--- title: "Bukele Has Declared Total War on Haiti's Gangs" description: "El Salvador's President Bukele has deployed 2,500 troops to Haiti after four Salvadoran military technicians were abducted. What began as a rescue mission has expanded into promises to crush Haiti's gangs entirely. Salvadoran forces now patrol Port-au-Prince, engaging armed groups controlling seventy percent of the capital amid challenging urban terrain." url: https://fronts.co/videos/bukele-has-declared-total-war-on-haitis-gangs.md canonical: https://fronts.co/videos/bukele-has-declared-total-war-on-haitis-gangs/ datePublished: 2026-11-05T20:30:03.000Z dateModified: 2026-11-05T20:30:03.000Z author: - name: Fronts Staff url: https://fronts.co/authors/fronts-team/ publisher: Fronts image: "https://media.fronts.co/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,height=630,fit=cover,gravity=auto,quality=80,format=auto/images/video-library/warfronts-north-central-america-1200.webp" type: NewsArticle language: en access: members isAccessibleForFree: false tokens: 4219 --- When it comes to crushing gangs, there's one name that gets thrown around more than any other. Na'i Bukayli, president of El Salvador and the man behind arguably the most successful, and perhaps the most controversial, gang crackdown in Latin American history. And lately, he's all out of Salvador and gangs to crack down on. Hence why he now seems to be turning his attention to Haiti, a country where four Salvadoran soldiers were abducted last month. So far, Bukayli's answer has seen him deploy a tenth of his country's military to Haiti, and promise to crush the gangs that have kept the Caribbean nation in crisis for years now. In short, what started as a rescue operation has now turned into a promise to free an entire country. But while our Salvador's military is far more sophisticated than Haitian gangs, it's also small, and now staging an intervention in a country that the far bigger American military invaded and occupied three times without ever bringing stability. Bukayli may have crushed El Salvador's gangs. The question now is whether he can really do the same in Haiti. The war begins. Now, when we last checked in on El Salvador's intervention in Haiti, just last week, the former had only just begun to ramp up its military presence from the few hundred soldiers it already had deployed in Haiti as part of an international anti-gang mission. This followed the events of October the 18th, when four Salvadoran military technicians working as part of the UN-authorized gang suppression force were ambushed and abducted. The war had been travelling through Quaid Bukay, just northeast of the capital, Porto Prince, when their armoured vehicle came under attack. Even in a nation as generally lawless as Haiti, this was an especially dangerous area, as much as 70 to 90 percent of the capital and surrounding areas are under gang control, and the international suppression force has so far proved unable to contain them. Within days of the abduction, Salvadoran President Nai Bukayli had ordered hundreds of troops into Haiti threatening to unleash an even greater campaign unless the four technicians were returned alive. And in the week since then, he's made good on that threat. The number of Salvadoran forces in the country has more than doubled, showing that Bukayli is not backing down. At the time of recording, the latest intel puts the figure at roughly 2,500 Salvadoran soldiers on the ground. That's an enormous commitment for a country whose military has just 25,000 or so personnel. It was also an enormous challenge just to get them there. San Salvador doesn't have the transport aircraft necessary to move thousands of soldiers at their equipment across the Caribbean, so it had to rely on outside assistance. The US and Colombia have both lent their own hardware to help with the transport, including seven helicopters. All together, the deployment has plenty to keep it busy too. By October 30, Salvadoran troops had deployed two and were actively patrolling neighborhoods around Porto Prince's international airport, establishing a base near the US embassy, and preparing to push further into gang control territory. But things really escalated on November 2, that day, a group of roughly 10 Salvadoran armored vehicles rolled into the plan to cool to suck an area northeast of Port o Prince close to where the four technicians disappeared. The area is also particularly important to Haiti's gangs, especially the 400 Mo ozo and Shenmishan groups, which have spent years building up control over neighborhoods, roads, and the movement of goods around the capital. It probably goes without saying that the gangs were not too pleased to see the new arrivals, and things got very violent, very fast. Patient outlets reported heavy automatic gunfire across Santo and Qui de Michon, accompanied by explosions from Kamikaze drones and military helicopters flying above. According to several reports, at least 10 suspected members of Sean Michon were killed, although there is no official casualty count. A separate report in Haiti's Le Intedar said that Salvadoran forces had freed 11 women held hostage by the gangs, though it's unclear if that was part of the same mission. Interestingly, though, the gangs don't appear to have put up as much resistance elsewhere. Reporting in more rural parts of Haiti can be difficult to verify, as much as would like, but there's footage going around that shows armored vehicles moving through neighborhoods that the gangs seem to have simply abandoned. Now, of course, there's a big difference between getting gangs to abandon positions temporarily and actually taking control of those neighborhoods, and it's quite possible the gangs will simply roll back in. It's worth noting that despite Bicali going in heavy, this mission is part