Haiti gang boss warns foreign forces will be treated as invaders

Haiti gang leader Jimmy Cherizier, known universally as 'Barbecue', has said if international troops or police move into the streets of Haiti he would consider them as aggressors.

But Jimmy Cherizier, known universally as 'Barbecue', has predicted that more violence is imminent, adding that a recent halt in the fighting is purely a technical pause.

"There is nothing calm, but when you're fighting you have to know when to advance and when to retreat," he said.

"I think every day that passes we are coming up with a new strategy so we can advance, but there's nothing calm.

"In the days that are coming things will get worse than they are now…" he told me sitting in an alleyway in his stronghold.

Political parties in Haiti, overseen by CARICOM, the Caribbean economic union of countries, are trying to form a transitional council that will take over the running of the country after the Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is currently in the United States, stands down.

Cherizier has said they 'respect CARICOM a lot' but dismissed the process as unrepresentative of the needs of the ordinary people and a smokescreen to allow "corrupt politicians" and what he calls "corrupt oligarchs" to continue running the country.

Inclusion

The only way the situation can move on, he insisted, is if the peace process includes him and his gang coalition.

"If the international community comes with a detailed plan where we can sit together and talk, but they do not impose on us what we should decide, I think that the weapons could be lowered," he added.

"We don't believe in killing people and massacring people, we believe in dialogue, we have weapons in our hand and it's with the weapons that we must liberate this country."

Haiti has been paralysed by weeks of violence that has seen whole districts burnt to the ground, tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes, while murder, rape, and gun battles are a daily occurrence.

Port-au-Prince is 80% controlled by the gangs and normal life has virtually stopped.