As Haiti confronts deepening violence and political collapse, calls for military intervention risk repeating a long history of foreign policies that have destabilized the country.
Motorcyclist and passenger riding in the streets of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, on February 27, 2025. Although gang violence is omnipresent in the capital, daily life continues as usual. (Guerinault Louis / Anadolu via Getty Images)
In early January, Haitian police working alongside private military contractors and Kenyan security forces, launched a major offensive to wrest territorial control of downtown Port-au-Prince from the clutches of the country’s armed groups. Explosive drones rained down from the sky and, at ground level, bullets sprayed into the densely packed communities.
A 28-year-old Haitian, who had left the country for the United States and been trying to relocate the family he left behind, told a local news outlet that his brother, sister, and father had all been killed in the police operation. He had been scrambling to get them to a safer place for months. But the search for a new family home had been hampered by landlords’ refusal to rent to anybody from one of Haiti’s impoverished neighborhoods. The stigma was too great. “Sometimes we had to lie about where we came from to avoid being associated with bandits,” he said.
The government told residents to leave, but few had anywhere to go. The day the family intended to move, the police began their attack. The man’s father and brother were killed by gunfire while inside their house; then a drone fell, instantly killing his sister. In total, nearly 120 people were killed in just one neighborhood, a local human rights organization later revealed, almost half of whom were civilians.
After years of steady descent, of seemingly ever-increasing violence and economic hardship, many in Haiti were understandably relieved to finally see the state’s security forces hit back against the bandi, despite the human toll—such is the desperation for an opportunity to breathe again. After weeks of the most aggressive security operations Haiti had seen in years, the police were able to reestablish a presence in an important commercial hub downtown, bringing, if even for a short time, some semblance of normalcy, of stability.
Later this year, a UN-authorized “Gang Suppression Force” is expected to be more fully deployed, bolstering the nearly 1,000 Kenyan forces already in the country. The goal of the force is clear: to kill the bandits and clear the way for the country’s first election in a decade. Speaking at the US Senate earlier this year, US Ambassador to Haiti Henry Wooster described the objective of the latest foreign intervention as ensuring “baseline stability,” defined as preventing state collapse and mass migration to US shores.
As I wrote in Aid State: Disaster Capitalism, Elite Panic, and the Battle to Control Haiti, everyone wants stability. For decades, just about every foreign intervention (not just in Haiti but globally) has been conducted under the auspices of stability. But the question that rarely gets asked is, stability for whom?
After the 2010 earthquake, there was stability. Billions in aid flows stoked the economy and 10,000 UN blue helmets stood guard. But who benefited from that stability? Today, there are as many Haitians displaced as in the aftermath of the earthquake 16 years ago. Per capita income is 25 percent lower than it was prior to that epic disaster. It wasn’t the Haitian people who benefited from the manufactured stability.
There is little reason to believe the US’s notion of stability will ultimately benefit the Haitian people this time either. In fact, it seems more about advancing the Trump administration’s domestic agenda of criminalizing migrants and mass deportations. Last week, amid ongoing efforts to strip hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the US of their legal status—stopped, at least temporarily only after a judge ruled that the decision was motivated by racial bias and animus—the administration threatened to halt the flow of billions of dollars in remittances that provide a lifeline to the country. Given how the Trump campaign weaponized baseless allegations of Haitian migrants eating neighbors’ pets, it’s not hard to understand the judge’s claim of racism. But in court, the United States argued that the deployment of the GSF meant the situation in Haiti was improving and justified the ending of Haitian’s Temporary Protected Status. The judge wasn’t buying that either. “There is no evidence or reason to believe that the GSF will succeed anytime soon given the failed prior interventions,” she wrote.
So how do the particularly violent security operations at the beginning of 2026 fit into this story, and for whom will these foreign troops be providing stability?
On February 7, a date marking the end of the Duvalier dictatorship 40 years ago, the mandate of the presidential council that had governed for the past 22 months came to an end. In the lead-up to the all-important date and amid the ongoing security operations in downtown Port-au-Prince, political negotiations over the future of the transition were taking place. A politician involved described the negotiations to me as a battle between different coalitions vying to convince the United States that they were more able to ensure a smooth deployment of foreign troops. The January offensive proved decisive.
