another case that's worth mentioning, and that was a Haitian national police operation in 2017 in the Grand Ravine neighborhood of Port au Prince. The operation was carried out by 200 national police with the support of Minuster, who helped plan the raid for six hours. Grand Ravine was turned into a war zone.

During the fighting, it was reported that UN police secured the perimeter of a school and a small contingent of Haitian police entered searching for gang members. After an extensive search, intelligence from bystanders revealed that some gang members were holed up somewhere in the school. A short gunfight saw two police officers shot and the gang members escaped.

The police then blamed those who provided the intelligence, claiming that it must have been a setup and started shooting people and beating others. Some of those beaten were allegedly hauled off by UN peacekeepers. Nine civilians were killed, five had been shot in the head and the bodies were left until the following day. It was alleged that one body had been actually dragged from a nearby house and dumped at the school with the others.

According to an investigation by the Intercept, the UN statement that officers were only stationed at the perimeter does not match the eyewitness testimonies they gathered. And just to add barbecue is said to have been one of those police officers involved. The other major scandal to rock Minusta was the sexual abuse. Some girls as young as 11 were being sexually abused and impregnated by UN peacekeepers and staffers before being abandoned when they left the country.

Back in January, a report commissioned by Haitian activists accused accused UN peacekeepers of raping hundreds of people in Haiti. More than 200 women, men and even children say they were abused in transactional sex incidents in exchange for food and medicine. Hundreds of kids are still today in Haiti without father and without economic support. And many of these kids were fathered in sexual abuses situations while the UN peacekeeping mission was here.

Hundreds of cases of human rights violations, people assassinated, etc. The kids that Widlaw talked about, so many were born that the Haitians nicknamed the children petty Minusta. Again, compensation to these women and girls has been minimal or absent. One woman speaking to CNN said that the UN treat us as less than human. Money that was designated for the victims was, according to the CNN investigations, siphoned off by on the ground aid organizations rather than given directly to the victims.

A year after the public apology, the UN peacekeepers withdrew from the country following a resolution from the UN Security Council ordering their removal. One interview with a Haitian I came across said that after years of running around and false promises from the un, nothing has happened. Another said, I am very angry that the un, the UN is leaving as it's left us with nothing. They should take responsibility. They know about the kids.

They did DNA tests and they told us they're positive, but never gave us the results. It's a fairly damning indictment. In addition to these scandals emanating from the UN mission, international NGOs like Oxfam were also mired in scandal after sickening reports emerged in 2018 of its own staff being involved in significant sexual abuse of Haitians. Some of those victims alleged that they were beaten by staff. When the revelations came out, President Moise said that it was the tip of the iceberg.

So given the very recent history, there is a completely understandable suspicion towards UN missions and international NGOs alike. And this is one of the reasons why there is such a strong desire by Haitians to solve this crisis themselves. The debate we are having today in this this country is why it is best for Haitians to solve their own insecurity problems.

And if you talk to folks here asking the international community for help, but help to strengthen the Haitian national forces, to strengthen the Haitian police, to strengthen the army so they can self destruct this insecurity problem not just, you know, for this time, but establish the structures necessary so in a few years we don't go back to the same places.

That's it for part two of Living Together, the Gangs of Haiti. I'd like to thank Widlaw, Sophie, Jacqueline, Bill and Romain. In the final part of this series, we'll be looking at the international response to what's going on. And as always, in the podcast notes you will find a bunch of links and reports relating to this topic.

If you want more research into organized crime around the world, head over to our website, globalinitiative.net also check out our YouTube channel where our series the Index has discussed cannabis legalisation in Morocco and before that, outlaw motorcycle gangs in Canada. We'll be back soon with part three on Haiti. This has been deep dive from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. I'm Jack Meagan Vickers. Thanks for listening. Sneaking.