A Haitian street gang fighting in Port-au-Prince in 2021. Photo: Haiti Liberte
By Kim Ives – Jul 13, 2022
On the evening of Jul. 11, amid fierce gun battles, a combatant of Haitiâs âRevolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies, Mess With One, You Mess With Allâ (commonly referred to as the G9) called a HaĂŻti LibertĂŠÂ source: âRight now, Iâm lying in Ti Gabrielâs bed,â he told the source.
Ti Gabriel, whose real name is Jean Pierre Gabriel, is the leader of G-Pèp (G-People), a copy-cat pseudo-federation of criminal armed groups that was formed to counter the G9, an alliance of armed neighborhood organizations, led by former police officer Jimmy âBarbecueâ Cherizier, committed to stamping out crime in their blighted communities as well as to revolution against Haitiâs bourgeois oligarchs.
G-Pèp is funded and politically aligned with RĂŠginald Boulos, one of Haitiâs most influential business magnates, a presidential candidate, a supporter of the two coups dâĂŠtat against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and a close collaborator of the U.S. State Department.
Since Fri., Jul. 8, heavy battles have raged in Port-au-Princeâs largest shantytown, CitĂŠ Soleil, between the two armed groups. The epic showdown between G-Pèp and the G9 is the culmination of three years of skirmishes and fighting, with G-Pèp and its allies frequently attacking G9 neighborhoods in CitĂŠ Soleil, lower Delmas, and Carrefour.
The G9 claims G-Pèp started hostilities by attacking CitĂŠ Soleilâs âBostonâ neighborhood, protected by one of the nine original G9 founders, Mathias Saintil. As the G9âs counter-attack over the weekend made headway against G-Pèp, reinforcements began streaming into CitĂŠ Soleil from G-Pèp confederates like the Croix des Bouquets-based 400 Mawozo, the notorious criminal group which kidnapped 17 North American missionaries last year, and the âFive Secondsâ gang of âIzoâ in Village de Dieu, where two Haitian SWAT units were wiped out in March 2021.
RELATED CONTENT: Haiti: 99 Killed in Armed Gang Violence in a Week (Core Group)
HaĂŻti LibertĂŠâs source claimed that G-Pèp forces were retreating, making a last stand in CitĂŠ Soleilâs Ti HaĂŻti neighborhood.
âGabriel may be on the run, but he still has a lot of soldiers,â the source explained.
As of Jul. 11, G9 sources estimate casualties on both sides to be over 50 men. (The CitĂŠ Soleil mayor told the Miami Herald that there were  52 killed and 110 wounded.) As of Jul. 10, another CitĂŠ Soleil G9 leader, Iscard Andrice, had lost 13 men, while Mathiasâ casualties numbered about eight or nine, HaĂŻti LibertĂŠÂ was told.
During the last week of April and the first week of May, a similarly huge battle took place on Haitiâs Cul-de-Sac plain between the 400 Mawozo and Chen Mechan (Mean Dog), an armed group allied with the G9.
Investigators say 148 people died in the fighting and 132 homes were burned. G9 fighters from neighborhoods across Port-au-Prince came to assist Chen Mechan in the 12 days of battle.
Likewise, today, Chen Mechan is fighting against G-Pèp and 400 Mawozo in the area of Canaan, a sprawling shantytown that sprang up on a desolate flood plain north of the capital after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake.
In addition to battlefield deaths, Village de Dieu, located near Carrefour in the capitalâs southern flank, saw two contingents of its âsoldiersâ wiped out as they traveled to reinforce G-Pèp. On Jul. 9, Haitian police ambushed and killed 16 of Izoâs men in nearby Martissant, posting pictures of their outstretched dead bodies. The next day, a boatload of Village de Dieu fighters tried to reach CitĂŠ Soleil by water, but they were intercepted by the Haitian Coast Guard. An unspecified number of Izoâs âsoldiersâ were shot dead or drowned.
The ongoing battle has implications for all of Haiti. CitĂŠ Soleilâs G9-controlled Wharf JĂŠrĂŠmie neighborhood is home to the Varreux fuel terminal and power plant, which supplies much of the electricity to the capitalâs grid. Fuel deliveries are blocked by the fighting, with two giant oil tankers hovering in the Port-au-Prince Bay. This augurs power outages and gas shortages in the near future.
