Haiti turns to weaponized drones in fight against gangs

Washington Post

10-04-2025

With the capital of Haiti on the cusp of falling to gangs, authorities in the crisis-racked Caribbean nation are turning to a new weapon in their fight against the armed groups: weaponized drones.
Some in Haiti hope that the unmanned aerial vehicles, which have shaped conflicts from Ukraine to Sudan, will lift the country from its worst crisis in decades. One of its leading human rights groups backs the tactic, and a song shared widely on social media praises the drones for stirring fear among gang leaders.
But their emergence has also alarmed analysts, other rights groups and aid workers, who say their use in Haiti's densely populated capital, Port-au-Prince, adds fuel to a combustible conflict, endangers civilians, complicates the delivery of aid and may violate international law.
'If the intention is to create the illusion that the situation is under control, this is quite the opposite,' said Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, a Haiti analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 'This is a very, very dangerous escalation.'
A humanitarian worker in Port-au-Prince said aid groups are figuring out how to adapt.
'We work in places where thousands of people are present,' said the aid worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. 'This situation is clearly dangerous for civilians, especially if something were to detonate during a distribution.'
Since they were first deployed in early March, the drones have not killed any gang leaders. They have injured at least nine civilians, including women and children, according to a health-care worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by Haitian officials. Two had such severe burns that they were transferred to specialized facilities for treatment.
Little is known about the drones. Haitians say they see them and hear the explosions. Gang leaders post videos of them in their territory and the injuries they say they have sustained from them. They appear to be commercial drones that were weaponized with improvised munitions to make them lethal, analysts say.
It's also unclear who is in charge of the drone operations. Neither Haiti's interim government nor its police have publicly claimed responsibility for them. But a Haitian government official said the unit is run by a task force created this year by interim prime minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé and the transitional presidential council.
'They have no transparency,' said Nathalye Cotrino, a senior researcher for the Americas at Human Rights Watch, 'and we haven't seen any accountability.'
The Haitian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security issue, defended the drone operations. Haiti, he said, is 'at war'; the drones have killed 'many' gang members, though he did not have a tally; and without them, he said, the gangs would have taken over the affluent neighborhood of Pétion-Ville.
The drones are being used to target gang strongholds that civilians have already fled, he added. But when asked about the civilian casualties — which have not previously been reported — he said they would not be a 'surprise.'
'Let's be honest — it's inevitable,' the official said, adding, 'To me, it's just a detail. As long as you're in a zone controlled by gangs and there are attacks, collateral damage is going to happen.'
The official said the task force responsible for the drones includes specialized police units. But Haitian National Police spokesman Lionel Lazarre said police use drones for surveillance and referred questions about weaponized drones to the government. Godfrey Otunge, the commander of a United Nations-backed, Kenya-led international police mission to Haiti, said that the force does not use weaponized drones and that Haiti's transitional government is in charge. Neither the secretary of state for public security nor a spokesman for Haiti's transitional presidential council responded to requests for comment.
Nonlethal drones have had a presence in Haiti, with both the police and gangs using them to conduct reconnaissance and plan attacks. Johnson 'Izo' Andre, head of the 5 Segonn gang, used them to coordinate a prison break at Haiti's National Penitentiary last year.
The acquisition of the drones 'has had a significant impact on the fighting capacity of gangs,' a U.N. expert panel on Haiti wrote to the president of the U.N. Security Council last year. It said that while there was no evidence of gangs weaponizing the drones, the provision of commercial drones to gangs could constitute assistance to criminal groups that would be grounds for the imposition of sanctions.
The use of lethal drones by authorities, however, is new. What little is known about the drones comes from videos shared on social media by gang members. They do not appear to be military-grade with precision-guided munitions.
Trevor Ball, a former explosive ordnance disposal technician for the U.S. Army, said the drone munition in one video appeared to be improvised and was designed to be lethal. A purple cylinder, with cross-hatching typical of a 3D printer, held what appeared to be plastic explosives. The drone munition, Ball said, did not appear to have detonated properly.
Philip J. Alston, a law professor at New York University, said Haitian authorities have 'an absolutely impossible job,' but the use of weaponized drones in this way runs afoul of international law.
Canada and the United States, which have provided equipment for the Haitian police, said their support has not included lethal drones or logistical support or training for their use. A spokesman for Canada's Foreign Ministry said that 'to our knowledge, neither the Haitian National Police nor the Haitian military forces were involved in the new Haitian task force's drone attacks.'
Analysts worry Haiti's gangs could now be spurred to add weaponized drones to their arsenal.
'Be careful,' Jimmy 'BBQ' Chérizier, one of Haiti's most powerful gang leaders, warned authorities in a video after a drone attack failed to kill him last month. 'The world sells everything. I can buy what you bought.'
Gangs control at least 85 percent of Port-au-Prince. At least 5,600 people were killed in gang violence in 2024, according to U.N. data, up 17 percent from 2023. Roughly 1 million people, or 10 percent of the country's population, have been displaced. The violence has worsened after warring gangs joined to form a coalition called 'Viv Ansanm,' which has launched attacks against the capital and the countryside.
The gangs have filled a leadership vacuum. The presidency has been vacant since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and the legislature empty since the last lawmakers' terms expired in 2023. In their place is an interim council and an appointed prime minister.
The police are outmatched and outnumbered by the gangs. The Kenya-led police mission has been stymied by its own lack of resources. Compounding the sense of lawlessness, the U.N. office in Haiti has also reported an increase in abuses by vigilantes and a rise in extrajudicial killings by police.
'Haiti's survival is at stake,' William O'Neill, the U.N. expert on human rights in Haiti, said last month.
Amid such a desperate situation, some in Haiti support the drones.
'They make it so that for the first time,' the Haitian official said, 'the bandits are afraid of something.'
Pierre Espérance, director of Haiti's National Human Rights Defense Network, backs their use. But the drone operations should not be controlled by political actors or used for political purposes, he said.
'These gangs are committing acts of terrorism,' he said. 'We welcome any action that counteracts them.'
Marc-Arthur Mésidort, president of Haiti's Action Group for the Defense of Human Rights, said a better strategy would be to focus on dismantling the ties between gang leaders and the elites who back them.
Markinson Dorilas, a preacher at a church in the Delmas 19 neighborhood, worries about civilian casualties.
'These drones won't solve anything,' he said. 'On the contrary, they'll only make things worse.'
A Port-au-Prince resident, Jean-Marie, disagrees. One day last month, he heard six loud booms — drones targeting nearby areas. He was forced to flee his home in March after gangs set it ablaze.
Jean-Marie, who asked to be identified by only his first name because of safety concerns, said he had just spent 65,000 Haitian gourdes (about $500) on school supplies for his three children. All of it was lost in the fire. Now, the sight of other children going to school brings him to tears.
'If God knew my life would turn out like this, I would have preferred to have not been born,' he said. 'The drones should have been used a long time ago.'