Introduction - Viv Ansanm's February 29 Leap Year Revolt Opens Civil War
On February 29, an advanced detachment of paramilitary groups who once visited violence on each other at the behest of Haïti's oligarchs and party bosses launched a massive, coordinated assault on the government.
When 30 police stations and the National Police Academy were sacked, the two largest prisons overrun and 3,800 inmates freed, the Port-au'-Prince seaport, National Palace, and the Toussaint Louverture International Airport assaulted and laid under siege, Haïti's government fell. It collapsed under the weight of its comprehensive corruption and U.S. imperial plunder.
Surging out of the Western Hemisphere's poorest ghettos, Viv Ansanm's nouveau nationalists and their charismatic leader Jimmy Barbecue Chérizier, stand on the precipice of achieving something extraordinary--toppling Haïti's ruling oligarchs and their U.S. imperialist backers.
Should Viv Ansanm win significant support from Haïti's diaspora, and Blacks in America Party threaten to torpedo Biden's presidential candidacy if Secretary of State Blinken's so-called Multilateral Security Support Mission (MSS) invades Haiti, Viv Ansanm may well succeed.
From the New Black Nationalist Network's (NBN) standpoint, the February 29 Leap Year Revolt signaled the opening salvos of civil war in Haïti. The reports of gunfire piercing through Haïti's streets and reverberating around the planet were from the muzzles of Viv Ansanm's AK-47s. No amount of yellow journalism from the Washington Post and New York Times asserting Haïti's crisis stems from gang violence run amok can obscure that reality. An all-out struggle for political power is unfolding in Haïti' between two opposing camps representing vastly different interests.
"If Ariel Henry doesn’t resign, if the
international community continues
to support him, we’ll be heading
straight for a civil war that will lead
to genocide.
The first step is to overthrow Ariel
Henry and then we will start the
real fight against the current system,
the system of corrupt oligarchs and
corrupt traditional politicians."
Haïti had been maintained as a permanent "failed state" of American Empire long before Jimmy Chérizier and Viv Ansanm came on the scene. Nor was "gang violence" a justification for military intervention when the Tonton Macoute killed 60,000 Haïtians under the Duvalier dictatorships for 27 years.
Since 1900, Haiti has had nine coups, three U.S.-directed invasions, and 23 years of American troop occupation. Haïti's dictators were propped up by American foreign aid while the rest of the country served as a laundromat for its oligarchs and foreign enablers to clean their dirty money, fleece Haïti's resources and ruthlessly exploit its people.
The subjugation of Haiti's people was such that when Jean Bertrand Aristide became Haïti's first democratically elected President in 1990, his goal was to move the country from "abject misery to dignified poverty."
But this is a new day. Recently, the Revolutionary Forces of the G-9 Family and Allies, a novel neighborhood social reform organization of nine groups who vowed to end Haiti's oligarchic system was joined by the G-PEP organization. Together they promised to challenge foreign troops entering Haïti under U.S. Secretary of State's imperial mandate to restore order in Haïti'. The amalgam of these urban rebels with a cause was renamed Viv Ansanm (Living Together in Creole).
If reports by the United Nations are to be believed, 80% of Port-au-Prince's geographical footprint is in the hands of paramilitary groups and other non-state actors. Whatever that percentage is, Viv Ansanm now controls the lion's share of it. Viv Ansanm's innovative upstarts acted on their strategic assessment that Haïti's political and security vacuum was a target-rich environment to be exploited. They leaned forward to fill it.
When mass outrage peaked across Haïti at reports Prime Minister Henry was putting off the delayed 2023 national elections until 2025 and traveling to Kenya to recruit another military occupation force, Viv Ansanm struck. Their coordinated attacks on government institutions that backfooted Haiti's National Police suggest two things: significant defections among the PNH's 9,000 officers, and inside intelligence Viv Ansanm received from its informants.
Leveraging its strategic advantage, Viv Ansanm's unexpected first strike has allowed it to dictate the pace of events and choose the time and place of battle.
