Navigating Economic Complicity and Coerced Survival: A Strategic Analysis of the FTO Designation’s Impact on Haiti’s Private Sector

Executive Summary

The designation of Haiti’s principal gang federations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) by the United States represents a decisive shift in the international response to Haiti’s deteriorating security situation. It also marks a watershed moment in how the Haitian private sector must reconcile its entanglement with violent non-state actors. While this designation aims to cut financial lifelines to armed groups, it also introduces new complexities for Haiti’s economy, which is heavily dependent on imports and dominated by businesses operating within gang-controlled logistics corridors.

This analysis offers a dual perspective. It highlights the complicity of a small but powerful segment of the economic elite that has for years financially empowered armed groups. Simultaneously, it defends the position of the broader private sector, whose members have been coerced into paying extortion under threat of violence. This report outlines the risks of blanket enforcement, identifies the structural inequities embedded in Haiti’s security economy, and proposes a nuanced policy framework to navigate the intersection of counterterrorism and commercial survival.

Introduction

On May 2, 2025, the U.S. Department of State designated two Haitian gang coalitions, Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. These groups have been responsible for hundreds of kidnappings, mass killings, and attacks on national infrastructure, and now control strategic areas of Port-au-Prince and its outskirts. The designation sends a strong signal to international actors and seeks to disrupt the criminal financing networks that sustain these groups.

However, this action also reverberates through the Haitian private sector, where businesses routinely make extortion payments to gangs to avoid violence or commercial shutdown. Some firms have responded with panic, suspending imports or calling for government action. Others have quietly approached foreign embassies for guidance, fearing potential sanctions or loss of insurance coverage. This reaction underscores the embedded nature of gang power in Haiti’s economy and the difficulty in drawing a clean line between complicity and coercion.

Historical Context and Economic Entanglement

Haiti’s economic elite has historically operated in close proximity to political and paramilitary power. During the last two decades, the withdrawal of the state from public security functions enabled a vacuum quickly filled by armed groups. These gangs began imposing tolls on transporters, extorting retailers, and even providing “protection” services in key neighborhoods.

A small number of powerful economic actors leveraged this environment to consolidate control over shipping routes, import monopolies, and real estate holdings. In some instances, payments to gangs were not just protection but strategic investments, used to eliminate competitors, secure warehouse zones, and influence political outcomes. These actors, flushed with capital and legal counsel, continued to expand their operations while violence intensified around them.

At the same time, smaller businesses, often lacking political connections or private security forces, found themselves increasingly vulnerable. These firms paid out of necessity, not design, and often operated under the daily threat of kidnapping or targeted violence. Thus, Haiti’s business landscape evolved into a bifurcated system: one part symbiotic with armed power, and the other hostage to it.

The Structural Inequity of Gang Financing

The financial architecture of gang-controlled commerce is inherently regressive. Fees extracted from importers, distributors, and service providers are rarely absorbed as losses. Instead, these costs are embedded in the price of goods and services, which rise sharply by the time they reach end consumers.

In Haiti, where nearly 60 percent of the population lives in poverty, price increases in fuel, food staples, and transportation are particularly devastating. Each bag of rice, gallon of gasoline, or canister of cooking gas carries within it an informal tax paid to criminal groups. The poor, unable to access bulk discounts or alternative markets, pay more for less while enduring the insecurity that wealthier actors can often avoid through private protection or relocation.

This system also distorts national economic data. Inflationary pressure driven by gang-related extortion is misinterpreted as market scarcity or macroeconomic instability, when in fact it is the symptom of violence being monetized across the supply chain.

The Illusion of Shortage and Tactical Scarcity

In the weeks following the FTO designation, major players in Haiti’s import and logistics sectors began signaling a potential halt in operations. Though framed as concern over legal exposure, many of these warnings reflect a deeper attempt to weaponize scarcity for political influence. By suspending fuel and food imports, actors can apply pressure on both the Haitian government and international allies to take action against the gangs—or to loosen enforcement.

This maneuver carries substantial risk. Haiti’s population is highly sensitive to perceived shortages. Any disruption to fuel or food supplies can provoke panic buying, which quickly spirals into actual scarcity. Already-fragile supply chains buckle under the weight of speculation, hoarding, and black-market arbitrage. The result is civil unrest, looting, and a broader breakdown of public order.

Such manufactured crises have been used in the past to trigger political transitions. However, this time the international environment has shifted. With criminal groups now categorized as terrorists, the line between economic protest and terrorism financing has narrowed, raising the stakes of using scarcity as leverage.

