How Corruption and International Intervention Empowered Haiti’s Gangs

In the 1990s, following a coup, the United States instituted an economic embargo against Haiti that devastated its middle class. After 1994, when the United Nations removed the coup leaders, the World Bank insisted the country import rice from the U.S. Combined, these massive socio-economic shocks sent thousands of unemployed boys and men from the countryside into the cities to join street gangs.

With Haiti’s army and police forces largely demobilized, politicians began relying on gangs to enforce their political will. Most famously, in 2001, when an attempted coup attacked the National Palace, President Aristide mobilized Port au Prince gangs to fight it off. Subsequently, most powerful politicians called on their own gangs to intimidate rivals, extort graft, and control the growing drug trade. However, in the early 2020s, many gang leaders shook off their political handlers after realizing that they held the real power.

In April 2024, Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced he was stepping down after gang violence overran most government functions. The capital was under a de facto gang blockade while nearly five million Haitians suffered food insecurity. A United Nation-backed deployment led by 1,000 Kenyan troops was expected to arrive in Haiti in the following weeks, but the gangs, which were heavily armed with weapons smuggled from and purchased in the U.S., held a press conference to declare that they were ready to fight off any foreign soldiers.

Haiti’s street gangs did not collapse their government, run the prime minister out of power, or gain control of 80% of Port au Prince, the country’s capital, by accident. They came to wield so much authority, influence, and firepower through a confluence of short-sighted interventionism, misguided economic reforms, and domestic political unscrupulousness.