They call the gang leader “Barbeque” and he has announced plans to destroy the country to prevent the Prime Minister from staying in power.

Haiti has declared a three-day state of emergency and a night-time curfew after armed gangs stormed the country’s two biggest jails, allowing more than 3,000 dangerous criminals, including murderers and kidnappers, to escape back on to the streets of the poor and violence-racked Caribbean nation.

The finance minister, Patrick Boisvert – who is in charge while the embattled prime minister, Ariel Henry, is abroad trying to salvage support for a UN-backed security force to stabilise Haiti – said police would use “all legal means at their disposal” to recapture the prisoners and enforce the curfew.

The banks, schools, hospitals, Internet lines, and airport all have come under escalating attack by militant gangs opposed to the Prime Minister. Critical infrastructure is under siege.

Now even prisons have been destroyed, adding thousands of violent criminals to the chaos.

Notably the few people who remained in prison after it was broken included the group of mercenaries who stand accused of assassinating Haiti’s president in 2021.

That’s actually an important detail.

Recall that Barbeque was fired from the Police for corruption related to gang violence. It turned out he had been heavily sponsored by the Haitian president to murder political opposition until… assassination of that president. Violent (murderous) anti-gang work actually was Barbeque just being a paid gang-building leader (classic dirty cop stuff, complicating a decade of analysis of who has been fighting for what).

Barbecue presented the gang alliance as a way to restore peace across Port-au-Prince. Instead, the coalition has expanded its territorial control and provided politicians a way to stamp out opposition.

Not to over simplify here but it seems Barbeque is deploying excessive violence and stoking crime to protest anti-corruption of new government leadership.

Mussolini would be proud.

Wrecking his own country suits Barbeque’s fascist strategy as he intends unlimited violence to intimidate and force every citizen into paying his gang protection money. He doesn’t want a safe country, he wants an unsafe country and a government so corrupt it pays his gangs to use extra-judicial killings to prevent political stability.