Counterpoint: Extortion, Survival, and Operational Coercion

While some in the business elite have profited from their proximity to armed groups, the majority of Haiti’s private sector operates under extreme duress. These include small family-owned importers, fuel distributors, warehouse operators, and transport cooperatives. For these actors, failure to pay extortion demands is not a moral stand, it is a death sentence or a business-ending act.

These coercive dynamics are not unique to Haiti. In multiple conflict zones, international legal standards have recognized that businesses operating under credible threat of violence cannot reasonably be held to the same legal standard as those who voluntarily provide support. The key legal distinction lies in the presence or absence of intent and coordination.

Applying this distinction to Haiti is essential. Without it, the international community risks criminalizing survival and undermining the very market actors that hold the national economy together.

Systemic Vulnerability and the Risk of Misapplied Enforcement

Haiti is one of the most import-dependent countries in the Western Hemisphere. Virtually all food, medicine, fuel, and construction materials are imported by sea and then moved overland through corridors now partially or wholly controlled by armed groups.

Insurance providers, particularly maritime underwriters, have raised concerns that the FTO designation could trigger terrorism exclusions. If this interpretation holds, Haitian importers will be unable to ensure their cargo, effectively cutting off the country’s access to critical goods. This would not just trigger an economic recession, it would produce a humanitarian catastrophe.

Telecommunications companies, which rely on daily diesel deliveries to keep their towers operational, are already warning of blackouts if movement through gang-controlled areas is disrupted. The collapse of the digital communications network would severely impair coordination between emergency responders, private sector actors, and international organizations.

MSS Deployment and the Missed Opportunity for Strategic Corridor Control

The Multinational Security Support Mission was designed to stabilize Haiti’s security environment and assist the Haitian National Police in reclaiming territory from armed groups. Its first priority, as laid out in operational planning, was the reopening of the country’s main humanitarian corridors—Route Nationale Number One and Route Nationale Number Two—and securing port access in Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien.

This mission originally called for the deployment of more than five thousand personnel. However, fewer than one thousand have arrived, primarily from Kenya, the Bahamas, and several Central American nations. With limited resources, the MSS has been relegated to augmentation roles, providing backup for HNP operations rather than leading comprehensive corridor reclamation efforts.

This failure to achieve initial objectives has had significant ripple effects. Without secure trade routes, the private sector remains exposed. Extortion remains necessary, and international sanctions loom over those who pay.

Recommendations: Toward a Layered and Nuanced Policy Response

A blunt application of FTO enforcement is likely to cause more harm than good. The following policy recommendations are offered to create a more measured and strategic response:

Differentiated Legal Frameworks: International actors should differentiate between coerced survival payments and deliberate gang financing. This distinction should guide enforcement priorities and sanctions regimes.

Secure Humanitarian Corridors: MSS, in partnership with HNP, must prioritize the immediate and sustained security of Route Nationale Number One and Route Nationale Number Two. Corridor control should be the foundational metric of MSS success.

Private Sector Compliance Channels: U.S. and international missions should establish confidential self-reporting and compliance pathways for businesses that believe they are at legal risk due to coercion.

Insurance Sector Diplomacy: U.S. Treasury and allied finance ministries should engage maritime and supply-chain insurers to prevent blanket terrorism exclusions from applying to Haitian shipments under threat-based coercion.

Targeted Financial Disruption: Sanctions and asset freezes should be focused on individuals and entities with documented patterns of gang collaboration, using intelligence-led investigations rather than public reputation or anecdotal evidence.

Commercial Continuity Planning: Identify and empower vetted private sector entities to support continuity of critical goods and services, especially in the telecommunications, medical, and fuel sectors.

Conclusion

The FTO designation marks a decisive step in the global response to Haiti’s security crisis. However, its impact will depend entirely on how precisely it is implemented. A policy that does not distinguish between corrupt enablers and extorted survivors will risk collapsing the commercial backbone of the country. Conversely, a nuanced, intelligence-driven enforcement regime can cripple gang financing while empowering legitimate business stakeholders to help rebuild the country’s fragile economic infrastructure.

Haiti’s crisis is not only a failure of security, but also a failure of governance and economic justice. It demands policy responses that are just as multifaceted as the crisis itself. Precision, partnership, and protection must define the path forward.

Note: This analysis is based on information available as of May 2025 and aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current situation. Ongoing developments may necessitate further updates.