This video is sponsored by Nebula, support
me directly while getting access to dozens of Original series, early releases,
and more by following the link below. Gunfire rings out over Port-au-Prince, Haiti's
capital of 2.8 million people where over 300 gangs battle relentlessly for control of the city. The Haitian President is dead. The acting Prime
Minister Ariel Henry is stuck in Puerto Rico. Gangs now control 80% of the capital. Each
with their own expanding territories backed up by young men wielding American military grade
weapons. The police are outgunned and outnumbered. One of the most powerful gang leaders is
Izo still in his 20s he has unleashed an onslaught of murder and kidnappings and seized
control of Port-au-Prince’s waterways and even the Palais de Justice, the highest seat of the
Haitian judicial system. With automatic weapons they raided the building stealing evidence,
weapons and money. Izo has built up a social media following and even got a silver play button
from Youtube last year before being banned. The most formidable leader in Haiti
is Jimmy Chérizier aka Barbecue, an ex-special police forces officer who
now runs the notorious G9 Alliance. This isn’t just criminal gang violence. Haiti’s
gangs are political actors. Chérizier has united gangs that once fought each other
to focus on one goal: to overthrow the unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry who has
withheld elections from Haitians for years. "If Ariel Henry doesn't step down and
the international community continues to support him, they will lead us directly
to a civil war which will end in genocide." Gangs have seized the port, burned shops, attacked
police stations, and on the 3rd of March 2024 launched a coordinated attack that assaulted
several police stations, culminating in a daring jailbreak that freed 4,700 inmates from 2 prisons.
The gangs besieged the airport and stopped Ariel Henry from reentering the country. He finally
stepped down as Prime Minister on March 12th. Haiti hasn’t had an election since 2016
so there isn’t a single elected official in the country. There’s No President.
No Prime Minister. No Parliament, and a lot of extremely armed men in the
capital waiting to fill this vacuum. Haiti, a small nation of almost 12 million
people about the size of Belgium, saw nearly 5,000 homicides in 2023 twice as many as the
previous year. In 2016 Haiti’s murder rate was 6.7 per 100,000, just above the global average,
it has surged to 40.9 in the last few weeks. In 2021 about 700 people were kidnapped,
in 2023 it has risen to 3000. Ransoms for kidnapping victims have skyrocketed
to $40,000 in a country where 60% of people live on less than $2 a
day and the number is rising. Children cannot go to schools,
hospitals are out of supplies, and entire neighbourhoods have been transformed
into open-air prisons for innocent Haitians. 362,000 Haitians, half of them children have
been displaced.1.4 million Haitians are “on the brink of starvation” and an outbreak of
cholera is spreading due to gangs cutting off water treatment services. Hundreds
of thousands of desperate Haitians have fled to the country and sought refuge
in Brasil, Chile, and nearby nations, tens of thousands are braving the dangerous
Darien Gap with its jungles and preying gangs in the hopes of reaching the United
States, where they face record deportations. Haiti is on the edge of collapse, grappling
with crippling overlapping catastrophes. These catastrophes are not random. They are
the bitter fruits of centuries of exploitation, foreign interventions, an apocalyptic 2010
earthquake, decades of dodgy elections and coups, a vicious 29 year father son dictatorship,
theft by foreign NGOs, rampant corruption, and a 122 year long debt forced on the
country by their former slave-masters. Haiti is collapsing, gangs might seize control
of a sovereign nation, and this is the centuries long story of why.
History This is the island of Hispaniola, shared
by modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic. After Columbus' 1492 arrival, the Spanish
colonised the island and wiped out Hispaniola's native Taino population. By the 1600s, the French
established the colony of Saint-Domingue here, which became France’s most lucrative colony fed
by the labour of millions of African slaves who harvested sugar, coffee, and timber. Here
slaves outnumbered the free more than 10-1. At the end of the eighteenth century half
of the sugar and coffee consumed in Europe was produced here by enslaved Africans working
12 hour days. Most only survived a few years. Rebellious slaves were flayed,
boiled in cane syrup, fed to dogs, and burned at the stake. Slave women would abort
their pregnancies to avoid birthing children into slavery. If anywhere on Earth could be
described as hell it was Saint-Domingue. In 1791 the slaves led a rebellion against French
domination. After a long 13 year long war in 1804 they had done the impossible, killed their
masters, defeated Napoleon’s 50,000 troops, and freed themselves from slavery and
the French. They outlawed slavery and established the world's first Black republic,
Latin America’s first independent nation. They called their state "Haiti" the name for
the island in the indigenous Taino language. France refused to recognise the country as
independent and blocked them from engaging in international trade. The United States, the
only other independent country in the hemisphere, refused to recognise Haiti until 1862.
