How US guns fuelled Haiti’s descent into hell
An explosion in weapons trafficking is to blame for the troubled country’s latest wave of violence
JIMMY “BARBECUE” CHÉRIZIER poses in front of cameras jostling for the best shot of Haiti’s most powerful man.
The gang leader and former policeman is wearing a khaki combat vest, with a “barbarians” tag sewn crudely on the front. His black beret sits on top of a sweating brow, Bluetooth headphones resting above. Hanging by his side is a powerful assault rifle of the sort you might find in the hands of elite Western counterterrorism units.
There is no way of telling where this heavily modified weapon comes from. But if recent evidence is anything to go by, it may have slipped quietly down Florida’s Miami River to the Caribbean.
Haiti is now in the grip of a round of violence so severe that its prime minister is trapped helplessly abroad while people like Barbecue – named for his propensity to burn people in their homes – take charge. The state is retreating, and gangs like his now rule over a growing number of people in Haiti’s population of 11 million.
Haiti’s descent to anarchy has been long and complex. But what Western officials describe as a “massive uptick” in American weapons is undoubtedly fuelling the violence. The guns are hidden in clothes and food packages inside small boats laden with remittance packages sent by migrants in the US to their families back home.
They include belt-fed machine guns, armour-piercing sniper rifles, AK47S and the Ar15-type guns like the one Barbecue carries, according to a recent UN report.
“Popular handguns selling for $400-$500 at federally licensed firearms outlets or private gun shows in the US can be resold for as much as $10,000 in Haiti,” the report said. “Higher-powered rifles such as AK47S, AR15S and Galils are typically in higher demand from gangs, commanding correspondingly higher prices.”
The sound of guns like these jolted Muhamed Bizimana – who works in Haiti with Care, an NGO – on the morning of Feb 29, when the latest round of violence began. A smattering of gunfire has become routine for those who remain living and working in the Haitian capital. This was anything but. “Everybody was panicking. The level of intensity of gun shooting was abnormal,” Mr Bizimana told The Telegraph.
Later in the day, hospitals were flooded with people hit in the crossfire of a turf war that would lead to the resignation of Ariel Henry, who had ruled unelected as prime minister since his predecessor was assassinated.
“Children [were] hit by bullets in their sleep,” said Sandra Lamarque of Médecins Sans Frontières. Haiti’s leading newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, described the outbreak of violence as “a cortege of fire, blood, corpses, incalculable damage and fear”.
As the fighting raged, videos began circulating of Barbecue announcing that rival gangs were joining together to depose Mr Henry, who was out of the country trying to drum up international aid to restore security in Haiti. “We will use all strategies to achieve this goal,” Barbecue said. “We claim responsibility for everything that’s happening in the streets right now.” Charred dead bodies were later seen lying in the streets.
The gangs broke into a prison and released 4,000 inmates to reinforce their strength, before attacking the city’s airport and main port, and torching a dozen police stations.
The country is on a precipice, but Haiti’s troubles started long ago. Slaves threw off French colonial control with a revolution in 1804 and the island was then forced to pay reparations to its former colonists. The “independence debt” crippled the country for almost 150 years, plunging it into financial ruin despite it being rich in resources.
This, coupled with dictatorships, power vacuums, natural disasters and unsuccessful international interventions left Haiti the poorest nation in the Americas, with the 2010 earthquake alone killing around 220,000 people. Since then, internal turmoil and a mass exodus of Haitians has created the conditions for largescale illegal shipments of weapons from US shops to flood the country. Organised networks across the Caribbean use “straw man” purchasers to buy every kind of gun, targeting retailers in the US states which have the loosest gun control.
They are then funnelled to Florida inside tightly bound packages of supposed essentials that are stacked in warehouses on the banks of the Miami River for delivery. US customs officials have little chance. One officer recently admitted it would take his entire team one month to search all the packages in a single warehouse.
Small shipping companies then send the packages on their way before they land somewhere along Haiti’s 1,700mile coastline, which is barely monitored by what’s left of the official coastguard and police.
Checks in ports are limited, and there are exemptions for customs checks. Those include being part of the Episcopal Church, which was at the centre of a recent arms smuggling ring that saw at least one priest charged.
Joly Germine, 31, the self-described “king” of what the US described as the notoriously violent gang 400 Mawozo, directed a major arms smuggling operation from his prison cell in Haiti. Working with his Florida-based ex-girlfriend Eliande ‘The Queen’ Tunis, 45, he trafficked weapons including AK47S, AR15S, an M4 Carbine rifle, an M1A rifle, and a .50 calibre rifle into Haiti.