of the broader international effort to crack down on the gangs in the country, and thus has the cooperation of Haiti's government. In fact, Haitian police have accompanied Bicali's men on several of the patrols, and are reported encountering no armed resistance during one joint search operation. That operation did turn up one important glue, though. They were able to find the Burndale vehicle that had come under attack back in October. The technicians themselves, however, were nowhere to be found. And while we don't want to speculate, things are looking brosy for Bicali's plan to get all four of them back alive, all of which raises the question, what's next for the Salvadoran mission? What's He Up Against? While the Salvadoran troops were busy searching the streets of Quard Bouquet for their missing brothers and arms, things took a wild turn on the diplomatic runt. The twist gave courtesy of none other than Wilson Joseph, the leader of the 400 Moozo gang. Joseph is an especially nasty guy, even by the standards of Haiti's gangs. His group has been responsible for thousands of kidnappings over the years, which has led the US to put an indictment against him with a million dollar reward for information leading to his arrest. So when you think of ways, a guy like that's going to respond to Bicali's crackdown, well, what comes to mind? We'd be willing to bet that a written letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations did not top your list. Nevertheless, that's exactly what he did earlier this week, requesting that an international delegation be sent to Haiti to mediate between his gang and the UN-backed coalition operating in the country. Joseph insisted that he wanted to find a peaceful solution to the ongoing fighting. It's worth noting that this was hardly an 11th hour conversion to pacifism, given that he warned that Bicali's invasion would result in "an escalation of violence and a logic of reprisals of which the Haitian people would be the first victims." So the offer should be taken with a warehouse full of salt. But faux peace offers notwithstanding, Joseph did have something noteworthy to say about the four missing Salvadorans. Speaking to the Associated Press, he claimed that all of them had actually been killed during the original October 18th ambush, which he made sure to clarify, was carried out in territory controlled by Shema Shah rather than his own 400 Moizzo. There's no way to independently verify that claim, of course, and this could just be his way of attempting to get Bicali to focus on some other gang. But whatever actually happened to the four Salvadorans, Joseph's comments are a reminder that the gang's Bicali is up against are anything but your average run-of-the- mill low-life. According to estimates in the Wall Street Journal, Haiti's gangs collectively have as many as 15,000 armed fighters, which is an enormous force considering the size of the Salvadoran deployment. And while these groups aren't operating as a conventional military and rely at least in part on child soldiers, they've also spent years fighting the Haitian police, ambushing international security personnel, and taking over neighborhoods with extreme violence. Their biggest advantage, though, is geography itself. Much reported prints is made up of densely populated neighborhoods that were built informally, resulting in a maze of unmarked roads, settlements, and tiny passageways throughout the city. This sort of urban layout is the stuff of nightmares for any military, with plenty of hidden corners for ambushes and escape routes into which gang members can simply melt away. For the Salvadorans who are complete newcomers to the country and don't even speak the same language as the local population, this is going to be one hell of an operation. And that's where it looks as though things could start to get messy for Bicali. Benjamin Geddon, who leads the Latin American program at the Stimpson Center, warned that there's a real danger of Bicali's forces finding themselves in a Black Hawk Down scenario. For those unfamiliar with the movie, it covers the disastrous U.S. operation in Somalia back in 1993, when American forces attempting to capture militia leaders ended up trapped in an urban battle after two helicopters were shot down. And spoiler alert, it is not a movie to watch if you want patriotic flag waving and a sense that there's no problem Uncle Sam can't handle. Now, that's not to say that the Salvadorans are destined for a similar fate. They have way better equipment than the gangs, along with considerable international support. But the gangs don't necessarily need to defeat Bicali's military in a conventional battle to make the intervention an absolute nightmare. Gorilla Star tactics could be enough to keep the Salvadorans busy for a very long time. Even if Bicali's men managed to overcome these challenges, the gangs have another major advantage. Their connections to Haiti's political and economic establishment. Keep in mind what we said earlier that 70% of the capital is under gang control. You don't get figures like that without also having considerable sway over the country. In many cases, the gangs are deeply connected to Haiti's political and business elite, to the extent that it can be hard to tell whether there's even much of a difference between gang boss and bleeding politician. Never forget, many of the gangs now holding the nation hostage were initially set up by Haiti's 1% to help manage their power. Now, of course, none of this is necessarily a problem if all Bicali wants to do is get back his four missing guys. If the Salvadorans pack up and go home after securing the technicians, or at least their remains, the dangers of a long-term operation in a dense urban environment partially melt away. Increasingly though, it's less and less