When a majority of presidential council members attempted to remove the prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, the US revoked the visas of all conspiring, alleging ties to gangs. Secretary of State Rubio then called the prime minister—who also employs one of Rubio’s close friends as a lobbyist—and “emphasized the importance of his continued tenure.” Anyone opposed to the prime minister will face “steep costs,” the State Department threatened. In the days before the council’s end, a US Navy warship was deployed to the coast of Port-au-Prince as a sign of support to the prime minister and a not-so-subtle threat to those who stood in the way.
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With this overt political intervention, the United States has once again picked sides in Haiti, and, as it has so many times before, it has decided to stand shoulder to shoulder with the country’s oligarchs—the same class that UN investigators and even the US itself have continually blamed for consolidating the current system of violence, economic exclusion, political corruption, and impunity.
But lost amid the fight over who will hold power in Haiti is what they are going to do with it.
Haiti is facing a crisis of insecurity. But the headline numbers don’t tell the whole story. In 2025, nearly 6,000 people were killed in gang violence, according to the United Nations, enough to vault Haiti into the territory of the world’s most dangerous countries. But, according to those same figures, the Haitian police were responsible for 60 percent of those deaths—and they claim roughly 90 percent of those killed by police were “associated with gangs.” But what does that mean? As the police operations earlier this year showed, “associated with gangs” could mean as little as living in a neighborhood run by gangs.
In his Senate testimony, the ambassador disclosed that the US estimates there to be about 12,000 members of armed groups, with 3,000 of them being “well-armed” and posing the “greatest threat.” But that’s even fewer than the number of gang members the police claim to have killed in just the last year. The strategy—which the authorities plan in doubling down on with the Gang Suppression Force—isn’t working. As the post-quake period showed, foreign troops and increased aid flows can bring short-term stability; however, that stability was used to consolidate an inherently unsustainable status quo of widespread inequality and lack of democratic governance, making today’s instability inevitable.
There is, however, a different path forward. To build something new, Haiti doesn’t need war. It needs peace.
The mere mention of negotiation or dialogue is often met with fierce resistance, along with accusations of being a gang supporter. But a peace process does not necessitate the abdication of justice nor require support for gangs. If done correctly, it could be an essential first step, not only in ending the violence and delivering the justice that victims deserve, but in refounding a state that has failed its own population. A local peace-building organization recently surveyed residents of gang-controlled communities and some of the million-plus living in camps for the internally displaced. They found a clear majority supported opening channels of dialogue with armed groups either instead of or alongside more robust security operations.
A transitional justice process is also, quite simply, practical. Upwards of half of those belonging to armed groups are children under the age of 18. Are the only options to kill or be killed? There’s no functioning judicial system to prosecute anyone, let alone jails left to hold them. What about the hundreds of thousands of civilians still living in neighborhoods largely controlled by armed groups, like the family of that 28-year-old man? The current policy treats them as enemy combatants, deserving of death. In some communities, residents are more afraid of police drones than a neighbor with a rifle—further eroding trust in the state and ensuring an endless supply of young men willing to join the ranks of an armed group.
Everyone acknowledges the role played by political and economic actors in arming and supporting the gangs, who, if dead, won’t be able to provide testimony about how this system of violence and repression truly works.
Ending impunity must start with truth, not death.
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For a peace process to succeed, victims of violence—both from armed groups and the state—must be centered. This could mean convening representatives from affected communities, victim associations, and civil society groups to outline immediate needs and longer-term priorities. Communities must be empowered to define the parameters of justice and determine what peace means to them. Restitution will be essential and could include financial support, mental health services, and job opportunities but also tangible public works, like cleaning streets and removing trash from the canals that flood from every storm. Infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, public markets, and thousands of homes that have been destroyed, must be rebuilt.
Ideally, such a process would provide a framework to restore—or in many cases create for the first time—government services that reach all Haitians, especially those in communities long cut off from state representation, where gangs have thrived. Perhaps most important will be clear steps to end impunity. This could take the form of a truth commission combined with structured programs that allow armed actors to turn in weapons and provide testimony. Political will remains the biggest barrier to progress on all these fronts, but lasting stability cannot be imposed simply with the barrel of a gun.