By seizing the airport and forcing Ariel Henry into exile in Puerto Rico, Chérizier temporarily blew up Ariel Henry's, Tony Blinken's, and Kenyan President William Ruto's plan to expedite the deployment of the so-called Multilateral Security Support Mission (MSS) to invade Haïti. The Leap Year Revolt also prevented Henry from returning to Port-au-Prince to spearhead a counterinsurgency effort. As a result, Cherizier acquired precious time for Viv Ansanm to consolidate its military gains.
Having plussed up Viv Ansanm's insurgent fighting forces, military-grade weapons capability, and support bases across Port-au'-Prince, Jimmy Chérizier told Al Jazeera News, “Now our fight will enter another phase – to overthrow the whole system, the system that is five percent of people who control 95 percent of the country’s wealth.”
The Myth and Legend of "Babekyou"
Jimmy Barbeque Chérizier grew up in Port-au-Prince's Delmas, Quest arrondissement where he served as an exemplary police officer for 14 years. His story is known to all. As one of eight children, he lost his father at the age of five and sold his mother's fried meats in the local market to help the family. Thus, the sobriquet and legend of Babekyou was born.
As Kim Ives of Haiti Liberté reported, "Cherizier, was a cop with an elite unit of the Haitian National Police called UDMO, the Departmental Unit of Maintenance of Order. In November of 2017, he was ordered by police leadership to put together a team of ten people from the station that he commanded in Cité Soleil to carry out a raid against the gangs in the area of Martissant.
There ensued a dramatic battle between cops and gang members. A number of gang members were killed, and maybe some civilians, too. It’s unclear exactly what happened. Police leadership said, “Oh, no, this was a rogue operation, it was Cherizier who did it.” They hung him out to dry, made him the scapegoat. This immediately started his radicalization. He started to see that this force he had been so devoted to was betraying him and trying to use him to cover for their own screwups."
The rest is history. In Haïti's rouge's gallery of Duvalier dictators, Tonton Macoute enforcers, coup plotters, and assassins, Chérizier is the only Haïtian ever to be sanctioned by the United Nations. The 2022, resolution stated he "engaged in acts that threaten the peace, security, and stability of Haiti and has planned, directed, or committed acts that constitute serious human rights abuses.” There is not a shred of evidence to support these claims.
Chérizier has been excoriated by the international press as a murderer, gang leader, kidnapper, and notorious mastermind of Haïti's underworld. Even his childhood nickname "Barbeque" has been caricatured, racialized, and held up for ridicule.
In Port-au-Prince's teeming Delmas arrondissement, however, Babekyou is both a term of endearment and an action word. In truth, Chérizier is a man of simple taste who gets things done. He neither minces nor wastes words when speaking in the popular vernacular of Haïtian Creole. "Hungry people," he says "don't play around."
When Chérizier appears, his forceful persona dominates the public space. But for all the scorn and vilification heaped on him as a thuggish brute, within the Viv Ansanm federation he functions more as a "first among equals." He keeps his word, and he is a reasonable negotiator.
Chérizier is also given to very public displays of humility and emotion that belie his strongman image. In a wrenching effort to forge a truce with another paramilitary organization, Chérizier knelt before the rival group at a public meeting and pleaded with them to make the peace. They didn't budge.
In another instance, Chérizier, who was very critical of President Jovenel Moise as a tool of the oligarchs, wept at a public memorial service for Moise after his assassination. While his detractors howled that Chérizier's tears proved he was the tool of Moise, he responded by saying this.
"I cried because I was frustrated, and my emotions were unleashed. How can a country that took its independence go through all this humiliation? How can a sovereign country let a band of criminals and delinquents come all the way from Columbia to assassinate Haiti's first citizen? As nationalists we love our country. Even if the opposition were to gain power, we would never collude with any foreign power to assassinate our own president. That revolted me. "
In our view, Chérizier's words reflect the ethics and principles of the Fanonist new nationalist movement. We take responsibility for our people's actions and our nation's shortcomings. We don't complain and dwell on grievances. We acknowledge our problems and differences. We try to resolve our issues through principled discourse and move on to fight the battles that must be won.
