By the second half of 2021, gang violence in Haiti had expanded beyond the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area into communities across the Artibonite and other departments, displacing thousands and disrupting the agricultural activities, market networks, and community life of regions that had previously been relatively insulated from the capital’s security crisis. The geographic expansion of gang activity represented a qualitative shift in the nature of the security threat facing the country.
In the Artibonite Valley, armed groups that had operated primarily as local criminal enterprises began asserting territorial control over communities and road networks in ways that mirrored the gang governance model that had already transformed parts of Port-au-Prince. Farmers found it increasingly difficult to move their produce to market. Market days were disrupted by violence. Communities that had maintained order through local social structures found those structures challenged by armed outsiders.
Human rights organizations documented a surge in killings, kidnappings, and sexual violence in the newly affected areas. Many of the victims were people who had no relationship with the criminal networks — ordinary farmers, market women, and community leaders who were targeted because they represented the community structures that gangs needed to undermine in order to establish control.
The expansion of gang activity beyond Port-au-Prince raised the terrifying prospect of a security collapse that was not limited to the capital but could threaten the entire country’s social fabric. International security analysts warned that without a serious security intervention, the territorial gains of criminal networks could become essentially permanent.