Armed gangs have overrun Haiti—killing, kidnapping, robbing, and raping their way to control. These are not ordinary street thugs, however. The label “paramilitary” describes them better. Their growing power is the result of the long-standing collaboration between (often over-lapping) networks of business leaders, politicians, arms traffickers drug kingpins, and former police to violently maintain Haiti’s societal status quo. Together, the ruling elite has long used armed gangs “to intimidate opposition, justify their policies, and collect money and votes.”

Now these militias, who have been blocking roads, taking over key ports, and shutting down the main airport, have become powerful enough to drive the official government to collapse. And since (the unelected and corrupt) Prime Minister Ariel Henry finally announced on March 12 that his teetering government would resign from power, these gangs have been in control of the country. Their numbers recently swelled after armed gang members led two prison breaks that released an estimated 5,000 inmates. Some of them have demanded to be a part of any “transitional government” that replaces Henry.

The risk of famine looms, as nearly half of all Haitians are experiencing “acute hunger.” Hospitals have depleted their supplies of blood and other crucial supplies. Most gas stations are running out of fuel.

The terrified population of Port-au-Prince has been trapped inside their homes by intermittent gunfire outside. Except for those few Haitians who own a private plane or who can afford a $10,000 seat on a private helicopter, it is virtually impossible to leave Haiti.

The U.S. government has, of course, provided helicopters to transport its own citizens from this life-threatening situation. But Haitians who try to flee by boat are intercepted and immediately returned by the U.S. Coast Guard. NBC News reported the twisted logic of U.S. policy: “The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the interdictions at sea are done to preserve human life by discouraging Haitians from taking the dangerous maritime journey.”

Is Haiti “ungovernable”?

The mainstream media have long circulated the lie that Haiti’s population is to blame for its status as the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. For example, after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, The New York Times claimed, “The atmosphere of lawlessness discouraged the kind of business investment that might rebuild infrastructure and create jobs.”

In truth, claiming that Haiti is a “failed state” and ungovernable provides a convenient excuse for the U.S. to regularly intervene there. Just as European colonizers claimed that they were on a “civilizing mission” when they invaded, occupied, and plundered Black and Brown nations over a period of centuries, the U.S.’s stated aim of “helping” Haiti is likewise patently false. The U.S. has controlled Haiti’s destiny for over a century, and building a genuine democracy there has never been on the U.S.’s agenda.

As Haitian journalist Garry Pierre-Pierre explained recently, when he is asked, “Why is Haiti ungovernable?” his answer is straightforward:

The answer is that it is by design. It is set up that way. Haiti is ruled not by the Black faces who are elected. It is governed by a small cabal of oligarch families who migrated to Haiti. They are known as BAM BAM, phonetically in Creole “Gimme, Gimme.” The acronym stands for the Brandt, Acra, Madsen, Bigio, Apaid and Mevs families. 

… These families control 90% of Haiti’s wealth and give a veneer that Haiti is a Black-run country when in fact they control virtually every business and entity in Haiti. They allow the political class to exist to protect their narrow personal interests. 

This oligarchy is composed of the six families named above; originally from Europe and the Middle East—whose ancestors migrated to Haiti in the late 19th and early 20th century to successfully seek their fortunes. Although they have occasionally intermarried, they are very pale-skinned and are considered “white” in a country where 99 percent of the population is descended from Black slaves.

This tiny oligarchy keeps Haiti’s political leaders in check, installing them and then removing them when they are no longer useful. But this control exists only with the consent of its old colonial masters. As political scientist Frédéric Thomas told LeMonde in a 2022 interview, “the alliance between the Haitian oligarchy and the former colonial powers, France and the United States is at the origin of the ‘Haitian misfortune.'”

The price paid for Haiti’s slave rebellion

France was Haiti’s first colonizer, conquering the territory in 1697 after battling Spain, and naming it Saint Domingue. Saint Domingue soon became the richest colony in the French Empire, by ruthlessly exploiting African slave labor. France brought in 800,000 slaves, nearly double the number of the much larger North America.  France’s brutal plantation system cost many slaves their lives but proved very lucrative for the French slaveholders—eventually producing 40 percent of the sugar and 60 percent of the coffee imported by Europe.

But Saint Domingue’s enslaved population launched a massive rebellion in 1791, leading to a protracted war in which the insurrectionists fought and defeated not only French troops, but also those sent there by British and Spanish imperial powers seeking to gain control for themselves. (Napoleon’s army lost more troops in Haiti than at Waterloo.)

The Republic of Haiti finally emerged triumphant on January 1, 1804—the only successful slave rebellion in modern history.

But Haiti paid a steep price for humiliating the French Empire—and thereby the entire colonial system. U.S. plantation owners were terrified that Haiti’s revolution would inspire other slave rebellions, and the U.S. refused to officially recognize Haiti until 1862, near the end of the Civil War.