Americans did not want slaves in their own country to have an example of a
successful slave revolt next door. Twenty-one years after Haiti’s independence
a squadron of French warships arrived. The French issued an ultimatum:
Pay 150,000,000 francs in reparations to your former slave masters for stealing their
property…literally the Haitians themselves, or face another war and be put
back in chains. If they accepted, France would recognise their independence.
Haiti’s president, looking to avoid invasion and eager for trade and international
recognition, accepted France's demands. The debt amount was 300% of Haiti’s GDP. The wealth Haitians created through sugar, coffee,
and timber became massive profits for French banks like Crédit Industriel et Commercial and its
investors whowent on to finance the Eiffel Tower. The first instalment of this Independence
Debt was six times Haiti’s income that year, an impossible payment. But that was the plan. Part 1: Lock Haiti into massive debt Part 2: Force them to take out a
high interest loan from French banks. This financial noose became Haiti’s “double
debt”. The ransom and the interest. $2.53 out of every $3 of coffee taxes,
Haiti's primary income, flowed directly into the pockets of French debt
holders. There was no funds to build a state, nothing to invest in businesses,
farms, bridges, sewers or ports. Over 122 years of debt payments Haiti lost between 21 and 121 billion dollars. Both sums
are larger than Haiti's current economy. On December 17th 1914 American Marines stormed
the headquarters of Haiti’s national bank and walked out with $13,526,578 in Haitian gold piled
it on a boat and sent the loot to Wall Street. President Woodrow Wilson then ordered a
full-scale invasion of Haiti. The country would be under American occupation for
the next 19 years. National City Bank, which later became Citigroup, took control of
the Haitian national bank; soon a quarter of Haiti’s total revenue went to paying National City
Bank. Another 20% went to the paying French banks. The Americans crushed any resistance.
Responding to protests with machine gun fire like at the Cayes Massacre. Haitian
rebels called cacos fought back and were brutally put down. A cacos leader Charlemagne
Péralte led a years long guerrilla war against the Americans until a friend betrayed
him and he was gunned down by US marines who pinned his corpse to a door, and then
distributed photos of it across the country. The Americans introduced forced labour, press
censorship, and rewrote the constitution to allow foreigners to buy Haitian land. When the
Haitians refused this constitution the Marines dissolved Haiti’s parliament at gunpoint. Haiti’s
land was turned into American sugar plantations, Haiti’s earnings went to bankers in New York
while 90% of Haitians lived close to starvation. After 19 years the US withdrew its troops
in 1934 leaving behind 15,000 rebel corpses, 5,000 dead in labour camps and countless more
due to starvation and poverty. The US kept control of Haiti’s finances until 1947 which
is also when the debt to France finally ended. The U.S. withdrawal was followed by the 1957 establishment of a dictatorship under
Dr. François Duvalier or “Papa Doc”. Fearing a coup Papa Doc sidelined the
military and created the Tonton Macoute. VOICE OVER: Dr Francois Duvalier. Two years
ago this medical man turned politician proclaimed himself reelected in an election
in which he never declared a candidacy. A situation that demanded the training and
organising of a personal palace guard. A 10,000-strong private army that answered
to him alone, you could call it a gang. The Tonton Macoute acted as his secret
police and tortured, disappeared, and killed any Haitian that critiqued the
regime. Luckner Cambronne, aka the "Vampire of the Caribbean" led the Tontons Macoute.