The Barbeque Revolution: Triangulation Strategy and Three-Dimensional Chess
Jimmy Chérizier is also well-schooled in the arts of three-dimensional chess. He will need to summon these assets and surround himself with a talented circle of strategists and operatives to execute his plan to rid Haïti' of foreign imperial powers (United States, France, and Canada) and corrupt oligarchs.
For those who think Chérizier is just another loudmouth thug with a military-grade assault weapon, they should think again. He said Prime Minister Ariel Henry had to step down. So did most of Haïti's politicians who have been squabbling to take Henry's place. But it was Chérizier who acted. Henry is now deposed.
New Black Nationalists reiterated Cherizier and Viv Ansanm' s actions that precipitated Henry's ouster to underscore an important point. Cherizier's is counting on his adversaries continuing to underestimate his capabilities to develop a strategic model to win a liberation war and Viv Ansanm' s ability to carry the day on the battlefield. He also believes Haïti's elites, oligarchs, and Tony Blinken's educated whiz kids sitting in front of their computer screens in Foggy Bottom, have no clue about the strategic depth his movement enjoys on the Haïtian street.
Cherizier knows that revolutions are typically fought between two numerically small armies of combatants. This will be an up close and personal street fight that the least committed force is going to lose. The battle for Haïti' is not going to end like 2004. There is no president to kidnap from the National Palace and force him on an airplane bound for the Central African Republic.
NBN believes Blinken's Black Caribbean Mercenary Brigade will not be committed once the bullets start flying. Neither will mercenaries paid for by the oligarchs. But we have digressed, haven't we?
In chess, game theory dictates that there is an opening, middlegame, and endgame strategy. If the opening is characterized by players developing their pieces, gaining control of the center of the board, and establishing a foundation to create multiple attack options in the middlegame, then Chérizier and Viv Ansanm' have won the opening. The question is what comes next?
At the heart of Chérizier's grand triangulation strategy are three overarching goals.
1. Build and lead the broad united front for a new Haïtian nationalist movement.
2. Politically defeat The Kingston Group and oligarchs' plans to capture Haïti's government.
3. Defeat Blinken's Black Caribbean Mercenary Brigades occupation force (BBCMB).
To accomplish these three goals, NBN believes Chérizier has mapped the architecture and sequencing of a bifurcated military strategy to win state power.
What do we mean by a bifurcated strategy? Namely, Chérizier' has calculated that to capture state power he must win two wars: Haïti's internal civil war, and the war against the occupation forces of Blinken's Black Caribbean Mercenary Brigade.
From NBN's reading of Cherizier's statements, we surmise he has concluded defeating Blinken and Biden's invasion force will be the most decisive factor in determining who will win Haïti's civil war. Thus, winning the war against the American-sponsored occupation is driving Viv Ansanm's overall strategy.
In part, Cherizier's dilemma is the sequencing of the civil war and the impending war of resistance against Blinken's Multilateral Security Support Mission (MSS). Presumably, the civil war Viv Ansanm initiated on February 29 will give way to fighting a war of resistance against Tony Blinken's invasion force in the next few months.
But things may not be that simple. One has to assume other paramilitary forces will side with Blinken's MSS units for some type of compensation. Or, what if Jean-Charles Moïse and Guy Philippe decide their political strongholds in the Nord and Nord Est departments won't support Blinken's occupation brigade or Viv Ansanm's resistance forces? What happens if Moise and Philippe declare Nord and Nord Est are neutral autonomous regions they are prepared to defend if Viv Ansanm or Blinken's MSS occupation forces encroach on their territory?
While most of the news reporting has focused on the collapse of Haiti's central government and the fighting around the Port au'-Prince metroplex, Catherine Charlemagne followed events throughout February in the Nord, Nord Est, and Central Plateau departments. These areas have had a series of intense demonstrations, standoffs and clashes between anti-Henry protestors and the PNH.
Throughout the twists and turns of Haïti's governance crisis and military conflict, the nation's political parties, civic and business leaders, paramilitary groups inside and outside of Viv Ansanm, and the oligarchs (Reginald Boulos, Gilberto Bigio, Reginald Deeb, Sherif Abdullah, and Dimitri Vorbe) will be switching sides and forming temporary alliances.
