The G9 gang coalition’s blockade of the Varreux fuel terminal was lifted in early November 2022 after weeks of standoff that had created a humanitarian emergency, with hospitals running out of fuel for generators and water treatment systems failing across the capital. The blockade’s end came through what appeared to be a negotiated arrangement rather than a security operation, with the government making undisclosed concessions in exchange for the gang’s withdrawal from the terminal area.
The lifting of the blockade provided immediate relief to a population that had been suffering from fuel shortages for weeks, but it also demonstrated once again the pattern that had defined Haiti’s gang crisis: criminal networks imposing blockades, the state failing to remove them by force, and the eventual negotiated resolution that rewarded the criminal actors without addressing the underlying power dynamic.
Hospitals that had been operating on minimal fuel reserves scrambled to resupply generators and restore normal operations. Water treatment plants resumed operations, providing clean water to communities that had been forced to rely on potentially contaminated sources during the blockade. The immediate humanitarian situation improved significantly with the resumption of fuel distribution.
But the fundamental security problem remained entirely unresolved. The G9 coalition that had imposed the blockade retained its arms, its territorial control, and its capacity to repeat the action at any time. The Henry government had demonstrated, for the second time in just over a year, that it could not remove a gang blockade of the country’s critical fuel infrastructure by force. The lesson was not lost on the criminal networks that observed the pattern.