Haiti seeks mercenaries to fight its gangs — but others urge negotiation
By Tim Padgett
May 30, 2025 at 6:00 AM EDT
Haiti’s gangs are so powerful now that officials are reportedly hiring foreign mercenaries to fight them — while at the same time, some influential Caribbean leaders are advising conversation instead of confrontation.
Gangs today control 90 percent of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and it's believed the city will fall completely to those criminal groups this year.
As a result, the New York Times is reporting, Haiti’s desperate transitional government is paying Erik Prince — a controversial private U.S. security contractor — to build a mercenary force.
It would take up the fight that Haiti's overwhelmed national police — as well as a year-old, U.N-approved and U.S.-funded multinational security mission, led by Kenyan police agents — has proven unable to win.
READ MORE: Port-au-Prince is about to fall to gangs. So is it 'crazy' to send Haitians here back to Haiti?
But Caribbean leaders like Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit are urging Haitian officials to negotiate with the gangs now, since they've become a major ruling force.
“We should now have a conversation with the gangs in Haiti," Skerrit said this week in a press conference in Dominica's capital, Roseau.
"The gangs in Haiti are too crucial a player for you to not engage them. And if you don’t engage people, then you leave them to their own devices ... and the situation will just get worse.”
Skerrit, the longest-serving head of government in the Caribbean, said he realizes the U.S. has recently designated Haiti’s gangs as terrorists. But he stressed Haiti should still pursue the kind of successful peace dialogue Colombia had with its own terrorist guerrillas a decade ago.
“I understand people do not want to engage gangs and so on — but they’re part of the [Haitian] society," he said. "And so how do we get them to curtail or to change their behavior and actions? We have to talk.”
Haitian authorities have recently been trying to kill gang leaders with drones attacks on their strongholds — so far to little effect, say security experts.
Haiti's gangs — most of them under a confederation called Viv Ansanm in Creole, meaning Live Together — were responsible for more than 5,600 murders last year, and their violence has left more than a million Haitians homeless and displaced, according to the U.N.
Gangs today control 90 percent of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and it's believed the city will fall completely to those criminal groups this year.
As a result, the New York Times is reporting, Haiti’s desperate transitional government is paying Erik Prince — a controversial private U.S. security contractor — to build a mercenary force.
It would take up the fight that Haiti's overwhelmed national police — as well as a year-old, U.N-approved and U.S.-funded multinational security mission, led by Kenyan police agents — has proven unable to win.
READ MORE: Port-au-Prince is about to fall to gangs. So is it 'crazy' to send Haitians here back to Haiti?
But Caribbean leaders like Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit are urging Haitian officials to negotiate with the gangs now, since they've become a major ruling force.
“We should now have a conversation with the gangs in Haiti," Skerrit said this week in a press conference in Dominica's capital, Roseau.
"The gangs in Haiti are too crucial a player for you to not engage them. And if you don’t engage people, then you leave them to their own devices ... and the situation will just get worse.”
Skerrit, the longest-serving head of government in the Caribbean, said he realizes the U.S. has recently designated Haiti’s gangs as terrorists. But he stressed Haiti should still pursue the kind of successful peace dialogue Colombia had with its own terrorist guerrillas a decade ago.
“I understand people do not want to engage gangs and so on — but they’re part of the [Haitian] society," he said. "And so how do we get them to curtail or to change their behavior and actions? We have to talk.”
Haitian authorities have recently been trying to kill gang leaders with drones attacks on their strongholds — so far to little effect, say security experts.
Haiti's gangs — most of them under a confederation called Viv Ansanm in Creole, meaning Live Together — were responsible for more than 5,600 murders last year, and their violence has left more than a million Haitians homeless and displaced, according to the U.N.