Les armes américaines affluent en Haïti alors que les gangs tentent d’en prendre le contrôle
»Le pouvoir à tout prix ! Demach ekip Ariel la klè. Y ap jwe sou 3 tablo. Si Gilles pa Prezidan KP a, se jij pa yo k ap prezidan oubyen y ap fè gang yo antre nan Palè Nasyonal« .
From Glocks to belt-fed machine guns and Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles, the armory of crime gangs now bringing Haiti to the brink of disaster is expanding quickly as warlords led by Jimmy Chérizier strengthen their hold on the country.
And the vast majority of the weapons are flowing from the U.S.
Largely obtained in American gun stores, often by so-called straw buyers acting as stand-ins for the gangs, the weapons make their way to Haiti piecemeal or as disassembled parts hidden in shipments of food, clothing and secondhand cars to be used by the 300 or so gangs now expanding their hold on the capital, Port-au-Prince, investigators in the U.S. and Haiti say.
Better armed than the country’s beleaguered police, the gangs terrorize Haiti’s 11 million people and threaten the U.S.-supported creation of a special council that, once convened, would appoint an interim prime minister and pave the way for free elections.
Their tools include everything from ubiquitous 9mm handguns to the 7.62mm semiautomatic rifles favored by the world’s insurgent groups, according to the Haitian National Police and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, which is trying to stop the flow of weaponry.
“What we started noticing that was concerning was the increase in the caliber and the volume of the weapons going there, and it was significant,” said Anthony Salisbury, the Homeland Security Investigations director in Miami. “As soon as we started seeing these weapons, you started seeing the spike in violence and murders going on.”
William O’Neill, the leading United Nations expert on human rights in Haiti, called the situation there “apocalyptic.”
“The statistics are numbing, and going in the wrong direction,” he said.
The gangs have left a bloody trail, with more than 11,000 homicides logged from 2019 through 2023, said James Boyard, a national police official assigned to Haiti’s Foreign Ministry. Last year, 4,789 homicides were registered, up 119% from 2022. The U.N. says the upgrading of the arsenal—hollow-point bullets, which expand upon impact, now are used by gangs in Haiti—is worsening the severity of the carnage.
In addition, nearly 5,000 people have been kidnapped, and the U.N. estimates that 360,000 people inside the country are displaced.
A rap music video that surfaced last month offers raw evidence of the groups’ increasing firepower and the challenge they pose to police and Haitian leaders. About 20 masked, uniformed gunmen ride in camouflaged trucks and carry an array of new assault rifles, including Belgian-made FALs and AK-47s, weapons used by rebels in Africa and Latin America.
The gunmen are part of a group identifying itself as the tactical unit of the Five Seconds Gang, run by one of Haiti’s most powerful gang leaders, Johnson André, a 26-year-old rapper better known as Izo. The video, uploaded to YouTube and TikTok and seen as far away as Capitol Hill, resembles those released by Mexico’s drug cartels, whose gunmen dress like elite shock troops and flaunt heavy weapons.
“The aesthetic they want to get is that of a special-forces soldier, and that’s what’s driving the type of weapons they are buying,” said Romain Le Cour, senior expert at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, a Geneva think tank.
O’Neill, who helped write an extensive U.N. report in September on the gangs and guns, said Five Seconds appears to be receiving training from Dimitri Herard, a fugitive senior Haitian police official who had been incarcerated until gang members busted him and nearly 5,000 other inmates out of prison last month.
From the straw buyers to the freight forwarders, the money carriers to corrupt Haitian officers, the gun-smuggling business is immensely profitable.
The U.N. report from September said that a 5.56mm semiautomatic rifle costing a few hundred dollars in the U.S. can go for as much as $8,000 in Haiti.
Weapons packing more punch cost far more, said Homeland Security’s Salisbury, explaining that a .50-caliber sniper rifle valued at $10,000 in the U.S. can be bid up to $80,000 by Haiti’s cash-rich gangs.
“That’s for one gun,” Salisbury said. “So, you just make $60,000 to $70,000 profit.”
And the gangs are thirsting for ever more firepower—and know full well that they can easily secure nearly any kind of weapon in the U.S. legally.
“This gun problem is so huge that 90% of the guns that go into Haiti come from the U.S.,” said Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D., Fla.), a Haitian-American serving in Congress. “Many people who are in the U.S. are buying and arming the gangs.”
In the recent U.S. case against the Florida-based members of the gang 400 Mawozo, investigators presented recordings of members speaking enthusiastically by audio message about securing more powerful weaponry and ammunition.
“My heart is beating fast,” Eliande Tunis, girlfriend of the Mawozo leader Joly Germine, said in a message, according to court documents.
“I want those bullets,” responded Jocelyn Dor, a cousin of Germine, who was in a Haitian prison at the time. U.S. investigators say they believe the two were discussing ammunition for a .50-caliber weapon, a firearm powerful enough to bring down a helicopter.
click for the remaining WSJ article : U.S. Guns Flow Into Haiti as Gangs Push to Take Control (msn.com)
