We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
People take cover from gunfire near the National Palace, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti March 21, 2024.
Haitians flee capital en masse
Intense violence in Port-au-Prince led over 33,000 Haitians to flee the city in the last two weeks alone, according to the United Nations.
Gangs attacked two specialized police bases in Port-au-Prince on Saturday and continue to make advances. Over 2,500 people have been killed in the fighting this year. Violence has kept the air and seaports shuttered all month, making it difficult for aid organizations to bring supplies in. The World Food Programme now says Haiti faces a record level of food insecurity.
Small signs of hope. The transitional council meant to replace outgoing Prime Minister Ariel Henry saw a key breakthrough last week when former Senator Jean-Charles Moïse reversed his position and accepted a seat. All seven voting members are now in place, and could name a president as soon as next week.
Progress toward setting up a government could also remove impediments to the Kenyan-led intervention force that has been stalled and delayed for months. We’re watching for who ends up in charge, and whether Haitians buy into this unelected government.
A police officer patrols near the police headquarters as Haiti continues in a state of emergency, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti March 6, 2024.
Haiti’s gangs threaten civil war
Prime Minister Ariel Henry is refusing calls to resign and remains stranded outside Haiti while the leader of the country’s largest gang alliance, Jimmy Chérizier, threatens civil war.
Henry visited Nairobi last week in an attempt to secure a Kenyan-led intervention force to help bring peace to Haiti. But heavily armed gangs took advantage of his absence and launched assaults against Haiti’s two largest prisons and the international airport in Port-au-Prince, paralyzing the country. Henry has since tried but failed to return to Haiti.
Washington responded to the chaos on Wednesday, calling for an “urgent” political transition, and the UN Security Council met behind closed doors to discuss next steps. Henry’s predecessor, Claude Joseph, told CNN that political groups within Haiti are discussing a plan for a three-member transitional council that will select an interim president to organize elections.
Why the power vacuum? Haiti has not held polls since 2016, has no elected officials in office, and Henry and his government are widely seen as illegitimate. He came to power unelected after President Jovenal Moïse was assassinated in 2021 but has been unable to prevent men like Chérizier from seizing 80% of the capital and unleashing intense physical and sexual violence on ordinary Haitians.
Two names to watch: Guy Philippe and Chérizier. Philippe played a leading role in the 2004 coup and is pressing for a council of his choice to put him in power. Chérizier, however, is the man with the most firepower.
Danny Shaw, a Haiti expert at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, says Haitians don’t see Chérizier, aka Barbecue, as a panacea.
“Overwhelmingly within Haiti – besides Barbecue's own base down in Delmas – they say he's an opportunist. They say he's not trustworthy,” says Shaw.
During his recent visits, Shaw also hasn’t seen much enthusiasm for the long-awaited Kenyan-led police mission, which is again in doubt. Despite Washington’s efforts to stay at arm's length, Shaw says many Haitians fear the deployment will amount to a “US invasion and occupation in blackface” that will fail to resolve the nation’s crises.El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele
Strongman with a strong mandate? El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele
Since riding an anti-establishment wave to power in 2019, El Salvador’s young, social-media savvy, mano dura (“firm hand”) President Nayib Bukele has tested the limits of his country’s fragile institutions.
He’s sent armed men into congress to pressure lawmakers, harried the opposition with arrests, packed the courts with loyalists, and raised human rights concerns with his jail-first-ask-questions-later approach towards gang violence.
But he’s also done something remarkable: he’s become one of the most popular democratically elected leaders in the world. After three years in office, his approval rating hovers around 90%.
Last week, high on that popularity, Bukele announced he would seek another five-year presidential term in 2024. The constitution seemed to say he couldn’t, but a court ruling last year by his own judicial appointees paved the way for the move.
Democracy and human rights activists aren’t surprised by the reelection bid. “There’s no news in the fact that he’s running again,” says Juan Pappier, an El Salvador specialist at Human Rights Watch. “He’s been using his popularity to undermine democratic institutions and the rule of law from the start.”
So, why is he so popular? One reason is that Bukele – a political upstart who favors a baseball cap and leather jacket over a suit and tie – represents a stark break from the country’s traditional politics. After a brutal civil war ended in the early 1990s, the warring sides became the two main political parties. As they deadlocked the country’s politics, the economy sputtered and violence soared.
“There was a demand for a third option, something different,” says Risa Grais-Targow, a Latin America specialist at Eurasia Group. “Bukele captured that and capitalized on it.”
Once in power, he quickly dealt well with the pandemic, securing vaccine supplies and setting up vaccination centers much faster than neighboring countries in Central America. But crucially, he also managed to bring down the country’s gang-driven murder rate – one of the world’s highest – by a staggering 67%.
