A new video released by the Haitian police a few days ago suggests that a notorious gang leader, Vitel’homme Innocent, who has a $2 million bounty on his head, was under attack and running for cover. Other footage the authorities released last month showed explosions coming from the sky.
The unspoken message was clear: The Haitian government, armed with drones, is committed to taking the streets back from violent criminals. Drones fitted with explosives are Haiti’s latest desperate effort to curb rampant violence that has forced 1.3 million people from their homes.
After more than three months of drone strikes in Haiti’s capital, most of which is under gang control, attacks appear to have lessened. But no gang territory has been retaken, and though one top gang leader was reported to have been wounded recently, not a single high-value target has been killed or captured. Now, in a surprising rebuke, the Canadian police, which has provided drones to Haiti, are calling the government’s strikes illegal.
Drone strikes have reportedly killed more than 300 gang members in Port-au-Prince, the capital, according to a leading human rights group. Gangs have retaliated against the attacks by killing at least four civilians.
Why are drones being used?
The Haitian government has been fighting a losing battle against Viv Ansanm, a coalition of gangs that formed last year and attacked government institutions like police stations and jails. The gangs, which raise money through extortion, kidnappings and tolls at illegal roadblocks, now control more than 80 percent of Port-au-Prince.
An international force financed mostly by the U.S. government and largely staffed by Kenyan police officers has not made much progress against the criminal groups.
In March, the Haitian government announced that it had formed a task force to launch drone strikes to target gang leaders.
Many Haitians say the new tactics are a welcome offensive they hope will help restore normalcy to their lives and are the only measure that has kept the capital from falling completely into gang hands. But the strikes are operating in a murky legal area, with no transparency about who is killed or how targets are chosen.
Why would targeting criminal groups be illegal?
Experts in international human rights law say the Haitian government should not be using lethal force unless someone’s life is imminently in danger.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or R.C.M.P., Canada’s national police force — which donated drones and provided surveillance drone training to the Haitian National Police — said the task force the government had created had “no legal authorities.”
“The drone attacks it has conducted are in violation of Haiti’s domestic criminal law and international human rights law,” Marie-Eve Breton, a Canadian police spokeswoman, said in an email to The New York Times.
“The R.C.M.P. does not condone the use of drones to carry munitions or offensive tools.”
To receive the Canadian drones, Haiti’s government had to commit to not using them to kill people, Ms. Breton said.
Legal experts share the Canadian criticism.
The legality of lethal drone strikes comes down to whether a nation is engaged in an officially declared “armed conflict.”
While thousands of Haitians have been killed, buildings have been set ablaze and hospitals and ambulances have been attacked, the violence is not considered an armed conflict, legal experts said.
(There is no central authority that decides whether there is an armed conflict, but the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva is generally considered the expert entity to make such a determination.)
That determination matters.
In armed conflicts, international humanitarian law applies: Fighting parties can engage in offensive operations such as targeted strikes, while ensuring that collateral damage is minimized.
If there’s no armed conflict, then international human rights law, which says that lethal force should not be used unless there is an imminent threat to a person’s life, applies.
Under international humanitarian law, an armed conflict is considered to be taking place if two criteria are met. First, there has to be a certain level of intensity, which takes into account the humanitarian repercussions, the weaponry used, the government’s response and the frequency of the fighting.
That’s a bar Haiti probably meets, especially given the disastrous humanitarian consequences people have suffered over the past year, experts said.
The second criterion is trickier. The armed groups have to be organized, with a clear chain of command and a top commander delivering orders and enforcing them.
Jimmy Chérizier, who is known as Barbecue, has emerged as leader of the Haitian gang coalition, but it is unclear the extent to which he commands all the groups. The U.S. government recently designated the coalition a terrorist organization.
Marisela Silva Chau, who leads the Haiti delegation for the International Committee of the Red Cross, stressed that the committee was constantly reviewing its legal assessments. “The I.C.R.C., currently present in Haiti, follows closely the evolution of the armed violence dynamics,” she said. “Haiti is not the exception.”
What does Haiti’s government say about the drone strikes?
The Haitian government declined requests to comment on the drone strikes. The prime minister’s office said it would not discuss matters of national security.
A top Haitian government official familiar with the drone strikes said secrecy about the operations was imperative to avoid tipping off gang leaders. That’s also why the Haitian government has largely relied on private military contractors to conduct the strikes: The involvement of fewer Haitian police officers in the operations means fewer leaks of information, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive security issue.
A company owned by Erik Prince, a Trump donor and founder of Blackwater, a company known for a massacre of civilians in Iraq nearly two decades ago, has been operating Haiti’s drones.
“It is a blurry framework, lacking any accountability and legal backing,” said Romain Le Cour, a Haiti security analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. “This is why there has been such opacity around the matter.”
Human rights groups in Haiti largely support the drone strikes but have urged the government to be transparent about the attacks.
A large operation of more than a dozen drone strikes last week killed 40 to 100 people, human rights groups said. (The police did not make any announcements about the killings.)
The strikes may be “against the law, but at the same time we are living in a country where we are out of control, because today in Haiti we don’t have a rule of law,” said Pierre Esperance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti.
Do drone strikes work?
Military experts said drone operations were particularly useful for surveillance. They can help the police gain a better understanding of gang leaders’ movements and help direct ground operations.
In general, drones can fire missiles, can drop improvised explosive devices like grenades onto targets or can carry explosives and fly into a target, said Seth G. Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The ones that act as missiles themselves are often referred to as “kamikazes.”
It is unlikely that the Haitian government is deploying missiles, and the first drones captured in videos in Haiti were quite rudimentary, Mr. Le Cour said. It’s unclear what kind are being used.
But experts agreed that a tactic that relied on lethal drone strikes was likely to fail. Killing gang leaders often only leads to more popping up to take their place, experts said. And killing gang leaders without a ground offensive will not lead to the retaking of territory or criminal convictions.
“You have to have a strategy,” said Thomas X. Hammes, a research fellow at the National Defense University in Washington. “Taking drones and killing people is not a strategy.”
In March, after the government launched its first known drone strike, targeting the gang leader known as Barbecue, he posted a video. “I have friends and brothers all over the world,” he said in the video. “I have money. Drones are sold everywhere. I can also obtain them.”
David C. Adams and André Paultre contributed reporting.
Frances Robles is a Times reporter covering Latin America and the Caribbean. She has reported on the region for more than 25 years.
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