A desperate Haiti turns to a Trump ally in fight against gangs

Boston Globe

2 days ago

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Security experts said Prince has also been scouting Haitian-American military veterans to hire to send to Port-au-Prince and is expected to send up to 150 mercenaries to Haiti over the summer. He recently shipped a large cache of weapons to the country, two experts said.
The Haitian government is awaiting the arrival of arms shipments and more personnel to step up its fight against the gangs.
US officials said they were aware of Prince's work with Haiti's government. But the full terms of the Haitian government's arrangement with Prince, including how much it is paying him, are unknown.
This article is based on interviews with a dozen people who follow Haiti closely. All but one spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive security matters publicly.
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The State Department, which has provided millions of dollars in funding to equip and train Haiti's National Police, said it is not paying Prince or his company for any work in Haiti.
Prince declined to comment for this article. Blackwater no longer exists, but Prince owns other private military entities.
The involvement of civilian contractors like Prince, a Trump donor who has a long and checkered history in the private security industry, marks a pivotal moment in Haiti. Its crisis has deepened since its last president was assassinated in 2021, and the government now appears willing to take desperate measures to secure control.
Armed groups escalated the violence last year by uniting and taking over prisons, burning down police stations and attacking hospitals. About 1 million people have been forced to flee their homes and hundreds of thousands are living in shelters.
Gangs have captured so much territory in recent months that United Nations officials have warned that the capital is in danger of falling under complete criminal control.
The situation is dire enough that officials and civilians alike say they are eager for any overseas help, particularly after a $600 million international police mission started by the Biden administration and largely staffed by Kenyan police officers failed to receive adequate international personnel and money.
With Haiti's undermanned and underequipped police force struggling to contain the gangs, the government is turning to private military contractors equipped with high-powered weapons, helicopters, and sophisticated surveillance and attack drones to take on the well-armed gangs. At least one other American security company is working in Haiti, though details of its role are secret.
Since drone attacks targeting gangs started in March, they have killed more than 200 people, according to Pierre Esperance, who runs a leading human rights organization in Port-au-Prince.
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After the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq ended, security firms like those owned by Prince started seeing big streams of revenues dry up. Private military contractors are looking for new opportunities, and they see possibilities in Latin America.
Before presidential elections in Ecuador this year, Prince toured the country with local police and promised to help security forces. The country has faced a wave of violence unleashed by gangs.
Ecuadorian officials denied that they had signed any security deal with Prince.
A person close to Prince said he hopes to expand the scope of his work in Haiti to include help with customs, transport, revenue collection, and other government services that need to be restored for the country to stabilize. Rampant government corruption is a key reason Haiti's finances are in shambles.
The Haitian prime minister's office and a presidential council, which was formed to run the country until presidential elections can be held, did not respond to several requests for comment.
Prince, whose sister Betsy DeVos was secretary of education during Trump's first term, donated more than $250,000 to help elect Trump in 2016, according to campaign finance records. He was often cited as an informal 'adviser' to Trump's first transition to office, a description he denied.
Haiti's experience with private military contractors goes back decades. When US forces returned former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in 1994 after he was ousted in a bloody military coup, he was accompanied by a private security team from the San Francisco-based Steele Foundation.
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In recent years, military contractors in Haiti have had a more tainted record. Colombian mercenaries hired by an American security firm were accused of taking part in the 2021 assassination of the last elected president, Jovenel Moïse.
Rod Joseph, a Haitian-American US Army veteran who owns a Florida-based security officer training company, said he had been in talks with Prince to help supply personnel for his contract since late last year.
Joseph, who trained Haitian police on the use of surveillance drones, said Prince gave him the impression that his plans were under the auspices of the US government but then shifted to be directly under the purview of the Haitian government.
He said Prince told him that he planned to send private soldiers from El Salvador to Haiti along with three helicopters to engage in attacks against the gangs.
Prince texted him a few days ago, Joseph said, seeking a list of Haitian-American veterans to send to Haiti, but he declined to provide names unless Prince could provide more precise details of their mission and would allow Joseph to lead them.
US military contractors doing defense work overseas are required to obtain a license from the State Department, but those licenses are not public record.
Prince has been trying to expand his portfolio and has traveled overseas in search of new business, said Sean McFate, a professor at the National Defense University and author of 'The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order.'
Prince is viewed skeptically by other members of the private military industry, McFate said, because of his showy nature and the negative publicity he generates for a security industry that prides itself on a 'sense of professionalism.'
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'It's always worth noting where Prince is going, because it's sort of a barometer of where he thinks Trump world might end up, and he wants to make a buck from it,' McFate said.
But experts stress that Haitians are desperate for solutions — regardless of where they come from.
'The doors are open. All possibilities must be on the table,' Haiti's minister of economy and finance, Alfred Métellus, told Le Nouvelliste, a Haitian newspaper, last month. 'We are looking for all Haitians, all foreigners who have expertise in this field and who want to support us, want to support the police and the army to unblock the situation.'