France agreed to recognize Haiti only if it agreed to pay crippling reparations to its former slaveholders. In 1825, France sent a squadron of warships to Haiti’s coastline and threatened another invasion if the young Haitian government didn’t consent to its ultimatum. In today’s dollars, the amount paid by Haiti to its old colonial master is estimated at $560 million.

In this way, Haiti was economically strangled from birth. The massive debt it owed to France was much larger than it could afford, so it incurred a “double debt”—the amount of the reparations themselves and the amount it had to borrow from French banks (with interest, of course) to pay the reparations.

For its first 100 years, Haiti’s debt left nothing over to invest in building basic infrastructure like sewer systems and water pipes. Likewise, its government and educational institutions suffered from lack of investment. While the vast majority of Haitians struggled in poverty, a tiny elite emerged and exercised outsized government influence —a breeding ground for the kind of corruption that crushes Haiti today.

The U.S. as Haiti’s imperial master

The U.S. became Haiti’s next colonial master. The U.S. military invaded and occupied Haiti between 1915 and 1934—ostensibly to help restore “stability” after the assassination of then-President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. But the U.S. remained in Haiti for the following 19 years, far longer than its initial claim suggested.

And, as reported by Al Jazeera, “during their time in Haiti, US forces oversaw widespread human rights abuses and the implementation of a “corvée”, a system of forced labor sometimes likened to slavery.” Al Jazeera also noted, “US soldiers even removed substantial funds from the Haitian National Bank, carting them off to New York.”

Before the U.S. withdrew its military from Haiti, its Marine force created the Garde d’Haiti, to oversee U.S. interests in its absence.

Ever since that time, the U.S. has intervened directly and indirectly in Haiti to serve its interests—often getting others, from the CIA the United Nations (UN), to do the dirty work. Its record of intervention includes:

• Installing and supporting the successive dictatorships of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, beginning in 1957, and upon his death in 1971, his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc. The father-son duo ruled via their personal paramilitary death squads, infamously known as the Tonton Macoute. Papa Doc ruled with an iron fist, as the Washington Post described,
  “stealing millions of dollars in public money and international aid, while ruling through sham elections and fear.” A popular uprising overthrew Baby Doc in 1986, and he flew off to exile in the French Riviera, transported on a U.S. Air Force plane — his Louis Vuitton luggage allegedly stuffed with $120 million in cash.”
• The years that followed Baby Doc’s overthrow were filled with political turmoil amid a power struggle, with a series of coups, and a string of short-term presidents.
• In 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a priest from the slums, was elected by two-thirds of the vote at the helm of the populist Lavalas movement. He promised an era of reforms but had little opportunity to implement them before a military coup overthrew him. The military seized the reins of power for the next three years. The U.S. sent 20,000 troops to help him return to power, while a parallel UN operation of “peacekeepers”, supported by the U.S., occupied Haiti from 1993 until 2000. After more turmoil, Aristide was reelected in 2000. But he had by that time been tamed into support for some key neoliberal policies. He also formed a private militia to protect him while squashing opposition.
• Aristide was ousted by a coup again in 2004, orchestrated by the U.S., which assisted his escape from Haiti. The UN led a “peacekeeping” occupation by its military force known as MINUSTAH, which withdrew in 2017 amid accusations of sexual misconduct from women and girls they were meant to safeguard.

Glimpses of the rot beneath U.S. “interests” in Haiti

But the Haitian oligarchy emerged from the decades of political chaos described above almost unscathed. It is worth wondering how and why they have been protected while the official Haitian government has consisted of a revolving door of presidents?

Wikileaks has performed an enormous service in exposing behind-the-scenes dealings between the U.S. and other powerbrokers in Haiti politics, using the irrefutable evidence of words “from the horse’s mouth.”

For example, in 2010, Haiti was hit by the horrific earthquake described above, which killed more than 200,000 people, injured 300,000 more and displaced 1.5 million people. The U.S. predictably responded by sending 20,000 troops and forming a naval blockade that blocked deliveries of emergency humanitarian and medical aid from around the world. Two years later, a half million Haitians were still living in tents. What happened to all the financial donations?

Haiti Liberté reporter Kim Ives described how Wikileaks cables unearthed glimpses of U.S. meddling: 

[T]he cables reveal how the U.S. colluded with the disaster capitalists who flocked to Haiti…how American contractors were lining up in “a gold rush” to get a piece of the $10 billion in aid pledged to Haiti. People like Gen. Wesley Clark were coming in to hold press conferences and front for the companies seeking these contracts.

…[T]he cables prove the Haitian bourgeoisie transformed the Haitian police into their own private army. They bought arms for the police and essentially told them to guard their factories and warehouses. The Haitian elite went to the U.S. embassy to get them to take over their illegal operation of issuing arms to the police.

Another discovery we made in these cables about the hijacking of the police was that the U.S. knew there was a cabal of criminals inside the de facto government that they set up after the 2004 coup. The cables admitted that at the center of it “was a small nexus of drug dealers and political insiders who control a network of dirty cops and gangs that are responsible for committing kidnapping and murders.”

