Violence Entrepreneurs in a Phantom State: The Drivers of Gang Evolution in Haiti since Aristide

Abstract

Over the course of the two decades following Aristide’s second presidency, gangs in Haiti evolved in important ways: from neighborhood organizations and guarantors of political support for Aristide, to their brief eradication under the UN Stabilization Mission to Haiti’s crackdown in 2007, to their return as more overtly criminal organizations after the 2010 earthquake, to carrying out state-sanctioned violence under President Moïse, and finally to the 2020 formation of a powerful gang alliance, the G9, that currently controls most of Port-au-Prince and is responsible for an intense wave of violence and kidnappings. In this paper, I ask: What factors explain the evolution of gangs in Haiti between 2001 and 2023? Drawing on the scholarly literature on gangs, warlords, and political instability in Haiti, I derive several hypotheses about the potential drivers of gang activity in Haiti, including times of election or governmental disruption, popular discontent, international aid, drug trafficking, privatization, and elite profits. I use the data available to test these causal propositions by creating categorizations of gang intensity, as well as by using kidnapping and gang-related violence data as proxies for gang activity. No single determinant of gang activity was fully convincing, but several potential avenues for profit seemed compelling at certain points in time. I find some limited support for patterns between gang activity and elections or governmental transition, popular discontent, and certain forms of elite profits, including potential rents from rice and fish imports. Other hypothesized drivers of gang activity – international aid, drug trafficking, privatization, and other types of elite industries – returned conflicting or inconclusive results. Ultimately, I argue that gangs in Haiti are shapeshifters who adapt to meet the interests of their patrons, but who can also grow to challenge their patrons’ influence and wield power of their own. Understanding the current form of Haiti’s gangs is critical to addressing the threats they pose, both to the safety of Haitian citizens and the functioning of the Haitian political system.