certain that the technicians' recovery will be enough to satisfy Bicali. In fact, he may be planning a bigger operation regardless. How far will he go? Now, when Bicali first announced that he was sending troops into Haiti, he was quite clear about what his goals were and what it would take to get him to withdraw. He promised that if the gangs handed over the four missing technicians alive, the Salvadoran military would pack up and ship out that very same day. Since then, though, his ambitions appear to have gotten bigger. Just the other day, he published a message in Haitian Creole on X invoking Jean -Jacques De Saline, a one of Haiti's founding fathers, promising to help Haitians reclaim their country from the gangs and those financing them. In case that wasn't clear enough, he wrapped things up with the declaration that Haiti will be free. And shout out to the Iranians who just cringed from a serious case of PTSD over a similar promise made by another leader in the Americas. It probably goes without saying that any operation aimed at crushing Haiti's gangs would be a hell of a lot more ambitious than recovering a few missing soldiers. But that seems to be where things are headed. In fact, El Salvador's foreign minister, Alexandra Hill Tonoco, met with her Haitian counterpart in Madrid the same day as Bicale's message, promising that Sans Salvador would continue supporting Haiti's anti-gang operations for as long as porting prints deemed it necessary. From the perspective of the Haitian government. This isn't a bad thing. Acting Prime Minister Alex Didier-Fulimé has enthusiastically embraced the intervention, presenting it as part of a broader effort to finally regain control of the country. The Haitian government had already announced plans to dramatically expand its security forces, recruiting thousands of additional soldiers and police officers in an effort to finally take on the gangs. But announcing plans to build up the military is one thing, and actually creating a force capable of restoring order. That's a whole different ballgame. Haiti's government has spent years failing to regain control of its own capital despite considerable international assistance and there's little reason to believe that this time is different. And while the Haitian government might be thrilled to have Bicale's support, that still leaves the question of how ordinary Haitians feel about thousands of foreign soldiers deploying to the country. Remember, the electoral term of every single politician in Haiti ended years ago. There's currently no one who could be said to speak democratically for the people, and the people themselves seem to have complicated opinions at best. According to the report that we referenced earlier in the journal, some Haitians have been cautiously optimistic about what the intervention means for their country, expressing hope that the Salvadorans might finally accomplish what their government failed to do. Bicale, true to form, has been sharing videos of locals greeting as soldiers to drive that point time. However, there have been protests against the intervention as well, especially in the areas around the capital where Salvadoran soldiers are operating, so things might not be quite as rosy as Bicale's ex-feed makes them appear. After all, Haitians have living memories of the problems the last UN-led intervention brought, from cholera to rampant civil abuse. But then again, can we even trust the protesters are expressing their own opinions? CNN in Español recently reported that members of a rival gang, the Viv and some, had been threatening to murder residents who failed to show up for the anti-Salvadoran demonstrations. Now we here at Warfronts cannot honestly say we have even the slightest including what Haiti's people really think. It could be that they're all desperate for the Salvadorans to defeat the gangs and set them free. It could be that they're terrified the intervention will bring more death and suffering as the two sides battle it out in densely packed residential areas. Or it could be that they're fed up with outsiders trying to sort out their nation and would prefer everyone to just butt out. Why? Maybe it's a complex, nuanced mix of all three. Who can honestly say? Whatever public sentiment may be though, it is pretty clear that Bicale will determine what happens next. He could bring home most of the troops deployed since October while maintaining an expanded version of the UN-authorized support mission that was already there before. And if the Salvadorans managed to help the Haitian government retake some strategically important territory in the meantime, it'd have something tangible to show for it. Whether Bicale would actually be satisfied with that is another question entirely, especially given how much of his political reputation rests on his success in defeating gangs back home. If he's sincere about his desire to replicate that in Haiti, he's going to lead a lot more than the original 200 guys to get it done. And that raises another possibility. He may decide to escalate, to go all in with the invasion and try to do what multiple American-led and UN-authorized interventions have failed to do. Crush Haiti's gangs once and for all. The prize would be a return to normality for 10 million Haitians, and an end to the instability the country's collapse has been exporting across the Caribbean. But the risks would include El Salvador suffering the same fate as all previous Haitian interventions and getting dragged into a messy, inconclusive quagmire. Obviously, we'd prefer the format. But the fact is that bigger, better equipped militaries have gone into 40 prints before only to discover their victories have been fleeting at best. Is Bicale the man to finally break this cycle? Only time's going to tell. Thank you for watching. [BLANK_AUDIO]