To discern who the oligarchs are backing we suggest you follow the money, although we suspect their financial largesse will be spread around as an insurance policy to cover unexpected contingencies.
What seems to be unfolding as the most likely future scenario in Haïti' is that the relative pause in fighting around Port-au'- Prince will hold. After incessant squabbling, The Kingston Group will finally agree on the composition of the seven-member Transitional Presidential Council and the selection of an Interim Prime Minister. In May or June, the so-called Multilateral Security Support Mission (MSS) will be formed and a date to invade Haïti will be set.
If this scenario plays out, Cherizier is confident he can unite a Haïtian Resistance force to defeat Blinken's Black Caribbean Mercenary Brigade. Having won the war against the occupation, Viv Ansanm would then have to reassess the scope of renewing a civil war to win state power.
Should Blinken's Multilateral Security Support Mission lose, falter, or never gets off the ground, most of the accommodationist Kingston Group political parties and civic groups that support it will be discredited. At that juncture, Viv Ansanm would probably be confronted by a crack force of predominantly Haïtian paramilitary forces bought and paid for by the oligarchs and dirty foreign money.
Viv Ansanm's February 29 Leap Year Revolt that opened the first phase of Haïti's civil war has for the moment settled into an uneasy de facto power-sharing arrangement. Viv Ansanm and other paramilitary groups effectively control most of Port-au'-Prince's metroplex, while Finance Minister Michele Boisvert is handling the day-to-day administrative affairs of Haïti's rump government.
The longer this power-sharing arrangement remains in place, it redounds to Viv Ansanm's advantage. If Viv Ansanm seizes the opportunity during the relative lull in fighting, they can create provisional structures to deliver food and water to the masses and curb gratuitous violence perpetrated by bad actors. Creating shadow government organs to get the streets clean and possibly even ration gas would begin to demonstrate their ability to grapple with the affairs of governance.
In the whirlwind of events that have turned Haiti upside down since February 29, Cherizier has not taken his eye off the ball. He continues to warn the Haitian people they must prepare to meet and turn back Blinken's Black Caribbean Mercenary Brigade at the gates.
In this regard, Haïti's accommodationist political and civic elites that met with CARICOM and U.S. Secretary of State Blinken in Kingston, Jamaica handed Cherizier two huge political gifts.
The CARICOM / Blinken Emergency Meeting Debacle in Kingston
At the CARICOM/Blinken March 11 "emergency" conference Ariel Henry tendered his resignation. CARICOM's 15-member Caribbean States organization approved an agreement to establish a Transitional Presidential Council (TPC). The seven-member council which most closely reflected the Claude Joseph EDE proposal will develop a process to conduct a national election in Haïti' and select an interim Prime Minister to begin running Haïti's government.
More importantly for Blinken and Biden, the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) not only needs to be seated but must appoint an Interim Prime Minister before Kenya can take control of the so-called Multilateral Security Support (MSS) Mission to invade Haïti.
As reported by the Miami Herald, the Kingston Group accommodationists bickered publicly about the CARICOM plan and what names to submit, possibly putting the creation of the TCP at risk. U.S. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said he expected the group that met with Blinken behind closed doors to name the seven council members by Wednesday. It didn't happen. As of March 16, only five names were submitted to CARICOM.
Two critical developments came out of the CARICOM / Blinken Emergency Meeting that substantively impact the struggle for power in Haïti.
First, everyone selected for the seven members serving on the Transitional Presidential Council and the Interim Prime Minister must endorse United Nations Resolution 2699 which supports the creation and deployment of the Multilateral Security Support Mission (MSS). This is a scandalous indictment of all the signatories.
Second, the conditions for participation on the TPC ban anyone that has been indicted or convicted in any jurisdiction, and anyone sanctioned by the United Nations. In short, the TPC agreement delineates who among Haïti's political and civic elites is supporting Blinken and Biden's war of occupation which the Haïtian majority does not support.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Cherizier asserted that “We’re not going to recognize the decisions that CARICOM takes. I’m going to say to the traditional politicians that are sitting down with CARICOM, since they went with their families abroad, we who stayed in Haiti have to take the decisions.”
