Can Bukele Beat Haiti’s Gangs?
This video examines the October 18, 2026 ambush of a UN-backed convoy outside Port-au-Prince, where gangs attacked with explosives and fire a vehicle carrying four Salvadoran airmen. The airmen escaped the burning vehicle and then disappeared. Three days later, President Nayib Bukele addressed Haitian gang leaders in Haitian Creole. He stated that El Salvador had finished with its own gangs and could do the same in Haiti, then deployed Salvadoran special forces on a journey of nearly 1,900 kilometers. The attack occurred in Croix-des-Bouquets, a red zone controlled by the Chen Méchan and 400 Mawozo gangs, and no group has claimed responsibility. After a Salvadoran helicopter searching the area came under fire, the force and Haitian police returned fire from the air, reporting at least seven gang members killed and four personnel wounded. Gangs now control roughly 90 percent of Port-au-Prince under the Viv Ansanm coalition, which the US has designated a foreign terrorist organization, and roughly 1.4 million Haitians have been displaced. The UN authorized a Gang Suppression Force of 5,500 troops, but only 1,500 to 2,000 were on the ground at the time of the ambush.
El Salvador’s State of Exception has run for more than four years, with over 90,000 arrests, a mega-prison built to hold 40,000, and 82 murders recorded in 2023, though human rights groups report thousands held without trial and Bukele acknowledged that 8,000 detainees were innocent. In 2021, the US Treasury sanctioned two Salvadoran officials for secret prison meetings with gang leaders to pay them to keep murder counts down. As of October 23, 2026, the four Salvadorans remain missing, and El Salvador’s Congress has extended the mission to October 2027. Haiti’s crisis has developed into a criminal insurgency in which armed groups exercise territorial control and systems of criminal governance. If El Salvador’s best soldiers cannot retrieve four of their own, the prospects for taking back the city from the gangs remain grim.