His company "Hemocaribian" sold five tons of blood plasma monthly to laboratories in the
USA. Plasma extracted from common Haitians. VOICE OVER, OVERLY BRITISH: THE TONTON
MACOUTE REPRESENTED A DEITY THAT COULD SNATCH MEN AWAY AND BRING THEM TO A KIND OF
HELL. THE REALITY WAS NOT FAR BEHIND THE FABLE Duvalier and the Tonton Macoutes’
reign of terror killed 50,000 people. Duvalier’s brutal rule was supported and
financed by the United States because he was anti-communist. The US propped him up as a
Caribbean counterweight to Fidel Castro in Cuba. Papa Doc died in 1971, his son Baby
Doc, only 19 years old took over, making him probably the world’s youngest dictator. The Duvaliers amassed millions,
while permanently crippling Haiti. VOICE OVER: Haiti’s poor people,
among the most desperate in the world, just miles from the luxurious presidential
palace, they live by the hundreds of thousands in shacks surrounded by raw
sewage. With no running water, no power, no food. Under the duvalier’s millions
in foreign aid money founds its way into private bank accounts while the average income
is less than .50c a day while children starve. 80 percent of college graduates fled Haiti during
this period. 12.8% of infants died in their first year, life expectancy was 53 years. While between
1981 and 1985 the USA and the World Bank gave Baby Doc hundreds of millions of dollars. During
this period Duvalier handed off running the state and economy to the United States Agency for
International Development or USAID and the World Bank. This led to consequences for Haitians. 30%
of all farmland was seized and transformed into export focused plantations which impoverished
tens of thousands of farmers. Haitians had bred a specific race of low-maintenance pig suited to
Haiti’s climate, in 1981 a swine flu outbreak in the Dominican Republic scared USAID who then in
Haiti “demanded total and complete eradication of the entire race of pigs”. Haitians couldn’t
replace the pigs. Foreign pigs were expensive and couldn’t survive Haiti’s climate, Haiti’s pork
industry was destroyed, the Haitian Creole pig went extinct, 800,000 former pig owners were
left destitute. Haiti’s agricultural sector began to shrink, Haitians who were producers
were made into consumers of foreign imports. Throughout the 70s and 80s Baby Doc worked with
American companies to eliminate Haiti’s trade tariffs, keep wages low, ban labour unions,
and allow companies to take all profits back to the USA tax free. By the late 80s there were
hundreds of American companies in Haiti taking advantage of a $2.65 a day wage, the lowest in
the Americas. Nearly every American baseball team at the time wore Haitian made uniforms and
tossed Haitian stitched baseballs, every Elmo and Cabbage Patch doll was made in Haiti. As Baby
Doc ran his sweatshop empire, aid flowed into Haiti from the USA, International Monetary, and
World Bank. While Haitians worked in the factories almost all the profit flowed out of Haiti. More
factories came and Haitians working 12 hours 6 days a week, had the lowest life expectancy,
literacy rate, and most poverty in the hemisphere. Most Haitians were eating less than 80% of the
necessary daily calorie amount. Only the $125m a year sent home by the 600,000 Haitians
living abroad stopped Haiti from starving. Voice over: we cannot have this
scandalous wealth side by side with abject poverty. Things have got to change Another voice over: they are protesting
their hunger nd call for the end of the dictatorship. Haitians are talking
openly about overthrowing their leader Voice over: President Jean Claude Duvalier
driving himself and his wife to the airport last night to go into exile. On the darkened
tarmac an americas airforce craft was waiting Voice over: people dance in the streets
today the hated dictator was gone Another voice over: the hurt, the anger, repressed
all those years exploded from the bottom. In 1986, massive civilian protests and then a
military coup forced Baby Doc to flee the country. The United States flew him and about $1 billion
stolen dollars into comfortable exile in France. Eventually on the 7th of February 1991
Haitians chose their first democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
who built a huge base of support among the nation's poor majority and rode into office
with 67% of the vote. He donated his $10,000 a month salary. He attacked tax evasion by the
wealthy and government revenue in Haiti went up for once. Failing state owned businesses were
turned around and made profitable and by June 1991 for the first time in a long time Haiti
was running a budget surplus of $8 million. Aristide tried to raise the minimum
wage from $2.65 per day to $5. Massive business opposition made him eventually
compromise on $4.80 a day. USAID began funding business leaders and members
of the military that hated Aristide. He lasted seven months in office before
he was overthrown in a military coup. A military junta replaced Aristide and ruled for
nearly 4 years in which thousands of Aristide’s supporters were killed. The United States and
United Nations with Aristide’s approval placed heavy sanctions on this military regime. Food,
medical supplies, and fertilisers all became extremely rare. Haiti’s crop production
fell 20%. 300,000 jobs were destroyed. Tens of millions of dollars in coffee, cocoa, and
other exports were blocked. GDP per capita fell 30% and in 1993 the New York Times reported 1000
children were killed each month by the sanctions. Aristide, exiled in the US, had urged American
Presidents Bush Sr and then Bill Clinton for years to bring him back to power.
