The US Mercenaries Fighting Haiti’s Deadly Gang War

“Years of political turmoil, corruption and the ascendance of a deadly gang coalition are suffocating Haiti’s capital city. The US and international community have repeatedly tried and failed to help bring order. Now, the remnants of Haiti’s government have rolled the dice with a very different option: a US private security tycoon.” These are the words of Nick Paton Walsh, CNN’s Chief International Security Correspondent, who has just released a groundbreaking report going inside the secretive operation taking on Haiti’s gangs. Today David McCloskey is joined by Nick to dig into his reporting about how the murky world of private security has become a new lifeline for failing states who can’t help themselves. ------------------- Watch Nick's report from Haiti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZpa3UWjQu4 ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: therestisclassified.com/newsletter ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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  Years of political turmoil, corruption, and the ascendance of a deadly gang coalition are suffocating Haiti's capital city. The US and the international community have repeatedly tried and failed to help bring order. Now, the remnants of Haiti's government have rolled the dice with a very different option, a US private security tycoon. These are the words of Nick Paton Walsh, CNN's chief international security correspondent, who has just released a groundbreaking and exceptionally gripping report that goes inside the secretive operation that is now taking on gangs in Haiti. And today, we are very lucky to be joined by Nick

• 1:08Speaker 00

  to dig into his reporting about this murky world of private military companies and security contractors, what's going on in Haiti, and really how this kind of security dynamic and the privatization of this security dynamic is playing out there. But first, a word from our sponsors, HP.

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• 4:35Speaker 00

  Nick, you have reported from some really quite dangerous places over the course of 30 years. I mean, you've covered the hunt and the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. You were inside Syria, a place close to my heart during the civil war there. You're currently wanted by the Russians for your reporting. And so I want to ask you about Haiti. I mean, I think many Americans have absolutely no idea what's actually going on in Haiti. And so I wanted to just ask you, I mean, where did this story come from? Why pick Haiti?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  You're right. For many Americans, Haiti is a place where they're going to want to send people back to, right? The 300,000 people whose temporary protected status has expired or is being fought over in court battles at the moment. But Haiti itself is in this utterly extraordinary moment of decline or post-collapse. I mean, I've never seen anything like it in 25 years of conflict reporting. And the role of private security contractors, namely here, Eric Prince, who many of you, you know, remember better back from the Iraq days, from his former company, Blackwater, is, I think, a stretch by the Haitian government to try and see if something that's not been tried before can do what's not been done before. And so my major passion here was to make sure we told everyone about what's happening in Haiti