What most of The Kingston Group didn't bicker about is who won't be included in their plan for Haïti's next government. The agreement in part states the following.
The Declaration for the Establishment of a Transitional Presidential Council and the naming of an Interim Prime Minister:
The exclusion from the Transitional Presidential Council of:
-Anyone who is currently on a charge, indictment or has been convicted in any jurisdiction;
[The Guy Phillipe exclusion clause] NBN's notation
-Anyone who is under UN Sanction;
[The Jimmy Barbecue Chérizier exclusion clause] NBN's notation
-Anyone who intends to run in the next election in Haiti;
-Anyone who opposes the UN Security Council (UN SC) Resolution 2699.
[The screw 85% of the Haitian population who oppose Blinken's Black Caribbean Mercenary Brigade occupation force clause] NBN's notation.
Among the groups that make up the council are the following.
-EDE/RED, a party led by former Prime Minister Claude Joseph
-Montana Accord, a group of civil society leaders, political parties, and others
-Fanmi Lavalas, the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
-Jan. 30 Collective representing several parties & former President Martelly's PHTK Party
Beyond the bickering and jousting by the groups and parties that met in Kingston, there were also forces that withdrew from the TPC selection process.
Jean-Charles Moïse, former presidential candidate and leader of the Petit Desalin Party announced they will not join a council. Moise said, “This is the same government we just kicked out of the country, and now CARICOM is asking for us to go negotiate? For us to go sit down with this government?”
Guy Philippe: An Opportunist for All Seasons
Jean-Charles Moise has also allied with former rebel leader Guy Philippe, chief organizer of the coup that toppled Jean Bertrand Aristide's government in 2004. A convicted money launderer sentenced to nine years in a Miami prison, Philippe, was released three years early in September 2023 and is now a leader of the Réveil National political party.
Reveil National proposed a new three-member presidential council with Philippe as president of Haïti and possessing the authority to name the Interim Prime Minister. While Moise supports the three-member presidential council concept his choices were Judge Durin Junior Duret (President of the Council), Guy Philippe (member) and Françoise Saint-Vil Villier (member).
Criticizing CARICOM and the Kingston Group, Philippe contended that “No citizen, no Haitian could accept this proposal from the international community because it is this same international community, in complicity with the political and economic elites of Haiti, that got us into this crisis.”
While Jean-Charles Moïse and Guy Philippe both rejected the legitimacy of the CARICOM process and the TPC, neither criticized its mandatory support for the Multilateral Security Support Mission. We wonder if that was merely an oversight.
Petit Desalin will not be the only party that rejects the CARICOM TPC agreement protocols. Nor does their rejection of the CARICOM / TPC agreement necessarily place them in the nationalist camp or the Haitian Resistance movement. These two issues are the nexus of Cherizier's attempt to build a new Haitian nationalist project.
Nor will there be any shortage of political opportunists like Guy Philipe, who is comparing his return from incarceration in Miami to become president to Nelson Mandela's imprisonment in South Africa. We just don't recall Mandela being arrested for money laundering dirty money for narcotics traffickers. Since being released from prison six months ago, Philippe spoke at several rallies calling for Henry's resignation from the Prime Minister's office. Philippe secured the endorsement of some paramilitary groups and reportedly reached out for support to Jimmy Cherizier.
While further analysis needs to be done, the New Black Nationalist Network's preliminary assessment suggests Guy Phillipe is being positioned as a cut-out--a strongman option to install as president if The Kingston Group falters and Blinken's Black Caribbean Mercenary Brigade occupation project starts going sideways. So, he has to be kept in play, even if the TPC protocols deem him ineligible to serve as president or as a member of the TPC council.
Guy might be a little rusty after spending six years in jail, but in addition to being an experienced coup plotter he was formally the Chief of Police in Cap Haïtian. Philippe is a plug-and-play option that can fulfill multiple roles in service to the forces of reaction in Haïti if called upon.