In February, the couple admitted to gun-trafficking charges, as well as the laundering of ransoms paid for US hostages, and were jailed. Their downfall left a power vacuum in Haiti filled by Barbecue, the architect of the current crisis.
The rise in guns entering Haiti from the US is mirrored across the Caribbean, which is facing an explosion in the murder rate. Mexico tried to sue American companies last year to compensate for the deaths, a result of “deliberate” practices by US gunmakers.
Haiti is now a shadow of a state, racked by violence and anarchy with little light at the end of the tunnel. On Monday, after initially declaring his determination to remain in power, Mr Henry agreed to resign following the “installation of [a transition] council”.
“I’m asking all Haitians to remain calm and do everything they can for peace and stability to come back as fast as possible,” the former prime minister said in a video statement. Americans were promptly airlifted from the US Embassy and additional forces were brought in to secure the diplomatic compound in Port-au-prince.
Mr Henry had travelled to Kenya last month to rally support for a Un-backed international force of 1,000 police officers to be deployed to Haiti. He tried to return home, but was unable to land, and instead headed for Puerto Rico, a US territory, where he remains. Meanwhile, US officials said members of the transitional council should be appointed this week after talks in Jamaica between Caribbean leaders and Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, who pledged an additional $133 million in aid.
What will happen next is unknown, but experts have urged the US and the international community to tread carefully and not inflict more damage on the embattled country.
“This is the worst cycle of violence that Haiti has seen for decades and it is a pivotal, and potentially transformative moment,” said Professor Rosa Freedman of Freedman, the professor of law, conflict and global development at the University of Reading said:..
“The last thing Haiti needs is another international intervention... the minute there are boots on the ground by peacekeepers, or foreign forces who don’t speak the language… it’s just going to perpetuate these cycles,” said Professor Rosa Freedman of the University of Reading. “This is a country that has been failed by the international community, not because the international community has left it alone, but actually, because the international community has intervened so much.”
Dan Foote, who quit as US special envoy to Haiti in 2021 over the Biden administration’s decision to deport Haitian migrants to the “collapsed state”, agrees. He said that if the US and others try to impose another leader, he fears there will be a “level of violence not seen in Haiti since the revolution”.
Haitians in Port-au-prince told The Telegraph they were fed up with the US meddling. “The United States treats Haiti as its courtyard, like their own little state,” Mackenson Emile, a 29-year-old student, said.
Food, water and medical supplies in the capital are now scarce. Six local hospitals have already been forced to close. Mr Bizimana said the violence has “really picked up, with many people getting gun wounded, a lot of rape, sexual violence towards women, young boys”.
Louis-henri Mars, executive director of peace-building group Lakou Lape, based in Port-au-prince, said he has avoided going downtown since the latest eruption of violence.
“There’s been a lot of shooting and the gangs occupy the space, and, you know, by the time you are identified you’re already picking up a bullet,” he said. “I have seen dead bodies in the street over the past few days ... I don’t know how they were picked up in the end or if they have been picked up.”
Mr Bizimana said his colleagues’ children have been “completely traumatised” by what they have seen going to or coming home from school. “You can sense trauma on people’s faces whenever you interact with them... they live under a complete state of fear of what will come next.”
The latest round of violence is also being used abroad to call for a dictatorial crackdown of the kind now rapidly spreading in Latin America. Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, called for the gangs to be “obliterated” while sharing a disturbing, unverified video which purported to show a gang member eating the flesh of one of his victims as they cooked on the fire.
For Haitians, there is little opportunity to escape apart from on packed fishing boats making the treacherous and illegal journey to the US. A “parole” visa scheme has been held up by the US Congress’s stalemate over migration and Ukraine funding.
At a gathering in Port-au-prince to celebrate the prime minister’s resignation, Emile, the student, told The Telegraph: “Almost nobody can live in this country.
“The resignation of Henry doesn’t change anything for me. Today in this country the street vendors can’t work, students can’t go to college, kids can’t go back to school.”
Prof Freedman said her remaining contacts stuck in Haiti have a now distant dream of simply going back to work, raising their families and having “a nice dinner” with friends.
“I was messaging one of them. He said, ‘I’m sitting with some other friends, we’re drinking beer, because what else is there to do right now?’”
‘The United States treats Haiti as its courtyard, like their own little state’