• 5:50Speaker 01

  and the extraordinary state of ordinary life there. I mean, like, 10% of the capital city is now not gang-controlled. And we were lucky enough, I think, to be able to do that through showing people, too, the mechanism brought to that fight by Eric Prince.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, one of the very striking things from the videos of your report, many of which I assume were taken by drone, is you can see that much of downtown Port-au-Prince has essentially turned into like an urban forest, where it's so depopulated or sort of destroyed by this violence that it literally looks like, I mean, there are trees that have sprouted up in the buildings and they're just abandoned. I mean, can you help us understand how it's come to this point for the Haitian government? Or even just what is the Haitian government at this point?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the Haitian government at this point is an interim prime minister who's not been through any elections, who's just indefinitely delayed the elections, who's kind of hanging on by a thread ultimately, his predecessor, you know, assassinated. So this is a very messy governmental structure that has made a big reach looking for US private security. The scene you're describing there, David, I mean, that is the thing that still sticks to me. Because when we were driving through downtown Port-au-Prince, right? This is like the flashy area of the downtown and the center of the city, where it used to be bustling shops, restaurants, lifelike at its fullest. This is not only deserted, but the streets are open sewers, where the trash has piled up so high that the vegetation has started to grow roots through it and grow out of it.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  And then the buildings, it's, I don't know if you recall scenes from The Last of Us or Planet of the Apes, the kind of after the apocalypse, this is what happens to a big city and the vegetation takes it back. That was really life right there. And so you're driving down these extraordinary places where the vegetation is the building and there are very few people, but the gang are still hiding out to exercise control. The ground is trash. I remember driving past one like canal in Port-au-Prince and it was just literally like the water had become plastic bottles. All you could see were plastic bottles running up the length of it. And it's a staggering scene simply because that's what happens without the ordinary infrastructure that we often take for granted in life. And it's not there, it hasn't been there.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  And so the sort of, it's like nature has had enough and decided it wants to take it back. And to some degree, it's been successful because there's so much less life there. But the thing that kind of really blew us all away was there are still people who have to use this as their route to work. And so they emerge from areas controlled by the gangs or in this area themselves. And they walk through this extraordinary landscape in single file, en masse, huge numbers of them, hundreds, at dawn when we first saw it and then at dusk when we saw it again. Just to get to the rest of the world, basically, to get food and to get to work. And it's utterly jaw dropping because some of them are bare feet. They're risking gang shots at the gang suppression force who we were travelling with.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  It's a very perilous journey in daylight and forget about it in the dusk.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  Who are the gangs? Can you give us a picture of what the government is up against?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  I mean, there are many of them, right? Over a dozen. And the dozen are kind of delineated by the fact that their leaders barbecue Vitellon, Meccano, various people who may have FBI most wanted sums against their name. And that breaks the gang patchwork down into specific groups like, you know, the Didi's group or Izzo or Barbecue's group. And they all form this patchwork who may have begun potentially in traditional organised crime as like enforcement guys for big business or may have simply been drug dealing, facilities that have kind of morphed into something larger. But they fight with each other a lot. And that's what a lot of the dead and injured comes from is inter-gang clashes. One rises, one falls.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  They briefly got together and tried to suggest that they could be a kind of political alliance that would enter into government and calm this all down. That didn't last very long. But they're also a reflection, I think, too, of what happens in society when something like an earthquake damages things so much that there's a gulf into which something has to step. And that something is the collapse of law and order. And that's what we're seeing. And it's just, it is staggering how they've managed to take so much of the capital.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Nick, at the heart of your report is Eric Prince, of course, this famous slash infamous, you know, former CEO of Blackwater. Before we get into what he's doing in Haiti, could you just set him up a bit? Who is Eric Prince?

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, he is a man from a wealthy US family, involved in manufacturing, and then found himself part of the private security industry growing in the 90s in the United States, but most known for his role in Afghanistan and Iraq, where in the early parts of the US insertion into Afghanistan, you know, there were urgent needs for CIA employees, et cetera, to be protected. Prince's firm, Blackwater, stepped in there and his own books about that, he talks or books that he's, you know, authorised. He talks about how they sort of were able to deploy in a scale and skill and capacity with ex-special forces guys in a way that the US government State Department simply couldn't do. Now, you can tell me, David, whether you agree with that or not, but that's where he began.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  And then when Iraq happened, the US military obviously found itself with an insurgency in a world that it simply had not legislated for. And two, State Department turns to private security, most notably Blackwater, to fill that hole. That's where they emerged. But the notoriety, as critics would say, comes from some key incidents around Fallujah, where they lost a lot of their own guys, but notably Nissar Square, where civilians were shot dead, some assessments being that that was unprovoked. Four of Blackwater's employees were subsequently convicted in federal courts and then later pardoned by President Trump. So a lot of criticism levied at Blackwater for the deaths of civilians in Iraq and for

