A video that circulated broadly on the web just lately confirmed a Haitian gang chief, Joseph Wilson, shirtless, fortunately displaying off belts of .50 caliber ammunition, mockingly saying he used the armor-piercing bullets to groom his hair.
“We now have sufficient combs for our hair to final a yr,” he joked.
So how did he get them?
Weapons will not be manufactured in Haiti, and it’s unlawful to ship any there, however the gangs terrorizing the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince, by no means appear to be wanting them — or of ammunition.
Experts estimate that there are about 20 armed teams working in Port-au-Prince, some who carry AR-15 and Galil assault rifles, shotguns and Glock handguns. The U.N. estimates that between 270,000 and 500,000 firearms are circulating illegally in Haiti, with most weapons within the palms of gangs.
Their superior fireplace energy has overwhelmed the skinny ranks of Haiti’s ill-equipped police and contributed to an astonishing dying toll final yr of greater than 5,600 murder victims, a soar of greater than 1,000 from the yr earlier than.
The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Haiti three years in the past, but most weapons on Haiti’s streets are from the US, the place they’re bought by straw consumers and smuggled into the nation by sea or typically by land by way of the Dominican Republic, in response to the United Nations.
The problem has change into so severe that Haiti’s authorities has restricted imports alongside its land border with the Dominican Republic. Solely items that had been initially produced there are allowed; any merchandise that didn’t originate within the D.R. must enter by way of Haiti’s gang-infested seaports.
As Haiti’s capital grapples with a violent disaster that threatens its very existence, questions stay about whether or not Haiti and different nations — together with the US — are doing sufficient to manage the tide of weapons.
“In the event you cease the movement of weapons and bullets, the gangs ultimately, actually, run out of ammunition,” mentioned Invoice O’Neill, the U.N.’s unbiased human rights professional for Haiti. “That’s a faster, sooner, safer strategy to dismantle them.”
The place are the weapons coming from?
In brief, Florida.
South Florida, together with the ports of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, was the purpose of origin for 90 p.c of Caribbean-bound shipments of illicit firearms reported between 2016 and 2023, in response to the United Nations Workplace on Medicine and Crime.
Gangs typically purchase weapons and ammunition by attacking police stations in Haiti or by bribing native police into offering weapons. Almost 1,000 police weapons had been diverted prior to now 4 years, the U.N. mentioned this week, and cops have been reported to promote them on the black market.
However weapons are extra usually smuggled in delivery containers and aboard freighters leaving South Florida, hidden amongst tightly packed jumbles of bicycles, vehicles, electrical items, clothes and meals.
U.N. officers and personal safety specialists say traffickers altered their techniques in latest months to keep away from elevated inspections on the Miami River, a five-mile waterway that cuts by way of the town of Miami and has lengthy been a hotbed for contraband.
Smugglers expanded their operations to new routes between Florida and the Dominican Republic, together with Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, a big cruise ship and cargo facility, the U.N. mentioned in a latest report.
What weapons are being smuggled?
To date this yr, Dominican officers have made two massive seizures of smuggled firearms on the port of Haina, close to the capital, Santo Domingo.
In February, Dominican Customs brokers made what they described because the nation’s largest seizure of weapons destined for Haiti.
Almost two dozen firearms, together with a Barrett .50 caliber semiautomatic rifle and 15 AK-47-style assault rifles, in addition to 36,000 rounds had been inside a container on the Sara Specific, a 35-year-old freighter that runs an everyday route between Miami and the Dominican Republic.
The proprietor of the Miami firm listed on the invoice of lading was arrested within the Dominican Republic.
A second cargo from New York seized in January on the identical Dominican port may additionally have been certain for Haiti, investigators mentioned. That cargo included 37 weapons, and several other Kalashnikov-style rifles with labels displaying they had been manufactured in Vermont and Georgia.
In November, Dominican authorities arrested a number of Dominican cops accused of smuggling almost a million rounds of ammunition from a police depot. No less than one of many consumers was from Haiti, Dominican courtroom data present.
Has regulation enforcement had any success?
In response to a September letter from a number of members of Congress who requested for extra to be carried out to deal with weapons smuggling to Haiti, the U.S. Commerce Division, which regulates firearms exports, mentioned in December that none of its 11 foreign-based export management officers had been posted within the Caribbean due to an absence of funds.
Nonetheless, the company mentioned that through the Biden administration, 9 Haiti-related investigations resulted in convictions.
Extra just lately, different federal regulation enforcement businesses have pursued a number of Haiti weapons circumstances.
Final month, a 31-year-old police officer in St. Cloud, Florida, pleaded responsible to buying and reselling at the very least 58 firearms as a part of a scheme that despatched a whole lot of weapons to the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Haiti.
In January, a 34-year-old undocumented migrant from Guatemala, Ricardo Sune-Girón, pleaded responsible to firearms trafficking in Tampa. Based on a plea settlement, Mr. Sune-Girón recruited straw purchasers to illegally purchase 900 firearms — together with assault rifles — that he then transported from Florida to the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
A former safety officer for Haiti’s chief of police was arrested in Florida in December after investigators linked him to just about 90 firearms.
How is regulation enforcement tackling the issue?
Haiti has few sources like scanners and border guards to sort out the issue of smuggled firearms at its borders and ports, whereas specialists say the US has restricted functionality to go looking exported items at home ports and usually performs solely random cargo inspections.
Ships crusing to Haiti from the US are sometimes jammed with assorted cargo, from second hand clothes to family home equipment, bicycles and vehicles, making it simple to cover contraband.
In a single case, disassembled weapons found aboard a freighter on the Miami River certain for Haiti had been hidden in shipments that included tennis rackets, fruit juice, rice and clothes.
“We present up unannounced,” mentioned Anthony Hernandez, a Customs and Border Safety agent who testified on the federal trial in Miami in January of an accused smuggler. “We do our greatest to get to as a lot as we will.”
Haiti’s regulation enforcement authorities didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark.
What concerning the Dominican Republic?
Within the Dominican Republic, the US helps a particular unit of 30 native Customs brokers, with one other 20 presently being vetted to work on U.S.-related circumstances.
The authorities have tightened controls, together with including eight new X-ray scanners at predominant ports, the place all cargo destined for Haiti is examined, the Dominican international ministry mentioned.
Dominican Customs officers monitor all suspicious shipments to catch and prosecute traffickers, a U.S. embassy consultant who was not approved to talk publicly mentioned, questioning whether or not the Dominican Republic was an essential supply of unlawful weapons to Haiti.
Dominican Customs authorities referred inquiries to prosecutors, who declined to remark.
So what might be carried out to cease it?
Critics say not sufficient is finished to control the sale of weapons in the US to straw consumers, an unlawful observe during which individuals purchase weapons on behalf of one other particular person, together with traffickers. The observe is liable for a lot of the arms that wind up utilized in crimes in Mexico and all through Latin America.
Sellers typically ignore simply detectable buying patterns by gun traffickers posing as reliable prospects and repeatedly shopping for a number of weapons, specialists say.
“That’s the place you may cease this,” Jonathan Lowy, founding father of World Motion on Gun Violence mentioned. “It’s very tough to cease as soon as the weapons are within the palms of the trafficker. They are often damaged down and put in a crate of breakfast cereal or fruit juices.”