Wikileaks also provided evidence that, after the 2010 earthquake, the U.S. directly interfered in Haiti’s presidential election. On Democracy Now, Haitian American scholar Jemima Pierre argued, “Hillary Clinton actually flew to Haiti and changed the election results, where Michel Martelly of the PHTK political party did not make the first round, but the U.S. forced the Haitian election council to actually make him — put him in the second round.”

In this way, with Lavalas barred from running after Aristide’s overthrow and less than 20 percent of the electorate voting, the U.S. virtually ensured victory to Martelly, a neo-Duvalierist, in the final round of voting.

Pierre also argued that the so-called “Core Group” established during the MINUSTAH occupation, “an unelected group of Western officials, including Brazil, which led the military arm of the occupation in 2004 under Lula, which led then — which has been controlling all the actions in Haiti, down to naming who the prime minister would be, Ariel Henry, after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse.”

In late 2022, the foreign ministry of Canada offered yet another glimpse into the shadow Haitian power structure when it announced taking the unusual step of sanctioning two Haitian oligarchs, Gilbert Bigio, known as Haiti’s richest person, and insurance mogul Sherif Abdallah, as “members of the Haitian elite who provide illicit financial and operational support to armed gangs.”

The Canadian government’s statement continued,

Canada has reason to believe these individuals are using their status as high-profile members of the economic elite in Haiti to protect and enable the illegal activities of armed criminal gangs, including through money laundering and other acts of corruption.

These gangs and their supporters continue to terrorize vulnerable populations in Haiti with impunity and are precipitating a humanitarian crisis in the country that includes the resurgence of cholera. They are also committing unspeakable violence, including widespread sexual violence, against affected populations and impeding the delivery of critical services and humanitarian aid.

The sanctions Canada has imposed are intended to put pressure on those responsible for the ongoing violence and instability in Haiti.

A few months later, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published the results of its investigation into these two Haitian oligarchs and their role in financing armed gangs, and the U.S. banks and law firms who work for them. But the investigation also revealed that these two were technically functioning as diplomats—Abdallah for Italy for more than a decade and Bigio for Israel for two decades (although Israel has since replaced Bigio with his son Reuven).

Both served as “honorary consuls”, a status that confers upon them the right to shield many communications and properties from searches by law enforcement. “Many of those who dominate the economy in Haiti are also honorary consuls,” explained university professor Jean-Vernet. “Police won’t search their homes or their places of work because they believe them to be protected as part of the honorary consulate. They have diplomatic power.”

Now the gangs have come back to bite them

Haiti does not manufacture guns, and yet they are easily available to the paramilitaries now running amuck. All the evidence available points to the oligarchy, aided and abetted by various U.S. institutions. As early as the 1950s, Bigio allegedly imported Uzi submachine guns from Israel for the “Papa Doc“ dictatorship.

Some of the same Haitian gang leaders now prominent in the mass media have served a purpose for Haiti’s class of elites. Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, once a member of Haiti’s national police but expelled for taking part in a massacre, has claimed he is leading a “revolution” in Haiti.

Guy Philippe, as Pierre explained,

was trained by the U.S. in Ecuador and spent a lot of time training in — living and training in the Dominican Republic. So, in the lead-up to coup d’état against Aristide in 2004, what you had is — all the fall of 2003, what you had, Guy Philippe and his armed groups would ransack — would cross into the border and ransack and attack police stations and so on and so forth. Back then, which is fascinating, if you look up in the news, the Western media portrayed him as a freedom fighter. He was the hero standing up against the evil Aristide, according to the West. And so they supported him. And he would say later that he was actually being funded by the CIA.

The U.S. then imprisoned Philippe for six years on charges of drug trafficking. When he was released, he landed back in Haiti in November 2023, and he now claims he is running for president amid the current turmoil.

Pierre added, “he worked with the U.S. to actually remove our elected president. And so, we have to be very careful about what the U.S. is bringing, what the mainstream media is bringing to us as real and as the situation, when we know the situation is actually very much controlled by the U.S. and the Core Group when it comes to Haiti.”

But perhaps the oligarchy and the U.S. have actually lost control of the very forces they have relied on to maintain the status quo in Haiti for decades. The U.S. strategy in Haiti has proven to be a disaster, and now it has been left scrambling for a temporary solution—most recently gaining approval from the UN Security Council for a UN force from Kenya to occupy Haiti. But Kenya is unwilling to deploy troops to Haiti until there is an actual government in place there.

No one knows what will happen next. But one thing is certain, as Pierre noted, “[W]e know that this is a very complex problem that’s very much set up by the 2004 coup, but also perpetuated by the oligarchy and the U.S., which work together to keep Haiti unstable, so that we can say Haiti is ungovernable and we need to come in and save it.”

That strategy is backfiring at the moment.

The looming question should be how Haiti can be considered a “failed state” if Haiti’s people have never been allowed to control their own destiny?