• 11:59Speaker 01

  how that began to, in the minds of critics, embody the idea of US private security contractors. Very much a new thing in the global war on terror and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that came with that, that how they were acting on huge budgets that were paid for by the taxpayer. And with that did not come the kind of scrutiny and legal oversight that everyone else functioned by, that essentially they had immunity from prosecution and can do what they liked. And that's a lot of where the sort of Eric Prince's history comes from, which he very much rejects and says, I'm a patriot, I stepped in where no one else could. There's no doubt he and a lot of his companies made an awful lot of money out of this too, whether that was spent in overheads, you know, history will know.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  But that's where the man got his kind of notoriety from, much of it, which I think he still feels is deeply undeserved, but certainly for many Iraqis and, you know, many who have viewed the US presence in both those countries, Blackwater became to embody the kind of extremely expensive things that the United States did to protect their people and care less perhaps than they should have about civilian lives in the areas where they were functioning.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Why do you think he wanted to talk to you or was willing to talk to you?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I still don't know that answer.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  But I will say, he comes across, in your report, he comes across, I should say, for people who have some cartoonish view of him as some kind of like maniacal, bloodthirsty villain, he doesn't really come across that way as, as you speak to him. I don't know what he's like in person. I'd be very curious for your take on him, but he comes across, I think, as a kind of no-nonsense but somewhat thoughtful guy who is, you know, pretty articulate about what he's doing. I'm curious what, what your read was on him after spending some time with him.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, this is not an easy guy to get access to. You know, he's not like, just give me a call, I'll be there on Thursday. This took some time. And even there, it took some, you know, wrestling to, to find the moments. And this is a man too, where you point a camera at him, his instinct is to turn his head away. And at some points we're like, Eric, we're here to film you. Could you just, could you just? So no, I mean, look, affable, smart, aware of why he needs to show a network like CNN what it is indeed he is doing, what is happening in Haiti for presumably his own reasons. As I said, you know, hard to get hold of, wary of mainstream media in the past, he's made no secret about that. And so, yeah, obviously, you know, part of me is still scratching my head, why choose

• 14:29Speaker 01

  CNN to, to be the platform? But I think and part of the attraction may have been the audience we reach globally, plus the fact that it shows he's not really shying away from a proper interview or scrutiny, if he goes with us, right? So it was, you know, it was a very interesting time we had to get there, first of all, multiple messages, you know? I mean, I first got in contact with somebody around this a year ago, and I got this random phone call from a French phone number from somebody who said they'd met me in Kabul Airport like 15 years ago and like, great to talk to you again. By the way, I'm doing Eric's, you know, media. I was like, okay, fine. And that sort of continued for many more months until we found ourselves finally together through like a, a meeting in Mayfair.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  But no, I mean, this is somebody who's obviously very suspicious of the mainstream media more broadly, I think, in general, sees the value of explaining to people what indeed he's been doing and he's going to continue doing in Haiti. In person is very direct, not quite the sort of, you know, I think a lot of his critics portray him as some sort of monster, but this is a very personal individual who can be quite funny at times too. So, I mean, I think somebody too, ultimately, who may be looking in this new chapter to try and re-explain himself, like, you know, Blackwater still hangs over him as the thing that even though he didn't pull the trigger in these instances, you know, that still hangs over his kind of public image. And so I think this new project, not only, you know, in Haiti, there's other countries

