 Hi, today we'll be talking about the security situation in Haiti and issues related to negotiating with the non-state armed groups in the country Joining me today is Vanda Felba Brown. She's the director of the initiative on non-state armed actors and a senior fellow at Brookings Welcome. Thank you. In our first series speaking to experts on Haiti, many of the experts identified security as an initial challenge, I mean as a very principal challenge to the overall stability of Haiti Could you tell us how you think we've gotten to this place where the gangs and armed groups are spreading their territorial control throughout the country and how the violence has gotten so bad and why? Well, Andrew, there is good reason why Many experts are focusing on the security situation. It really is the worst today than it has been in many decades By some analysts even really the worst in the past 50-60 years The territorial control as you mentioned of the gangs has grown significantly But so has their power, organization and in fact ambitions There are maybe 200 gangs in Haiti, some half of which are centering on Port-au-Prince The capital which is also the place of the greatest Economic power as well as of course the location of the politicians and political and economic elites in the country and the gangs are now involved in providing Violence or disrupting violence or reducing violence as a mechanism to Privilege certain businesses and certain economic businesses. They are used by the businesses to create Monopolies to eliminate rival opposition or shut down business opposition and they are used by politicians to deliver votes and also to deliver political mobilizations and to create violence to create political challenges pressure on Governments or when I when they are used by governments and administration to suppress political opposition to suppress protests to suppress dissident voices this relationship between Paramilitary groups at first during the dictatorship of the Devaliers and later Between the gangs that were known two decades ago as the chimeras and to they are referred to as the gangs has been there for a long time What and has really not escaped just about any administration had some dealings with the gangs What has been changing is the power relationship between the gangs and the politicians and the businesses with the gangs becoming strengthened vis-à-vis them and vis-à-vis the already Under equipped under manned and often corrupt and infiltrated and highly vulnerable Haitian national police So several other changes have taken place These are factors that have been evolving over a number of decades certainly Intensively over the past two decades the gangs have learned and strengthened through their bargaining with The politicians and the businesses and governments administrations of the employ them, but things have become even more dramatic since last summer President Moses was the President Moses was Was assassinated with the level of extortion and the level of Fighting between the gangs haven't gone up significantly And so today we are seeing the greatest levels of homicides perpetrated by the gangs in very long time And at the same time we are seeing the coalescent of the gangs into two broad groupings the so-called G9 the JPEP and a third Entity that That has been really the most powerful gang That has now essentially joined the JPEP In this overall growth of their political power and power with businesses they they will be Pivotal to any sort of way forward in a political settlement We understand that there are lots of work There's lots of work being done by the United States the UN and others to try to help the political process Do you think that the gangs need to be Formally or informally a part of this political process for any viable solution to go for it? Well in reality the gangs are part of the process because they are so interconnected to political interests and key political parties and politicians in Haiti The question is what kind of bargaining's will take place and who will be doing the bargaining? So bargaining with the gangs takes place daily. It's civil society groups and humanitarian organizations that bargain with the gangs for access to distribute Humanitarian services, this is not new But this has become all the more intense as the territorial reach and ambition and power of the gangs has grown And as their violence, kidnappings and extortion has grown The national police of Haiti bargains with the gangs both as an institution, but also individual Officers and individual commanders often engage in bargaining with the gangs And you have some accounts that will say that perhaps half of the police is really connected to The gangs and very many officers live in gang control neighborhoods. Their economic survival depends on Supplements bribes from the gangs, but their physical survival and the physical existence of their families in their neighborhood Is determined by the gangs willingness to provide it or not. So so today, you know given the The power of the gangs. It's really in the fact that there is no domestic Haitian entity that really has the capacity to dismantle or systematically suppress the gang the Haitian National Police, which is backed up by Assistants from the United States Has the capacity to mount certain operations But they remain essentially piecemeal. It can make difference in achieving short-term goals As it did during the era of Minusta the UN force that was there between 2006 and 2017 but Even with the international backing doesn't have the capacity to dismantle the gangs Is there are there better ways that the international community or Their lessons learned from these types of negotiations and how we can Transfer the confidence-building measures perhaps built into that or or the the successes from those types of negotiations Into these broader political negotiations. Is there something to be drawn from that? So even in Haiti itself there have been different models of how to negotiate Human-Italian actors such as international NGOs have often negotiated access by Emphasizing that they will not provide any services medical services or food relief if the gangs don't agree to impartiality and if they try to steal appropriate the humanitarian Service just toward themselves and of course these Humanitarian international NGOs often have very limited power their only power is to say we will simply not provide the services and To the extent that either the gangs want the services They have no access to medical facilities in the absence and or the population was the services That gives actually the NGOs a strength. So that's one vision of negotiations the objective for the negotiator You want Italian actors is not to change the political Process is not to change we can the power of the criminal gangs is not to Even perhaps reduce violence It could simply be reduced violence only in the corridor so that services like medical care or Earthquake distribution could be provided a Second model of negotiations is one that tries to change the power of and behavior of the criminal groups Again, there have been international NGOs in Haiti trying to do that. They would try to condition Non-violence or at least reductions in violence by the gangs by paying for good behavior. So every month there would not be High levels of violence incidents The community would be rewarded with some material handouts like motorcycles like compute a motorcycle we go computer a week these fairly limited packages that nonetheless were very Substantial in terms of what pool gangs which used to be in Haiti Would otherwise have and their members were half of course the problem with this bargaining is both that it teaches the gang you up violence in order to be negotiated with to get a payoff and That the discretion of violence or not is solely at the hands of the criminals It's a gang piece. That's that's induced by Some sort of reward some sort of material reward the third set of Bargains that