Aristide said that if he was in charge, the thousands of Haitian refugees fleeing to the
US in makeshift boats would stop, which would be a huge win for Clinton. By 1994, 50,000 Haitian
refugees were being held at Guantanamo Bay. Clinton sent in 20,000 US Marines to
put Aristide back in the Presidential palace. The military junta fled
before the troops even landed. Voice over: On the streets of Haiti president
jean bertrand aristide is welcome as a saviour After coming back to power
Aristide lacked the confidence he had before. Afraid of another
coup in 1995 he disbanded the army. Voice over: to prevent them
from enacting another coup against Haiti’s democratically elected president Former soldiers flooded into the ranks of gangs
to make a living. Aristide created the Chimères, essentially a gang under his
command which he sent into the streets to fight opponents. From the
Tonton Macoute to the Chimères now the political-gang alliance was now a
permanent aspect of Haitian politics. Clinton made sure Aristide knew his return
came with… conditions. Haiti was forced to downsize the government, freeze low
wages, and lower taxes on foreign companies. Haiti’s state owned businesses
were sold off, starving the state of revenue. Haiti had tariffs on food imports as high as
150%. This was to protect Haitian farmers who made up nearly 70% of the population. But by 1995
Bill Clinton, USAID and the IMF cut Haiti's rice tariff to 3 per cent. In the United States
rice is subsidised by American taxpayers who provide billions to farmers to make American rice
artificially cheap. Rice grown in Arkansas could be sold 30-50% cheaper than rice grown in Haiti.
Haiti was not allowed to subsidise its own rice, the IMF said that was anti free market. American
rice flooded the Haitian market. Today 90% of the rice eaten in Haiti is American, 50%
of all food is imported. Haiti was food self-sufficient in the 80s, now it has the
11th worst level of hunger in the world. Devastated Haitian farmers who lost their lands
flocked into the capital and crammed into the badly constructed and overcrowded slumshoping to
get work in nearby American garment factories. There weren’t enough jobs so
workers had to fight for even the lowest paying positions, keeping wages low. Aristide was reelected in 2001 at the same
time as George W Bush entered office.Bush, disliked Aristide’s miniscule pushback
against the IMF and World Bank. He cut aid to Haiti massively, but not all
aid. USAID diverted funds to Group 184, a group of business leaders, many of
them in the sweatshop industry, who just 10 years earlier were sanctioned for their
anti-democratic stances. Now they were allies. Corruption and ineffective rule clouded Aristide’s
second term. His increasing authoritarianism and his acceptance of IMF orders alienated
his allies. Pro and anti Aristide gangs were fighting across the country,
violence became widespread. The capital was in danger of being conquered.
