Sure. Someone named Barbeque has taken charge. He is one of the prisoners who were let out of the prison when the doors were swung open during a riot. The inmates are running the asylum.
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Will Barbeque be a benevolent dictator.
Gangs probably make money by theft, extortion, and kidnapping. Doubtful they will be benevolent.
But if peace can be restored and the economy resumes normal activity perhaps they will benefit more.
Welp, I don’t think he got his nickname because he loves a great BBQ brisket. It might have something to do with being convicted of multiple massacres, one involving torching a community that led to around 70 deaths.
The “unity” of the gangs is inherently, uhm, fragile, as gang sociology is based quite simply on deep in the DNA primate DOMINANCE of “leader” over gang and of most powerful gang over others. The unity will only last as long as the most powerful gangs are still reaping the benefit of no central governance through looting opportunities. When that is over they will start to destroy each other.
The situation in Haiti is best understood after a brief review of Hobbes’ seminal book Leviathan. The gangs are the epitome of a “War of ALL against ALL”, destructive of trust, investment, and safety. That situation can only be ended by the emergence of an all powerful potentate from which civility might possibly reeemerge.
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If we use the Chicago Capone era as an example, gangs can find it useful to establish boundaries and cooperate. Gang warfare defending territory is counter productive and bad for business.
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Yes, but crucially the Chicago city government continued to exist and was key to the continued existence of a working gambling drinking whoreing sheepish public crucial to the gangs, and very like what was in Haiti over the last decades.
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Organized crime is organized and probably can arrange to provide govt services if they choose to do so.
Organized crime can, rarely does, but yes if “organzing” is intelligent enough for long enough it turns into a government. Such is the case of modern Russia, organized by the mob at the FSB ex NKVD, and a long list of others now spoken of as oligarchs. The ancestry shows in extremely poor levels of long term investment and a departure of intelligent citizenry…
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Carnage on the streets of Port-au-Prince
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/americas/haiti-council-gang-intl-latam/index.html
For three weeks, Haiti’s capital has been trapped in a gory cycle that far exceeds the kidnapping and gang violence for which it was already known. An insurgent league of heavily armed gangs is waging war on the city itself, seeking new territory and targeting police and state institutions. Scared and angry, vigilante groups are blocking off their neighborhoods with felled trees and chains, killing and burning outsiders suspected of gang membership. It’s the only way, they say, to defend themselves…
When Haiti’s gangs began this wave of violence at the end of February, they demanded the resignation of the unpopular prime minister. He capitulated – but they kept rampaging.
Ten days have now passed since CARICOM announced that Haiti would set up a transitional council, but no one has been named to it. The killings continue each day.
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Full scale anarchy mixed with competition for status and power by rival but temporarily aligned gangs… Yes, hell.
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The prime minister of Haiti, Ariel Henry, formally signed his resignation letter on Wednesday, paving the way for a new government and bringing a measure of political stability [???] to a nation mired in gang violence and an unfolding humanitarian crisis.
With the sound of gunshots as a backdrop, the nine members of a transitional council took the oath of office early on Thursday in the National Palace…
Michel Patrick Boisvert, a former Haitian minister of economy and finance who stepped in for Mr. Henry in his absence, was named as acting prime minister.
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Is there sufficient Will, Power, and Civil Coherence to empose a lasting order from the current anarchy? Order must be imposed through organized persistent violence sufficient to suppress and terrify the gangs and disgruntled minor oligarchs that currently rule petty fiefdoms.
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Internally? I suspect not, at least not until the fires burn themselves out. Externally, the Kenyan proposal is having second thoughts, and funding has been slow to obtain. It would seem Haiti is one of those sh*t-hole countries that people don’t care much about.
Perhaps it is similar to the decades-long conflict in the Congo. Which Congo, you ask? Well, turning to Wiki, we read that “Congolese Civil War or Congo War may refer to any of a number of armed internal conflicts in the present-day countries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo…”
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In a city cut off from the world, guns and drugs keep flowing
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/13/americas/haiti-mss-unodc-guns-drugs-intl-latam/index.html
On the rare days that the hills surrounding Port-au-Prince fall silent, people notice. “If you can’t hear shooting somewhere, the gangs are probably running low on ammunition,” a police source in the Haitian capital told CNN. “But when there’s a lot of shooting, they’ve definitely received a fresh shipment.”…
Encircling the Caribbean nation is another closed perimeter, this one created by Haiti’s neighbors. The Dominican Republic has sealed the island’s shared border and airspace. The Bahamas has launched a naval blockade to keep Haitians from fleeing the crisis by boat; the UK has sent a warship to ward off anyone seeking refuge in Turks and Caicos, a British overseas territory; and the US state of Florida has increased marine and aviation patrols…
Eighteen months ago, the UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Haiti, which bans the export of weapons to anyone in the country other than the government…“One popular method of moving illegal products involves “banana boats,” go-fast vessels that arrive at night, beach on coastal banana plantations, and are subsequently destroyed after unloading their cargo,” the UNODC report details.
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One suspects “lead or silver corruption” is the core of the problem. Officials who refuse to look the other way are assassinated!!
Kenya’s President William Ruto arrived in Haiti on Saturday, claiming that because of a Kenyan police force battling gangs “the country’s security has significantly improved.” Ruto’s claim was contradicted by a United Nations security expert, who just days earlier warned that violence in the country was worsening as gangs expand their control over the Caribbean nation…
About 400 Kenyan police are in Haiti. Earlier this month, about two dozen police and soldiers from Jamaica arrived in the country. But the United States and other countries have said that the forces aren’t enough and lack resources to take on gangs, which control about 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Meanwhile, U.N. human rights expert William O’Neill, who visited Haiti this week, warned Friday that gang violence is only spreading across Haiti and that Haiti’s National Police still lack the “logistical and technical capacity” to fight gangs, which continue to encroach on new territory.
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He said he spoke with Haiti’s police chief, Rameau Normil, who said they only have 5,000 officers for a country of more than 11 million people…
He cautioned that the current mission, led by 400-strong Kenyan police officers who arrived in Haiti in late June, has deployed less than a quarter of its pledged contingent…
Washington is mulling a U.N. peacekeeping operation in Haiti as one way to secure funding and staffing for the Kenya-led mission but the U.N. has pushed for more funding for the current mission.
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No cats and dogs? Keep them for cannon fodder this time.
Some folks lie a lot. Others kid a lot. If you can’t tell the difference we all need to begin to worry about you, generic.
Why not? It seemed to work out well when Clinton did it.
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Bullets hit a Spirit Airlines plane when it was about to land in the capital Monday, injuring a flight attendant and forcing the airport to shut down. Photos and videos obtained by The Associated Press show bullet holes dotting the interior of a plane.
On Tuesday, JetBlue and American Airlines announced that postflight inspections found their planes also had been shot Monday while departing Port-au-Prince. American suspended flights to the capital until Feb. 12.
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