• 15:56Speaker 01

  too, where he sort of services in, in presence, was talking to us was perhaps a way of trying to fashion a, a new sign of, of what he's up to and what he might want to be about in the future.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, so let's, let's talk a little bit about, I guess, maybe more specifics about what exactly his firm, Vectus Global, is doing in Haiti. What's the, what's the contract and what are they up to day to day as they support the Haitian government?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  I mean, in the simplest, simplest terms, he's being paid money to use drones to kill gang members and to use ex-special forces to lead some of the more tricky operations for the police and then let them in. And there's a whole separate part of that where if there's success, he'll get 10% over a decade of any increased revenue from them shoring up the illegal border crossings and improving customs generation for the Haitian government. But more ultimately, there's a flat fee, which he's absolutely not going to tell me what it is for these services.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Do you have a guess, like, range of what, what that?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  I mean, there's been reports suggesting north of 40 million. You know, I'm told that a lot of that is overheads. So he's not like sort of taking home a big suitcase of cash or anything. It's certainly been in the tens of millions. He describes it as being a sixth of the cost of running the camp of the previous UN presence. You do some basic maths, you're talking tens of millions, 30 million, 40 million probably. But there's something about the fact that he's not just saying, yeah, it's 15 million, cheers, you know? There's something, there's something around that which clearly means there's a desire for part of the parties in that for them not to be a public number.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  They're embedded with the police, they've got ex-special forces, kind of contractors, they've brought this, this drone capability, you know, is, is exceptionally interesting. And it seems, I think it's from your report, I mean, there've been thousands of kamikaze drone strikes that Vectus Global has carried out in Haiti. Is it, is it working and how are those going?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  It's not not working, right? I mean, this is the difficult thing about judging a negative, right? Are we able to see how bad it would have got in Haiti had this not happened? No. Was it exceptionally bad before they intervened? Yes. 90% at least of the capital controlled by gangs. So the rot has definitely stopped and even the UN, right? Who is, you know, doesn't call himself in competition with, but ultimately he's saying the UN can't fix your problems, I can. Give me less money. Even the UN in their most recent report said there'd been signs of progress, that gang expansion had stopped and even been reversed in some key areas of the capital. So that 10% number is probably slightly bigger now where ordinary life can exist in the capital. Is that him? Is that the gang suppression force that's UN-backed?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Is that the police who've got a whole new load of stuff in from foreign donors? No one can tell. But there were 2,000 drone strikes, they say that they did, and they're part of this thing called the task force, which is dozens of guys. I would say probably about 40, 50, if you had to put a guess on it, foreign ex-special forces, Antipodean, I'd guess, Americans possibly. And they're the kind of, you know, the ones on the ground doing the shooting and the house clearing and the front end of it. There's drone operators, there's logistic guys too, but they're able to bring something that Haiti's not had and many countries don't have, which is an armed drone capability against the gangs, which the gangs, when we spoke to them, like, this is having an impact. We can't function in our neighbourhood, we're getting pushed out.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  One gang leader, junior dude, sort of like called Julio, said Eric Prince is the biggest threat. I mean, we're pretty sure he wasn't a placement, you know? He literally sort of said, the big problem is Eric Prince. And we want him to leave so we can make a deal with the cops. So there's clearly an impact being felt. The gangs are taking notice. Can it be sustained at some point? We've seen everywhere, right? You've seen this, you know, eventually the other side learns. And so they learn how to make that threat less threatening or how to do it themselves. They've got their own, seems surveillance drones. So it's not a huge step between that and strapping explosive to it. And then my God, you're into a whole world of wolfness.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  But it's fair to say that there have been changes noticed since the project started. And certainly the gangs have noticed. And then there's the element of civilian casualties too, which is, you know, the people who should not have been hit by these. The UN, if we go through their reports, we can find about 85 deaths that they attribute to the drones, which is a horrific number for the families, but a small, relatively small proportion of the 6,000 people killed or injured since the end of the last year, according to the United Nations. So there's clearly an impact on the ground. Does it win the war, turn the tide? Clearly he wants more time.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wanted to ask what Prince, I presume you put this question to him about the civilian casualties. What's, I mean, what's his response when confronted with that, with that number?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  His response is prepared. And I think he was likely, we do a lot of flights to survey an area before we do a patrol, a raid, anything. We do everything we possibly can to avoid this. Accidents are not impossible, was what he said. And, you know, look, I think most people functioning in conflict zones don't accept that civilian casualties are part of it because that's not how you should behave. But ultimately, I think most military people you run into will at some point acknowledge that this is something that is going to happen when you're chucking high explosive around, however much you may try avoid it. So I'm not making excuses for that, but I think it's one of the other interesting things