In 2004 Fulton Armstrong, a CIA analyst, noticed weapons flowing into the hands of
former Haitian military. “It had all the markings of a US operation…All indications
were incredibly that the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs…was behind
it”. With armed men closing in on the 29th of February 2004 Aristide was put on an American
plane and sent to the Central African Republic. Aristide claims that he was kidnapped. He had been coup’d a second time,
he would not be coming back. France’s Ambassador to Haiti at the time later
admitted that France and the USA orchestrated the 2004 coup against Aristide. France might
have been influenced by Aristide's plans to sue France for $21 billion dollars to reclaim
the slave debt. Did France consider this a threat, no…but Aristide had stepped on too many
toes. After the coup the Americans plucked a Haitian living in retirement in Florida, made him
Prime Minister and he promptly cancelled the case against France and was tasked with wiping out
the Aristide’s still quite popular movement. A wage increase in 2009 from 31c an hour to 62c
an hour to keep up with inflation was fought tooth and nail by Fruit of the Loom and Levi’s
who worked in close concert with the US Embassy, but it passed and today sweatshops in
Haiti pay an average wage of $5 a day. Haitians need about $26 a day to adequately
provide for themselves and their families. Only international aid and remittances
sent home from Haitians working abroad keep millions of Haitian families afloat
and Haitian labour artificially cheap. Drained of revenue and facing
contant protests over food prices Haiti's government was about to crumble. ……
VOICE OVER: its being called a catastrophe of epic proportions. The caribbean island
of haiti has been rocked by it biggest earthquake in 200 years. The 7.0 quake hit
just south of the capital port-au-prince. Voice over: buildings toppled
to the groudn/ a hospital was flattened. Even the presidential
palace couldn’t withstand the force At 4:53pm on the 12th of January 2010
within 30 seconds Port-au-Prince collapsed. It was apocalyptic. Over 220,000 Haitians died. 1.5 million were
displaced. 400,000 homes were destroyed. Damage soared to $8 billion, about 67% of the country’s
GDP. Entire sweatshops collapsed killing every employee. The National Palace caved in along with
all but one government ministry. 1 in 3 civil servants died. Decades of economic policy drove
thousands upon thousands of rural Haitians into the capital’s overcrowded shoddily constructed
slums where the earthquake buried them. The massive scale of the earthquake’s
destruction shocked the world causing a tsunami of aid to flow into the country.
About $10 billion was pledged to rebuild Haiti. Rather than this money going to Haitians on the
ground who knew what they needed. Rather than going into the local economy. 99% of aid went to
foreign non-governmental organisations or NGOs. Over the 90s and 2000s, thousands of foreign
NGOs took over the role of the Haitian state, by 2010 they ran 80% of education and health
services. Most donors funded their own NGOs. About 67 cents of every dollar of aid sent to
Haiti ended up going to companies in the same 30 mile radius in Washington D.C. Leaked documents
called it a “Gold Rush”. The Red Cross raised 500m for Haiti and promised to build thousands of new
homes…They built 6…not 6,000…they built 6 houses. Woman speaking: You in Haiti to help
you not in haiti to have an attitude. If you not if you not doing anything
wrong then you can answer the question Woman: They’ve been here 3 months and
they haved’t received food, water, nothing Haitians went without basic medicine while
NGO employees were earning $140,000+ a year. When it came to rebuilding Haiti
NGOs didn’t hire Haitians they imported foreign workers. Shelim Dorval, a Haitian
explained “For each one of those expats, they were having high salaries, staying in a
fancy house, and getting vacation trips back to their countries. A lot of money was
spent on those people who were not Haitian, who had nothing to do with Haiti. The money
was just going back to the United States.” The international teams called Port-au-Prince’s
poorest areas “Red zones” which they didn’t dare enter. Millions were spent on international
rescue teams that rescued about 200 people from the rubble in wealthier and tourist
areas. The earthquake’s actual first responders were Haitians themselves who pulled
their communities out from the rubble. Outside the capital rural homes opened their doors to
hundreds of thousands fleeing the destruction. Remittances sent directly from
Haitians abroad put millions of dollars into the hands of regular
Haitians more than any NGO did. Haitians reported feeling an extreme sense of
newfound solidarity with their fellow Haitians. For many the earthquake looked like it destroyed
old Haiti. When surveyed the Haitians responded that they wanted a new state that was accountable
to citizens and provided services. They wanted aid to invest in agriculture, schools,
roads, hospitals, and Haitian businesses. Man talking: Surveys show the people
want jobs, they want education, they want shelter but they also want local food
production. They want all things to help them move ahead. They don't want charity. They're not
just waiting now for the New York conference to hand them a lot of money.They are ready to
move ahead and make this something positive. “We saw the national palace destroyed I would
like to see Haitian engineers rebuild it” But decisions about how to rebuild Haiti were made
not by Haitians, but by the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, chaired…by Bill Clinton. The billions
sent to Haiti did not go to feeding, sheltering, and supporting the recovery of Haitians.