have taken place are these bargains between Haitian politicians and for that matter politicians in Jamaica in Brazil in Trinidad and Tobago that the reward the gangs with big contracts with provision of Substantial services in exchange for the gangs delivering votes suppressing oppositions delivering potentially financial contributions and those are the most problematic of the deals and they precisely teach the gangs that Violence is a mechanism and then its reduction eventually is a mechanism to pay off so in other settings like for example In Norway and in some cases even in Latin American countries the bargaining has taken place differently and the model for this or one of the models for this different type of bargaining known as focus deterrence comes out of the United States and Boston operation ceasefire in the early 1990s was one of the key models the bargaining essentially said We know key leaders of your gang. We have this this portfolio of Serious criminal charges on which we can indict you you gang leader now We will not exercise our prosecutorial capacity to indict you and arrest you If violence goes down or you can set, you know other conditions and it's It's a bargaining that's based not just on Some sort of material reward, but it also comes in with coercive power That's hard to do in a place like Haiti, which has such a dysfunctional and under equipped corrupt Police force and the police officers are so vulnerable, but it's not impossible one could imagine using for example special interdiction units with close and constant international supervision and vetting to be able to deliver those limited Coercive punishments if certain red lines are violated what would be the red lines depends on what the asks would be In my view, it's really impossible to imagine how Right now there could be a demand that the gangs just disarm and dismantle the the mantra of DVR requires Situation in which you have a strong victor or strong willingness Across the political scene to this arm. I don't see that we can dream of DVR in a place like Haiti But a reasonable ask for example could be that there is not Violence that prevents people from voting now Unfortunately, I think the gangs will play strong role in the votes We are not going to have free elections in the sense of people truly exercising their will But even the reducing the current levels of homicides the the fact that the roads have become Fully controlled many of the key roads are fully controlled by the gangs Certainly allowing greater freedom of operation and movement for people so they can cross into rival gang territories for schools For economic opportunities are all valuable ask that could be part of what? the bargaining is about in a way to reduce the violence from the the current pitch that it has but we need to be very Very sober in what are the realistic objectives and and ideally we would want to Structure any such bargaining by whoever it is conducted politicians local communities But have some international mediators international NGOs to have some coercive punitive element and not be based solely on handing out material rewards what what should the international community in the United States do to support after this long history of Support mixed history of support in Haiti What can they do specifically in the securities sector specifically to help with these points that you've raised on dialogue helping communities? support for Recognizing accountability for the human rights abuses and recognizing human rights abuses What can they do in the short and medium and long term? To try to help get things on the right track. So in the short term I think there are several possible points of interventions the United States Is already supporting the Haitian national police force including in building special interdiction units? I think it's very reasonable appropriate to have a conversation about the purpose of the special interdiction units And I would again suggest that rather than having Desirable but in my view unachievable objectives of really dismantling the criminal gangs or even Significantly in the short term reducing their power there could be exploration of how they use them How to use the SI use to shape the behavior of the gangs toward less violence toward less community repression and how to marry the SI use with any kind of less problematic bargaining that could emerge The second element is as we move toward any kind of political transition and political process Is to really carefully think through? Watch that will inevitable mean for bargaining between the politicians and the gangs And how to shape the politicians to make less problematic bargains There are various dimensions to it including that the United States has the capacity to indict Negotiators with criminal groups the United States has done it. It has done is recently After negotiations in El Salvador That can be a force for the good in trying to shape the negotiations But it could also unravel negotiations that might be inevitable. So really having a robust conversation between any kind of external donors and Support Actors who might be trying to facilitate mediations about the inevitable realities of how bargaining with gangs will take place both giving some sort of legal assurance perhaps or Threatening legal consequences if certain set of bargains are done is something that can be on the table now in the long term we can I use we both as the United States and the community international community more broadly can think about How to be strengthening the state And weakening the criminal groups as more opportunities emerge We want to get in a situation where the criminal groups are so powerful that the bargaining is About anything beyond instead of going to prison for 20 years You will go to prison for 10 years if you are a gang leader So we want to be in a situation where the bargaining is essentially about plea bargains But we are far from them, but it doesn't mean that we have to be stuck in the situations where the gangs are so powerful Very little known is the fact that in the late 1980s early 1990s the Colombian government had extensive negotiations with some of the most odious criminal groups the Medellin cartel and in the first iteration of the negotiations the bargaining that they struck was really a bargain that empowered the cartel significantly and that was That left the state with the very weekend the state conceded to many elements allowing Pablo Escobar to build his luxurious private prison that he would go in and out Not acting against a set of actors But fortunately and that could have been the end of the bargain the state could have been perpetually weak fortunately the Colombian Political class and civil society found the strength and very little with us helped to be strengthening institutions and With us prodding years later the power changed the national police became more capacious and set of consequences Took place against the criminal groups Escobar himself was killed But prosecutions of the Cali cartel followed and the cartel was dismantled other cultures emerged It's hardly a resolved picture. Colombia is still torn by violence But nonetheless the state was able to go from really Just a shredding of institutions Toward their strengthening even at the time where the bargain was originally struck the criminal bargain the bargain with The criminal actors was originally struck I mean, I mean intense weakness So whatever bargains are done today with the gangs one would hope that in time the bargains would be Renegotiated and then the state would become in strengthen and more and more the bargains would be about the extent of punishment It would be about more capacious DDR rather than payoffs for allowing humanitarian access or payoffs for Turning violence down as has been the case up till now Thank you so much. Thank you so much for that very very thoughtful and relevant analysis We really appreciate you being with us today. Thank you for having me