The G9Â came together in June 2020Â under the leadership of former special forces policeman Cherizier to combat the kidnapping, robbery, rape, and extortion plaguing Port-au-Princeâs poor neighborhoods. When formalized in July 2020, the G9 leaders made a truce to stop inter-neighborhood fighting with gangs which did not subscribe to their anti-crime agenda. Portrayed as G9 âalliesâ but not part of its âfamily,â Izoâs Five Seconds gang and Renel âTi Lapliâ Destinaâs Grand Ravine gang, both infamous for kidnappings, co-existed in an uneasy cease-fire with the G9 for about one year.
But in June 2021, Haitiâs opposition politicians, eager to light a fire under embattled President Jovenel MoĂŻse, paid a large sum to Ti Lapliâs Grand Ravine gang to launch an offensive against the adjacent Ti Bois neighborhood of a G9 founder, Christ Roy âKrislaâ Chery. At the same time, the gangs of Belair, Ruelle Maillart, and Rue Tiremasse attacked Cherizierâs neighborhoods of Delmas 2, 4, and 6. Fighting between neighborhoods resumed with a vengeance but took a brief hiatus after the Jul. 7, 2021 assassination of President Jovenel MoĂŻse.
In the fall of 2021, the G9 carried out an almost successful campaign to drive from power de facto Prime Minister Ariel Henry, whom the Washington-led âCore Groupâ of ambassadors had anointed to lead Haiti after Jovenelâs murder and until new elections can be held. The G9âs anti-government challenge culminated with the shutdown of the Varreux oil depot, creating a crippling fuel shortage. Henry was on the verge of resigning, sources within his government revealed, but the hardship caused by the G9âs tactics was also hurting its image and mass appeal. On the occasion of the Vertières anniversary, Nov. 18, the date of Haitiâs decisive battle against France in 1803, Cherizier declared the lifting of the blockade on Varreux and a month-long truce that would last through the Christmas holidays.
However, the G9 remained mostly quiet and non-confrontational for about six months, despite repelling occasional attacks from its warring neighbors. Haitians across Haiti and its diaspora who had been closely following the G9âs dramatic demonstrations, armed actions, and declarations began to question whether the shantytown movement had become divided, been paid off, or just fizzled out.
But during a G9-organized ceremony to symbolically distribute care packages to 200 women on Haitian Motherâs Day, May 29, Cherizier gave a speech which finally addressed such questions and effectively announced the federationâs return to the headlines.
âWe decided not to leave this day only in the hands a bunch of hypocrites who humiliate, beat, kidnap, rape, destroy their small businesses, and even kill mothers every day,â Cherizier said from the podium. âOur silence reflects our deepening consciousness. Our silence does not mean weâve retreated⌠[or] abandoned [the struggle]. On the contrary, our silence has allowed us to grow more, understand more, see farther, discover more who is the true enemy⌠Our contacts are increasing. More cooperation is being put in place. More comprehension is developing with leadership for the society to better see and understand the [G9âs] battle. Nobody is using the G9. The G9 is its own boss. It knows when to advance, when to pauseâŚ. We urge mothers to ask their daughters and sons to keep resisting, to help us fight the acts of insecurity against the lives of their families,⌠to rally their sons and daughters to the G9âs cause, which is the struggle to improve peopleâs material conditions and existence of the people, their families, their mothers. This battle cannot be waged by little, sporadic handouts of food or money, by Macoute women who waste money for clean-ups [a reference to former Haitian First Lady Sophia Martellyâs relief program Ede Pèp (Help the People)] in connivance with a bunch of political crooks. Long live the resistance of all mothers.â
Most haitians are opposed to a renewed un military occupation, which ruled Haiti for 21 of the last 28 years
In May, the website InsightCrime, supported by the CIA-cutout National Endowment for Democracy, published an article saying that the infamous 400 Mawozo had officially joined the G-Pèp coalition, challenging G9 dominance, quoting Martinique-born former UN gang-disarmament negotiator Eric Calpas.