It was spent on odd things like USAID’s plan to distribute 130 tons of genetically
modified Monsanto seeds to rural farmers. The destruction was mostly confined to the
capital, Haitian farmers were fine. They already had seeds, harvest season had just finished
so they had huge stocks of food they needed to sell. For just $80 million dollars a year, which
was a fraction of the aid money sent per month, USAID could have purchased every grain of rice
in the country which would have boasted the rural economy. Farmers not only needed that money, but
they were also housing thousands of refugees in their homes who they could have hired, rehoming
people outside the overcrowded capital. Instead in the first 2 months alone USAID handed out
40 million pounds of food aid imported from the USA. Haitian farmers watched their stocks rot,
which meant they had no money for next year. 90 percent of eggs and poultry consumed in
Haiti comes from the Dominican Republicand US, the sanctions in the 90s killed Haiti’s
chicken farms and the hundreds of thousands of jobs associated with them. 90 percent
of Haiti’s rice is imported. Almost all sugar is imported! In what used to be a sugar
colony. Aid could have been spent building those fundamental industries. Which would
have given Haiti a stable base to grow from. By 2010 only 12 percent of the population
had access to clean water and latrines. Thousands of Haitian jobs could have been
created through the construction of sewage treatment plants, water supply
systems, roads, ports, energy, and earthquake-resistant infrastructure.
Here’s a graph of Haitian requests for funding and then what actually got funded.
Something like transportation saw aid pledges 510% higher than what was requested. While
Haitians asked for money to support building a strong and more democratic state, reconstruction,
or education almost no funding went there. Instead of investing in critical job-creating
infrastructure projects, The World Bank advised the Haitian government to “lift restrictions
on 24/7 multi-labor shifts” while “getting rid of higher pay for night shifts and offering
“economic free zones” (EFZs) zones where foreign companies could operate in Haiti tax-free.
They would not budge from the sweatshop model. The shining jewel of the aid effort would be the $300 million dollar, 600-acre Caracol
Industrial Park. This would be a giant tax free sweatshop where Haitians would
work for the lowest wages in the Americas. But Caracol Industrial Park was built in the
north of the country, far from the actual area impacted by the earthquake. The north was
chosen not to help the 1 million displaced people in Port-au-Prince but because “hundreds
of small farmers who had to be moved” to make way for the park who “were far less resistant
than the wealthy landowners in the capital”. The construction of the park evicted 366 families
from their land. “If we had the support we needed to farm our land, we would be doing well. Now
that I’ve lost my land, I don’t have a penny”. Bill Clinton offered them minimum wage jobs
at the park producing t-shirts for Walmart. When Bill and Hillary Clinton flew in
to inaugurate Caracol park in 2012, the project had created just 1,500 of
the 65,000 jobs that were promised. Billions of aid dollars were spent, there is no new infrastructure, and
Haitians earn less now than in 1960. After the 2004 coup against Aristide’s the UN
sent in a 9,000 strong peacekeeping force. After the Earthquake this force was strengthened.
The UN force was deeply unpopular. It was revealed that over 100 members were
involved in a child sex-trafficing ring. It was also revealed peacekeepers were
trading food to starving Haitians for sexual favours. Leaving behind hundreds if not thousands
of pregnant women and girls. The peacekeepers treated Haitians aggressively for example in one
of Port-au-Prince's densest slums, Cite Soleil, UN peacekeepers on an anti-gang raid fired 22,000
bullets into a square killing dozens of civilians including children. To make matters worse in
October 2010 the toilets of the peacekeepers drained directly into the local water supply
which caused a massive outbreak of cholera, a disease unknown in Haiti. It infected well
over 1 million Haitians, and killed 12,000. With hundreds of millions of dollars in aid in
the country thousands died while NGOs pinched pennies. Doctors Without Borders and the Cuban
medical brigades, who financed themselves, handled the overwhelming majority of cases.