One of those roles appears to be as a mediator for the paramilitary insurgents. There is a theory that some of the paramilitary units unleashed their attacks two weeks ago to improve their bargaining position for amnesty when a new government is formed and Blinken's rent an army comes charging over the hills of Petionville. Philippe has taken on the role advocating for amnesty for these groups. In a recent interview he explained his position to the New York Times this way.
“We have to tell them you will put down the weapons or you will face big consequences. If you put down the weapons you will have a second chance. You will have some kind of amnesty.”
And just who is going to give these lads amnesty? Does anybody believe that? Here again, Philippe is playing both sides against the middle. Asking for paramilitary groups' support for his presidency on the one hand while seeking to disarm them on the other. At its root, it is a message of cynical defeatism. Philippe is telling the paramilitary groups they can't win, so cut the best deal you can and save yourselves. It's a very different message from Jimmy Cherizier's.
Shutting Down Blinken's Black Caribbean Mercenary Brigade
Finally, it must be said that the deployment of Blinken's Black Caribbean Mercenary Brigade can be stopped before deploying to Haiti. In Canada, France, and the Caribbean a political firestorm of opposition needs to be built to challenge the Multilateral Security Support Mission's legitimacy and true purpose.
The Fanonist New Black Nationalist Network in American Empire's metropole calls on all Fanon activists, especially in the Francophone diaspora to raise their voices in opposition to the planned occupation of Haïti.
In the Caribbean, the most important countries to target are the participating nations of Jamaica, the Bahamas, Guyana, Antigua, Barbuda. Whatever illusions these crack troops may harbor, they should know they are not being deployed to assist the people of Haïti' in a peacekeeping mission.
The so-called Multilateral Security Support Mission (MSS) is not a United Nations mission. Even if it was tasked by the United Nations as was the case in its 1993-96 occupation of Haiti, it should still be opposed.
Blinken's Black Caribbean Mercenary Brigade are contracted mercenaries per the deceptive language of United Nations Resolution 2699. They should know U.S. Secretary of State Blinken paid for them like a fee for service transaction at the March 11, CARICOM meeting in Kingston for the bargain basement price of 230 million dollars. They should know if they make landfall in Haïti, they are going to be treated with the contempt they deserve and will likely come under fire.
Imagine that: Black mercenary troops exclusively from former British colonies, hired by the United States to kill and crush the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere colonized by France. It's a low and dastardly deed that must be terminated.
It is a sad commentary that in this moment of crisis, the Haitian people cannot count on the support of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Black Chairman of the Democrat National Committee, the Black Minority Leader of the House of Representatives or even the Black former President of the United States who never once in eight years paid a state visit to the first Black democracy on the planet.
Except for a precious few, these "leaders" have done nothing while Blinken and Biden continue to finance and support Israel's genocide of 31,000 Palestinians. They will not lift a finger to assist the people of Haiti. We, however, shall do our part.
Concluding Thoughts: Haiti is to American Empire what Palestine is to Europe and Israel
We conclude our brief with the words of the Cameroonian Black Francophone philosopher Achille Mbembe. The Fanonist scholar predicted the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza in his 2016 publication of Necropolitics--which translated means the politics of death.
"Nearly everywhere, the Western political order is re-constituting itself as a form of organization for death. We are increasingly faced with the question of what to do with those who's very existence does not seem to be necessary for our reproduction, those whose mere existence or proximity is deemed to represent a physical or biological threat to our own life. Gaza might well prefigure what is yet to come."
In many ways Haiti is to American Empire what Palestine is to Europe and Israel--the people who simply refuse to submit to oppression, be it invasions, occupation, coups, sanctions, ethnic cleansing, and dictatorship. Still, they fight. That is why the Haitian people are going to win, and maybe sooner than most people think.
On behalf of the New Black Nationalist movement in the bosom of American Empire, we congratulate Viv Ansanm, Jimmy Barbeque Cherizier, and all the people writing a new chapter in the chronicle of Haïti's revolutionary history. We bid you victory in the political defeat of The Kingston Group accommodationist and the oligarchs. We are supremely confident that if U.S.-sponsored occupation forces make landfall in Haïti you will dispose of them in a manner that is befitting, and upholds the tradition of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Jean Jacques Dessalines, and Charlemagne Péralte.