Early on, his crime fight was helped by pandemic lockdowns, and there were whispers that he might even have made a shadowy truce with the country’s powerful gangs. But more recently, he’s used drastic emergency powers that give the police broad leeway to arrest people, particularly in poorer areas where gangs thrive.
There’s a downside. Many, actually. Activists say the gang crackdown has led to thousands of arbitrary detentions in what Amnesty International calls a “human rights crisis.” And they worry about broader moves to bring the country’s institutions under presidential control.
“To deal sustainably with gang violence,” says Pappier of HRW, “you actually need strong judicial institutions that are willing and able to investigate the gangs and to hold those responsible for the horrible abuses that these gangs commit. But that is exactly the opposite of what Bukele has done.”
What’s more, the US and EU have already raised concerns about Bukele playing fast and loose with the rule of law. And with immigration a perennial hot-button issue in US politics, the Biden administration in particular has pressured governments across Central America over corruption and impunity, part of a strategy to address the “root causes” of northward migration.
Pressure from big players matters to small El Salvador. After all, it’s a tiny, resource-poor, dollarized economy with a massive debt burden. The country relies heavily on external financing, and remittances alone account for about a quarter of GDP. Bukele’s splashy bid to become a crypto economy has largely flopped so far, and with little to offer in the way of infrastructure or resources, it can’t really play the China card the way other Latin American countries do.
That may limit how far Bukele’s authoritarian instincts can go. “If El Salvador becomes a pariah,” asks Grais-Targow, “what do they have to keep them going and to keep the population happy?”
But analysts say Bukele is also betting the US won’t push him too hard. For one thing, they say, he seems confident that Donald Trump – or another Republican in his image – will take the White House in 2024, heralding the return of a more transactional approach to foreign policy.
For another, the sensitivity of immigration in American politics may limit how much pressure any administration would put on El Salvador.
“The Bukele administration assumes, probably correctly, that the US would never dream of imposing major economic sanctions on them,” says Grais-Targow. “That would drive more Salvadorans north, which would be a huge domestic political problem for whoever is in the White House.”
The pathway from here is ominous for El Salvador, says Pappier. “We have seen this situation of highly popular leaders destroying the rule of law and evading constitutional limits many times in Latin America — we saw it with Chavez in Venezuela, with Evo Morales in Bolivia – this is the same story. And in the case of Venezuela and others, we have seen where it ended.”
But with strong domestic support, little opposition, and nearly complete control over institutions, the savvy Bukele is in a commanding position to write that story however he likes. For now, the next chapter seems certain to begin in 2024.
This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.
In El Salvador, security forces continue with the massive arrests of alleged gang members, during an operation called "war against the gangs."
Hard Numbers: Bukele goes after gangs, Bangladeshis sentenced to death, NZ's inflation woes, COVID death toll milestone
4: Four people have been sentenced to death in Bangladesh for the 2004 murder of writer Humayun Azad. Azad was killed by members of Jama’atul Mujahideen, a terrorist group, in the first of several public murders of academics and writers over the past decade. The country’s justice system is often criticized for, as in this case, taking years to process cases.
20: On Wednesday, New Zealand’s central bank lifted its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point, its fourth consecutive hike to address rising inflation. The bank’s move was its biggest single hike in 20 years, but some analysts say another increase is possible in May.
500,000,000: The world has now seen more than 500 million cases of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins research. The death toll has topped 6 million. US public health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has expressed hope that Congress will pass a $10 billion Covid relief bill, and he’s recommending that Americans over 50 get their fourth COVID shot.Gang members are secured during a police operation at Izalco jail.
Hard Numbers: El Salvador vs gang talk, crap demand soars, Delhi sees meat beef, Ukrainians at the US border
15: A new law in El Salvador threatens people with 15 years in prison for sharing information about gangs. The measure, passed amid a state of emergency due to gang violence, is meant to stymie communication between them. But human rights advocates already worried about the authoritarian leanings of President Nayib Bukele say it could be used to stifle free expression more broadly.
9: There’s a big beef in the Indian capital of Delhi, where local officials of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party asked meat shops to close for the nine-day Hindu festival of Navratri (Hindus regard cows as sacred animals). The move provoked online outrage from opposition leaders and Indian Muslims, who said the move was discriminatory.
14: Prices for good-quality solid manure in the US state of Nebraska have recently risen to as much as $14 per ton, nearly double their normal price. Farmers’ demand for this sort of crap has soared globally because it’s a substitute for chemical fertilizers, which are more expensive than ever as the war in Ukraine undercuts supplies.
2,000: More than 2,000 Ukrainians have arrived at the US southern border in recent days, seeking refuge in the United States. President Biden recently pledged to accept up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, and he plans to lift pandemic-related restrictions on immigration in May. Those two moves together could generate a fresh border crisis as officials struggle to cope with a soaring number of migrants.