Antibiotics were withheld to cut costs, so was bottled water. When doctors requested
vaccines they were told that if Haitians got vaccines they would get too comfortable
about hygiene. Without adequate funding to build sewage facilities cholera
remains a problem in Haiti today. Almost no aid money went to preparing for
future disasters. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew wrecked the country costing 13% of GDP. In
2015 and 2017, drought killed 70% of crops. But Haiti crawled along. The election
of Jovenel Moïse in 2016 was clouded by fraud allegations. Moïse faced constant
protests demanding his resignation by Haitians who blamed him for the economic crisis,
rampant corruption, a gasoline shortage, and rising gang violence. In 2020, the
terms of every elected official expired and no elections were held to replace
them, leaving Moïse to rule by decree. Assassination At approximately 1:00 a.m. on July 7, 2021, a group of mercenaries stormed the home of
President Jovenel Moïse. They burst into his room and fired 12 bullets into the Haitian
President abruptly ending his rule and his life Moise’s term technically ended in February
2021 but he kept ruling which caused massive protests and made him unpopular. He was also
working on a list of powerful politicians and business people involved in Haiti’s drug
trade, with the intention of going public. Under the Duvaliers Haiti emerged as a transit
hub for cocaine heading to the US. In the 80s little single-engine planes from Pablo Escobar’s
Medellin Cartel landed in makeshift airstrips in Haiti before finishing the trip to the US all
with the help of powerful politicians and local business elites. Due to its incredibly weak
government and strategic position Haiti is a vital route for cocaine heading to the United
States, the world’s largest cocaine consumer. Today traffickers operate from airstrips
in the north. The drug trade is booming, planes frequently pass through carrying metric
tons of cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela. Between May and June 2021, one airstrip in Savane Diane saw at least a dozen planes
pass through, carrying thousands of kilos of cocaine. Moïse found outand
ordered the destruction of the airstrip. A week later, Moïse was gunned down in his home. Just 36 hours before his death, President Moïse
had named Ariel Henry as acting Prime Minister, the second highest position in the government, and tasked him with preparing the country
for elections in the next two months. It has been 7 years since the Haitian elections.
3 years since Henry took over. He never held elections. It also seems like Henry was in
contact with the assassins shortly before and right after the assassination, which hasn’t
made a great impression on the Haitian people. On August 14, 2021 one month
after Moise was assassinated, an earthquake twice as strong as the 2010 one,
a magnitude 7.2 quake struck the southern region of Haiti. It killed 2,200 and injured well
over 12,000 causing about US$1.6 billion in damages or 11% of GDP which put more
pressure on an already crumbling Haiti. Under Henry’s rule poverty, hunger, and
violence spiralled out of control. Haiti stopped functioning as millions protested
what they saw as Henry’s illegitimate rule. But the United States gave full support to Henry
despite the total lack of a democratic mandate. Under Moise & Henry, Haiti’s gangs evolved from
small groups based in one neighbourhood into sophisticated and heavily armed organisations
with ambitious goals. The number of gangs in Port-au-Prince has grown from roughly 40 in 2004
to over 300 today and they’ve evolved into large, professional, and violent operations
governing large territories. Gangs that had 50 or 100 members 15 years
ago now have 1500 to 2500 members. Recently gangs have mainly grouped into two
competing alliances G9 and G-Pep. Seeing the weakness of Henry’s regime the gangs have
recently set aside their differences to work together to attack the government. G9 led
by Jimmy Chérizier includes criminal gangs and political dissidents who’ve joined together
to kick out Ariel Henry. Haitian gangs have always been political as well as criminal actors,
which is why Haitian officials usually call them armed groups rather than gangs. Since the Tonton
Macoutes and the Chimères Haiti’s elites have used gangs to attack opposition, intimidate voters,
or enrich themselves through illegal means. For example, Chérizier’s G9 got half
of its revenue from politicians, 30% from kidnappings and 20% from
extortions. After Moise’s assassination, political funding fell 30% which might
explain the surge of kidnappings, his conquest of fuel and resource depots,
and his desire to overthrow Henry. Those that wanted to exploit Haiti have always found willing collaborators in
the country, Haiti’s elites. Wealthy Haitians call the common Haitian
people, gwo zotey “big toes” because they often go barefoot. For generations by
collaborating with outside powers Haitian elites have maintained a system that drains wealth
produced by Haitians while providing nothing in return. They pay no taxes while the Haitian people
earning barely a few dollars a day pay high food, tuition, and healthcare costs. They make up barely
5% of the population but control nearly all of the wealth. They collude with gangs while they live
in multi-million dollar guarded fortresses in the hills of Port-au-Prince surrounded by slums
where thousands live without basic services. The richest man in Haiti is billionaire Gilbert