On Jun. 26, Haitian police arrested Alexandre Ezechiel, alias âZe,â the leader of Carrefourâs Baz Pilat neighborhood and a G9 founder, charging him with kidnapping. He was arrested in the Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhood in the company of former Haitian policeman Junior âZakèâ Claude, who was fired from the force in 2019.
âI spent 14 years in the police, chasing bandits, thieves, kidnappers, and rapists, and I am no different from Alexandre Ezechiel,â Cherizier said in a Jun. 29 press conference, dressed in battle-fatigues and armed for the first time since his 2021 pressers. âThere is noone who has helped the Haitian state and the police as much in the fight against gangsâŚ. Ze was never a thief, kidnapper, or rapist. No kidnapper better ever pretend that they like Ze. Even where he is, heâll never be friends with kidnappers.â
The class interests behind the current fighting in CitĂŠ Soleil are somewhat murky and contradictory, but outlines are discernable. In June, businessman Innocent Vitelhomme, a close collaborator of lawyer AndrĂŠ Michelâs Democratic and Popular Sector (SDP) as well as the 400 Mawozo gang, made a series of dramatic public statements. He claimed that the SDP was behind the formation of the shadowy paramilitary renegade police organization known as Fantom 509, which police say carried out a massacre in Delmas 32 in June 2021 as well as many other crimes. Although it was the foremost opposition group to Jovenel MoĂŻse, the SDP is now the centerpiece of Ariel Henryâs ruling âMusseau Agreementâ coalition along with Reginald Boulosâ Movement for a Third Way (MTV) party. Thus the SDP appears to have links to both Fantom 509 and 400 Mawozo, while Reginald Boulos has publicly admitted on Haitian radio that he is a supporter of Ti Gabriel. It therefore appears that a faction within the ruling government coalition is in league with the new G-Pèp/400 Mawozo alliance and may be trying to stamp out the G9 federation, which Washington sees as a threat.
On Jul. 8, the State Departmentâs assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere, Brian A. Nichols, announced a $48 million security package to Haiti through its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL), designed âspecifically to strengthen the [Haitian National Police] HNPâs capacity to counter gangs, including funding community-based efforts to deter gang recruitment, hiring additional anti-gang subject matter experts, and supporting the HNPâs anti-gang operations,â a State Department press release said.
Already U.S. officials like former U.S. Ambassadors Kenneth Merten and Daniel Foote have singled out Cherizier and the G9 as âcriminals,â while throwing no such spotlight on the 400 Mawozo, which has in fact kidnapped U.S. citizens, among many other foreigners. (The U.S. did extradite and indict in Washington, DC a 400 Mawozo leader, Germine âYonyonâ Joly, in May, but without the same media fanfare which surrounds Cherizier).
Furthermore, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed Magnitsky Sanctions on Cherizier in December 2020, which it has done to no other âgang leader.â
RELATED CONTENT: Haitiâs Cup of Tears is Filled to the Brim
Many Haitians believe that the focus of Washington and the Haitian government on the G9 stems from the federationâs call for revolutionary change in Haiti.
On Jul. 13, the UN Security Council will decide how to continue the UN Office in Haiti (BINUH). The UNSC âis weighing proposals ranging from deploying a new peacekeeping mission to adding U.N. police officers capable of training and accompanying Haitian police in operations,â the Miami Herald reports.
Most Haitians are opposed to a renewed UN military occupation, which ruled Haiti for 21 of the last 28 years (since 2019, Haiti has been supervised under the UN Charterâs Chapter 6, which gives BINUH just a mediating and advisory role.) Given the tensions between UN Security Council veto holders (the U.S., England, and France vs. Russia and China), a new UN troop deployment seems unlikely, although Dominican President Luis Abinader has called for that.
The Haitian masses, however, are almost universally calling for âsystem change,â ârupture,â or ârevolution,â and the G9 captured the attention of many Haitians as possibly being, if it is sincere, a genuine agent of change. This may be one of the motive factors behind the current G9 vs. G-Pèp battle royale.
Cherizier and the G9 appear to be aware of the populationâs expectations of them but are looking for more engagement and adherence from all quarters before beginning again on any government challenges or adventures.
âTo you who ask âwhere is the revolution?ââ Cherizier said in his Jun. 29 press conference, âwe ask: âWhat have you done to make it happen?â Long live the G9!â