None of this is meant to downplay or ignore the horrors inflicted on the population. Mass rapes, often perpetrated in front of family members, are still taking place. Entire communities have been burned to the ground. Universities, pharmacies, hospitals, and even churches have been pillaged and destroyed. Many street vendors, the backbone of commerce in the capital and the link between urban and rural, have lost everything. In some areas, schools have been closed for more than two years. An entire generation has been traumatized.
The coalition of armed groups known as Viv Ansanm—the name means “living together” in Haitian Kreyol—is not leading a revolution of the masses as some of its leaders proclaim, nor is it a genuine attempt to overthrow the state. But the violence is a de facto form of resistance, a political act. Armed groups have, on the one hand, thwarted efforts to organize and peacefully demand change; killed activists and journalists while chasing many more out of the country; and justified the continued intervention of foreign powers. And yet, that same violence remains the last barrier preventing a return to the status quo, to a system guaranteed to perpetuate it.
A peace process, however, cannot simply mean a negotiation between armed groups and the state, which occurs under the table already. The reality is that everyone is negotiating daily; for a street vendor to set up her stand, for a politician to visit family in the provinces, for an embassy to safely move its staff or an NGO to distribute food, for grocery stores to fill their shelves or gas stations to fill their pumps. But these informal negotiations do not begin to address the underlying causes of the crisis. They are negotiations for survival, for protection. To move beyond the status quo, a process must be formalized, brought into the public sphere, and made inclusive. Unlike yet another ill-defined foreign military intervention, a national dialogue for peace offers an opportunity for a truly Haitian-led solution to the crisis.
Last spring, an Australian journalist asked former cop Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, the outspoken and self-declared leader of Viv Ansanm, “Why can’t you pick up the phone and have some sort of reconciliation in this country? And if you love it so much and they say you have to go to jail, OK, maybe you should.”
“Every day I ask for reconciliation,” he responded. “I want to resolve the problem.” But he continued, “the people in power don’t want to.… they don’t want to resolve the problem because they want to steal, make money so they can buy a house in the US, in Canada, in France.” It’s more than fair to question his sincerity, or his ability to effectively control the many thousands of armed individuals—many of them kids who, for the first time in their life, have had a taste of power, of control over their destiny. But his second point is harder to refute. Each council member reportedly received approximately $75,000 monthly in pay and benefits, including stipends for food, housing, and personal expenses. The never-ending fight for political power is not about the well-being of the population but the well-being of the political and economic elite.
In many cases, Haiti’s armed groups have become economically lucrative criminal enterprises involved in drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping. The incentives to disarm and give up those privileges may appear virtually nonexistent. But social workers, health professionals, and organizers who have interacted with gang leaders and foot soldiers tell a more nuanced story. With appropriate guarantees, with a holistic plan for the state to step up and provide for the population, the possibility of peace is not as distant as the headlines make it appear.
Behind closed doors, policymakers—in Haiti and abroad—acknowledge the necessity of dialogue and transitional justice, but generally say it’s something to be handled down the road, once more troops arrive and stability is restored. But if there isn’t progress toward peace prior to the arrival of foreign troops, history shows us what is likely to happen: Haiti’s political leaders, legitimized by outside powers, will use foreign troops to ensure their own stability in power, not to address the root causes of Haiti’s crisis. The window for change is closing.
A genuine attempt to move past the perpetual cycles of violence is a threat to not just those currently in government but also certain gang leaders, businesspeople, members of civil society, and, of course, foreign interests. People will fight to maintain their position within the old system, to prevent the necessary rupture from taking place.
Peace is a process, not just the absence of violence but the presence of schools, healthcare, and opportunity, not just in Port-au-Prince but across the entire country. Peace begins with forgiveness, by creating relationships. It begins by acknowledging the systems that led to the crisis and opting for a new path forward. “We need to reconstruct the relationship between people again and have trust return,” Luis Robillard, a community activist engaged in peacebuilding efforts, explained. “Trust within the population, the population’s trust of the state, trust in the country’s systems. This is where we should start.”
No, the violence is not revolutionary, but the response to it can be.
Jake JohnstonJake Johnston is a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, DC. He is the lead author for CEPR’s Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog. His articles have been published in outlets such as Boston Review, The Hill, AlterNet and Truthout.