If the videos showing Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier shaking hands and handing out food to local residents as he walks through Port-au-Prince’s lower Delmas neighborhood are any indication, it almost seems like business as usual for Haiti’s best-known gang leader. But the tranquility is deceptive.
Outside the stronghold of Cherizier’s Revolutionary Forces of the G9—or G9, as his gang alliance is known—the escalating violence maintains a firm grip on the Caribbean country. Between July and September this year alone, the war between Haiti’s estimated 200 gangs and the country’s security forces, as well as internecine fighting between the gangs themselves, has left over 1,200 dead and 500 injured, many of them women and children. In addition, extorsion, kidnappings and frequent attacks on critical infrastructure have led to the internal displacement of over 700,000 people and severely aggravated the humanitarian crisis that is currently driving about half of the population into a state of severe food insecurity.
In order to support Haiti’s weakened national police in taking back control from the gangs that today effectively rule 85 percent of the capital, the United Nations Security Council authorized the deployment of a Kenya-led international force of 2,500 police officers in October 2023. But when the force’s mandate was renewed a few weeks ago, not even a fifth of the planned contingent had arrived on the ground, and tangible successes have yet to materialize.