Bigio, patriarch of the Bigio family. He helped coup Aristide in 91, is linked to assassination of
democracy activists, and he purchased from Jeffery Epstein a $132,000 Mercedes Maybach, in a nation
where 60% of people live on less than $2 a day. The Bigio family owns a private
container port of Lafito. Gangs have been using the port to import heavy
weapons. This isn’t new. Back in the 1950s, the Bigios imported Uzi submachine guns
from Israel for the Duvalier dictatorship. Today the links to the elites remain but
armed groups can now self-fund and self-arm and wield significant power over Haiti's
political landscape Armed groups generate cash through drug trafficking and extortion,
businesses in their territory are forced into paying protection fees ranging from $5,000 to
$20,000 weekly, under the threat of violence. Chérizier’s G9 has seized control of
key economic arteries in the capital, including the ports, oil terminals, and
the Delmas area—a hub for warehouses, markets, and corporate headquarters. Which all
generate large “protection fees”. Chérizier has by far the most to lose if the UN intervenes,
which is why he is trying to prevent that. Kidnappings generate conservatively
about $25 million per year for gangs. The massive surge in violence has been fuelled
by the gangs’ unprecedented access to firearms. Ten years ago a handgun would be shared between
several gang members. Today weapons trafficking networks based in Floridaare funnelling an
arsenal of deadly weapons into Haiti. AK-47, AR-15, and Galil assault rifles, .50 calibre
sniper rifles, and M50 and M60 machine guns. Ex-soldiers and policemen have been recruited and
now gangs ‘move and fight differently’ to just a few years ago, allowing them to assault
police stations and government buildings. The armed groups can now administer
larger territories, extract resources, conduct military-type operations,
and organise hundreds of men. Life in gang-controlled areas, with
the restrictions of movement, violence, lack of basic services is like living in a prison. “I personally lost friends, killed just because
they were passing particular neighbourhoods. Sometimes I can't go to school; my mother can't
go to work because of the clashes. Every day, we risk death in one way or another. We
should all leave here, but where to go?” Gangs face no opposition since the Haitian police have less than 9,000 officers for
a country of 12 million people. Henry promised to step down on the 7th
of February 2024. He… did not step down. Instead on February 28th 2024 he promised
elections in 2025. On February 29th Henry was in Kenya trying to seal a UN military
intervention to send 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti. This was the last
straw. Henry was already considered an undemocratic foreign puppet now he wanted to
stay in power using an international force. The gangs unleashed an onslaught against
key sites, main roads, fuel depots, police stations, and prisons where they
freed thousands of inmates and then besieged Toussaint Louverture airport
to prevent Mr Henry from returning. A panicked Henry flew directly from
Nairobi to New York on March 2nd where he tried to convince his Americans
backers to provide him with military support. It seems the Americans finally
turned on him, they rejected his offer. On March 5th he tried to fly to the
Dominican Republic, mid-air he was told he could not land in the country. The
plane had to divert to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Stranded in Puerto Rico, Prime Minister
Ariel Henry finally resigned. We’ll have to wait and see how or if a new
government can be organised from abroad. Kenya and the UN are now
pausing their intervention. With painful memories of past occupations,
coups, theft, and the tragic UN peacekeeping mission many Haitians are hesitant to
the idea of another foreign intervention. For intervention to work it would need
to work with and listen to the Haitians. Life right now in Haiti is desperate.
The state has disintegrated, gangs are rampaging through Port-Au-Prince
the only resistance to them is a tiny police force and neighbourhood brigades set up by
regular Haitians defending their communities. We have seen over the last half
hour Haiti's story unfold—Centuries of other people extracting wealth
through sugar, debt, cheap labour, and stealing aid has left a nation
teetering on the brink of collapse. “Please let us live. That's all
we ask for. We are human beings. We want to be respected. And we want
to be able to decide by ourselves.” Haiti is not the only country France has
intervened in to protect its own interests. In January of 2013, rebel factions in Mali overran
the entire northern half of the country. France decided to militarily intervene with more than
5,000 troops, and you can learn what happened in this episode of Modern Conflicts exclusively
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grab these exclusive holiday offers and support independent original creators. Thank you so much for watching. I really hope you enjoyed this video. It took me a long time to put
together and I unfortunately had to cut things and simplify things. It's impossible to cover an
entire people in just one video but I hope you enjoyed this brief introduction to the Bengalis.
Leave a comment on which people you would like me to cover next. If you are Bengali please
leave a comment if you think I left something out or if you want to make fun of my cooking or
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Sources I used are also in the description.
