Trump Labels Haiti’s Powerful Gangs as Terrorists

The Trump administration designated a powerful alliance of armed gangs in Haiti on Friday to have lunch the country and launched attacks against state institutions as a terrorist group.

It is likely that the measure worsens an already humanitarian and already serious crisis in Haiti, where gangs control much of the country’s economy, including the key access and distribution points, including the main ports and the main roads.

The gang coalition, called Viv Ansanm, which means living together, in Haitian Creole, a promise to protect civilians, but then immediately joined the communities, prisons, hospitals and police forces emerged last year.

The designation of President Trump gives his administration a wide power to impose economic sanctions on the criminal group, and potentially take military measures. But it also allows you to impose sanctions on any person whom the United States batteries to do business with the gang coalition.

If applied, the measure could end all the trade with Haiti, experts say, since Virtualy there are no goods can enter or leave the capital, port prince, without the payment of rates to the gangs.

“Humanitarian access programs would probably cease,” said Jake Johnston, a senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in a publication on social networks. “You cannot enter a community to disperse help without negotiations” with gangs.