Why Everything Changed in Haiti: The Gangs United

Even as gangs terrorized Haiti, kidnapping citizens en masse and killing them at will, the country’s embattled prime minister remained in power for years.

Then everything changed within a few days.

Amid political unrest not seen since the country’s president was assassinated in 2021, Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry agreed to resign. Now neighboring countries are trying to set up a transitional council to govern the country and set a course for elections, which once seemed a distant possibility.

What made this moment different, experts say: the gangs united and forced the country’s leader to give up power.

“Prime Minister Ariel resigned not because of politics, not because of the massive street demonstrations against him over the years, but because of the violence that gangs have committed,” said Judes Jonathas, a Haitian consultant who has worked in aid for years. “The situation has now completely changed because the gangs are now working together.”

It is unclear how strong the alliance is and whether it will last. What is clear is that the gangs are trying to capitalize on their control of Port-au-Prince, the capital, to become a legitimate political force in the negotiations mediated by foreign governments, including the United States, France and the Caribbean countries.

In early March, Mr. Henry traveled to Nairobi to finalize an agreement to deploy a Kenyan-led security force in Haiti. Criminal groups took advantage of the absence of Mr Henry, who is deeply unpopular. Within days, the gangs closed the airport, plundered seaports, attacked about a dozen police stations and released about 4,600 prisoners from prison.

They demanded that Mr Henry resign and threatened to worsen the violence if he refused. Since he agreed to step down, the gangs appear to have focused largely on securing immunity from criminal charges and staying out of jail, analysts said.

“Their biggest goal is amnesty,” Jonathas said.

The criminals’ most prominent political ally is Guy Philippe, a former police commander and coup leader who was recently released from US federal prison for drug money laundering. He has taken the initiative to push Mr. Henry to resign.

Now Mr Philippe is openly calling for amnesty for the gangs.

“We have to tell them, ‘You will put down your arms or you will face dire consequences,’” Mr. Philippe told The New York Times in an interview in January, referring to the gangs. “If you put down your arms,” he said, “you get a second chance. You get a kind of amnesty.”

Mr Philippe does not have a seat on the transitional council appointed to lead Haiti. But he is using his connections to the Pitit Desalin political party to bring these demands to the negotiating table in Jamaica, where Caribbean and international officials are meeting to find a solution to the Haiti crisis, according to three people familiar with the discussions .

The decision by gang leaders to unite was most likely motivated by a desire to consolidate power after Mr Henry signed the deal with Kenya to bring 1,000 police officers to Port-au-Prince, said William O’Neill, the UN expert in the field of human rights. in Haiti.

Many gang members in Haiti are teenagers, he said, who are eager to get paid but likely have little interest in going to war with a well-armed police force.

The gangs respect “fear and violence”, Mr O’Neill said. “They fear a force stronger than them.”

While many doubt that the Kenyan military will provide lasting stability, its arrival would pose the biggest challenge to the gang’s territorial control in years.

“The gangs have been hearing about this Kenyan-led force for years,” said Louis-Henri Mars, executive director of Lakou Lapè, an organization that works with Haitian gangs. “Then they saw that it was finally coming, so they launched a preemptive strike.”

The violence unleashed by the gangs closed off much of the capital and prevented Mr Henry from returning to his country.

This was the tipping point: the leaders of the United States and the Caribbean considered Haiti’s situation “untenable.” U.S. officials concluded that Mr. Henry was no longer a viable partner and stepped up their calls for a swift transfer of power, officials involved in the political negotiations said.

Since then, gang leaders have spoken to journalists, held press conferences, promised peace and demanded a seat at the table.

Jimmy Chérizier, a powerful gang leader also known as Barbecue, has become one of the best-known faces of the new gang alliance known as Living Together.

A former police officer known for his ruthlessness, Mr Chérizier’s gang, the G-9, commands central Port-au-Prince and has been accused of attacking neighborhoods linked to opposition political parties, looting houses, raping women and killing people indiscriminately.

Yet Mr Chérizier has apologized for the violence at his press conferences and blamed Haiti’s economic and political systems for the country’s poverty and inequality. Mr Philippe echoed this idea.

“Those young girls, those young boys, they have no other option – to starve to death or to get weapons,” Mr Philippe told The Times. “They chose to take guns.”

André Paultre contributed reporting from Port-au-Prince.