When an ambush outside Port-au-Prince left an armored vehicle in flames and four Salvadoran military-aviation technicians missing two weeks ago, the initial response from El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele's was to send a rescue mission.
It quickly expanded into an unprecedented foreign-military campaign.
El Salvador has airlifted to Haiti more than 2,500 troops and special forces, who are now patrolling the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, establishing themselves as the largest armed contingent in the country, except for Haiti's beleaguered national police.
The deployment marks a high-stakes effort for Bukele to export his domestic anti-gang crusade abroad, potentially plunging his country's soldiers into armed combat like they have never seen before.
The operation carries enormous risk. Gangs hold roughly 90% of Port-au-Prince and control critical arterial roads for fuel, medicine, and food. Salvadoran military units must now navigate foreign slums where up to an estimated 15,000 armed Creole-speaking combatants operate along narrow corridors and mountain extraction routes. Many of them are child soldiers.
"The risk of a Black Hawk Down scenario is very high," said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America program at the Stimson Center, referring to the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia and the resulting book and movie about a Black Hawk helicopter carrying U.S. forces that was shot down.
The Salvadorans' initial objective remains unresolved. There has been no proof of life and no ransom demand for the four technicians, who disappeared after an attack in Croix-des-Bouquets, 9 miles northeast of the capital. Security officials familiar with the incident fear the men were killed during or immediately after the ambush.
"The gangs are dangerous," said Carlos Ruiz Massieu, special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Haiti. "They are armed with high caliber weapons and operate largely within an urban context," he said. The Salvadorans and other forces must do everything to prevent casualties in areas where gang members live among civilians, he said.
Bukele, who locked up tens of thousands of suspected criminals to suppress gang violence in El Salvador, had long signaled interest in Haiti. "We wiped them out," Bukele said in March 2024, arguing that his model could apply abroad. "The same must be done in Haiti."
Before launching the deployment, Bukele secured political backing from President Trump. At a Mar-a-Lago Halloween party, Trump said Bukele informed him of the missing personnel. "You are running your country," Trump said he told Bukele. "You have to do what you have to do."
The U.S. and Colombia have provided some logistical help ferrying troops and supplies into a nation unmoored since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
Salvadoran soldiers had been part of the U.N.-backed Gang Suppression Force -- a 2,000-troop coalition from six nations. Some Salvadorans serve with other contractors hired by U.S. security consultant Erik Prince. The four missing Salvadoran technicians were members of the U.N.-backed force.
Now, most Salvadoran troops will operate under their own commanders through a bilateral pact with the Haitian government. Several hundred will integrate into the multinational force.
Many Haitians see in the Salvadoran military mission a glimmer of hope that could mark the beginning of the end of the reign of terror in which local gangs have held the country for years.
"He's showing he means business, the hope has gone back up," said Louis-Henri Mars, the senior adviser to the Institute for Research and Action for Peace, a conflict resolution group.
To be sure, Salvadoran troops could return home after killing or capturing some gang leaders who can be extracted to El Salvador, home to Bukele's harsh Terrorism Confinement Center, known as Cecot, the mega-prison currently housing thousands of gang members who terrorized the Central American country for decades.
A successful deployment requires sophisticated intelligence and logistical capabilities, starting with a secure prison for captured gang members in a country where prison outbreaks are common, said people familiar with Haiti's security conditions.
A military escalation risks deepening the current humanitarian crisis rocking the country and a mass exodus to the Dominican Republic. If things go wrong, Salvadorans may quickly be perceived as invaders in a highly nationalistic country. More than 1.5 million residents have been displaced within Haiti, many seeking shelter in schools. Another 11,000 have been killed in gang violence and massacres within the last two years.
Bukele has described Haitian gangs as satanic. "This is not an operation against the Haitian people, nor an invasion," he wrote on X last week. "We came to Haiti to fight against the wicked," he also said recently, and quoted an Old Testament verse.
The Salvadoran military presence drew a response from Wilson Joseph, a gang leader also known as "Death Comes at Any Time." In an open letter to the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres released on Sunday, Joseph asked for the U.N.'s mediation to stop further bloodshed.
Joseph, head of the 400 Mawozo, or 400 Country Bumpkins, one of the two gangs believed to be involved in the ambush of the Salvadorans, said Bukele's "vengeful remarks, expectations, and threats" made him believe more destruction would befall Haiti.
"I fear that this situation could lead to an escalation of violence and a cycle of reprisals, of which the Haitian population would be the primary victims," wrote Joseph, who has a $1 million U.S. bounty on his head. Instead, Haiti's beleaguered population needed "dialogue, justice and reconciliation," a process in which he was willing to take part, he said.
It was a change for Joseph, who had previously posted mocking videos of plastic buckets full of bullets to show off how well armed his men were, made fun of Bukele's anti-gang policies, and said his men wouldn't flee if Salvadorans attacked his positions.
Comments