Security & the Economics of Violence

Between December and June, the state went into Bel-Air, downtown, Martissant, and Village de Dieu. In August, the toll in Kenscoff stood at forty-seven dead. This column rereads six months of operations with a single question in mind: who holds the ground the next day. It identifies three bottlenecks, sets them against the experience of Colombia, Rio, and Mosul, and proposes five decisions, none of which requires one more armored vehicle.

A letter calls for a truce in the name of “rebels.” Three days later, Kenscoff is attacked: forty-seven dead, more than fifty people abducted, then a video threatening to execute them. These acts contradict one another only if they are taken separately. This column reads them as parts of a single negotiation by coercion, and examines what the state can do about the hostages with less than four months to go before the election.

A truck leaves Port-au-Prince; the driver knows he will pay, but not where. This column shows that the armed groups’ levy no longer needs a visible barrier to be collected, and that destroying the toll checkpoints will therefore not break the economy of Viv Ansanm (“living together” in Creole).

Port-au-Prince is holding its breath: the sound of gunfire has changed its tone. This piece warns against the Mexican syndrome, the atomization of armed groups after decapitation, which is more dangerous than their concentration if the state does not build the peace.

How a criminal organization should be fought depends on the age it has reached: with force when it is predatory, with pressure when it is parasitic. This column examines the instrument that broke the Italian Mafia and asks whether it can be transplanted.

Seven children killed and 176 wounded in Cité Soleil between 10 and 13 May 2026, a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital urgently evacuated, more than 5,000 people displaced. The column works through the arithmetic of these figures and of what they imply.

Walls ripped open, roofs torn off, buildings reduced to their concrete skeletons: it looks like an earthquake. Except that an earthquake does not discriminate. This column reads the methodical destruction as a distinct phase, one that begins where the looting ends.

The police offensive has retaken positions long held by the coalition. This column describes the transition from broker to godfather: what changes in the nature of a criminal organization when it passes from one age to the next, and what that demands of anyone who sets out to fight it.

Announcements about residents returning to Solino multiplied in the spring of 2026, reaching as high as the Prime Minister’s Office. This column does not question the intention: it notes that no method underpins it, and says which method is missing.

On the night of 13 to 14 April 2026, the attack on Séguin, in the Sud-Est department, left at least seven dead, burned down the police station, and destroyed two police vehicles. This column shows that the advance could be read on a map long before it turned deadly.

“Adaptation” recurs in every grammar of military intervention: mandates, budgets, speeches at the Security Council. Then the troops arrive. The column sets the Sahel experience against the urban geometry of Port-au-Prince, which bears no resemblance to it.

On 1 April 2026, the first Chadian contingent of the Gang Suppression Force set foot in Port-au-Prince in front of the cameras. At the same moment, in the lower Artibonite, the country’s granary was burning. The column sets the two images side by side and runs the numbers.

A national opinion survey conducted in early 2025 by the Aksyon Sitwayen Angaje consortium with ProEco Haïti measured what Haitians think about their security. This column draws three blind spots from it: three things that public debate stubbornly refuses to look at.

Eight hundred forty-three people killed in December 2024, in a single month. A figure like that suggests chaos, something beyond comprehension. This column shows that it follows a regular pattern, and that the pattern can be described.

Rio, Kingston, Ciudad Juárez: three cities that had their moment of reconquest, and then the aftermath. The column examines what follows the euphoria of a security victory, and why the sequence repeats itself from one continent to another.

Haiti’s economic collapse and the explosion of violence are not two parallel crises: they are linked. What remains is to establish what the figures actually demonstrate about that link, and what they do not allow us to conclude.

A civilian force designed for mediation finds itself fighting an urban war. This column argues for strict oversight of this de facto militarization, and for a doctrine of legitimate force that protects the Republic as much as the territory.

Twenty billion dollars between 1995 and 2024. This column sets that sum against the gains actually achieved on the ground, and puts a figure on what divisions at the top of the state have cost the country.

From January 2023 to December 2025, the national total of violent incidents appears stable. Drawing on ACLED data, this column shows that the stability is deceptive: violence is not falling, it is moving, and that movement can be read.

On 18 October 2025, a video showed what development economists would delicately call a disruption of agricultural production systems. This column builds a scenario in which rice production in the Artibonite collapses, and puts figures on the consequences.

In February 2024, the G9 and the G-Pèp, long-standing rivals, merged. This column describes the shift that this alliance has brought about in Haiti’s political economy: public attention becomes a resource, and territorial control a currency.

The alliance born in 2024 from the union of the G9 and G-Pèp ended a war of attrition between gangs in order to maximize criminal excess profits and coordinate its offensives against the state. The Shapley value, a game-theory tool designed to divide up a coalition’s gains, offers a way to read this architecture and to pinpoint what makes it fragile.

Translating a human tragedy into economic terms sometimes conveys what emotion alone does not. Applying human capital valuation methods to the Haitian case, this column puts what armed violence destroyed in 2024 at between $400 million and $900 million.

Haiti’s tax revenue fell to 5.2% of GDP in 2024, from 6.3% a year earlier, one of the lowest ratios in the world. This column reads that collapse through the Laffer curve and shows that the state and the armed groups now draw on the same tax base.