• 21:34Speaker 01

  we found when talking to the families of those who died was that about over half blamed the gangs for bringing the drones upon them rather than blamed Prince and his contractors directly. There was a particularly notable incident quite early on in this campaign where eight children were killed. It seems to have been a gang leader's birthday party in September last year, where the drone seems to have landed on, in the wrong place and killed over a dozen at least, including some kids. So horrific early incident like that. And there have been others since. But I would say I had expected a wider preponderance of data around this sort of thing, given the amount of explosive being fired into populated areas. And it may be because it's very hard to work in those areas.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  It may be because the people impacted are reticent to come forwards. Or it may be because drones are more accurate than flinging artillery shells around. We didn't get a massive, a larger picture as perhaps I'd expected.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  One of the things that, that strikes me about the, the strategy is the drones plus the special forces, this task force, when you combine it with the gang suppression force and the new armor coming in from foreign donors. You would expect that all of that would give the Haitian government, the national police, a greater ability to sort of take back turf. But are they able to hold it? Do you have a sense that this kind of these offensive weapons are creating space for the Haitian government to step in and, and keep the gangs from coming back? Or is it too early to tell?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, you hit the nail on the head there. It's the hold part of this that is the problem, as it's always been for the US and Iraq and Afghanistan, right? Wherever, you know, you've worked, it's keeping that territory when the shooting is over. And we've seen it on multiple occasions since, you know, Vectus or the task forces, they're called when they work with the police, go into an area with the police, they kick people out and then the, the hard fighting is done, they pull back and the gangs just wander back in. And in several cases, kill, kidnap, large numbers, the locals in an act of vengeance for whatever they see as their betrayal earlier. That's the big problem. And that's technically what the gang suppression force in the minds of many is for.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  That's supposed to be over 5,000 Chadin Sri Lankans, Mongolians, variety of nations contributing to a more sort of teethy UN force that's supposed to be able to take on the gangs, but also forcibly hold an area. But look, Haiti's big and 5,000 of them isn't even going to cut it. And so the, the job, if it's happened, is going to fall down probably to police who are more immune to corruption, to bits of the gang suppression force, probably to angry locals. And that's also too, I think, where the question of how many gang members do you need to kill to change the equation comes in. Because I think we both know like insurgencies, which is ultimately what the gangs are turning into or kind of are, rebuild, they're never short of recruits.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  This lot are utterly unashamed about using people under the age of 12 as spotters or combatants if needs be. It's a, it's a very tough situation. And so you're, you're ultimately down the line looking for some kind of tipping point where the damage being done militarily makes everyone have a rethink about their decisions. And that's a hard thing to be waiting or relying for.

• 24:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wanted to ask you about the really very disturbing piece of this around the use of children in combat here. I mean, what, when you were on the ground, how did you experience that? What did people tell you?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a, there was a crazy moment where we go into a place called Godé, which is outside of Ken Skoff, where a lot of the fighting and dying and kidnapping and murdering by gangs have been going on over the last month. There's a tiny village called Godé, the gangs have barricaded it, dark trenches around it. And all the locals are like on the road. We're like, who are these people hanging out here during the middle of a gunfight? And it's locals who were desperate to get back into their village and see what's happened. So they rush down and the locals set fire to the barricades, the gangs are put up so the gangs can't use it again. And then there's this very odd moment where the police say, right, everyone out. And we're like, what's going on? They're like, well, because we can't have them stay here because the gangs might come back and kill them all. And then one police officer turns around to us and says, listen, what the gangs do

• 25:49Speaker 01

  is they leave the kids behind with handguns and the olders run off with military or the proper, you know, military weapons, the rifles, et cetera. And they leave the kids behind to kind of take pot shots at the police. And the frequency of which kids pop up, there's some estimations about half gang members are minors. We spoke to two who, I mean, it was just jaw dropping to, with, I mean, we didn't know their real ages, obviously their identities were hidden, but clearly one in single digits, another one pre-teen, girl and boy. And one, the boy described how his job was to kill kidnapees for the gangs. And the girl described how she would have to murder people too for them. If she didn't, she'd get killed herself.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  And then she would often observe the gangs chopping the people up and eating their hearts. So the, the role that these kids play, I think, is a reflection of just how like ingrained and horrific, deep seated the trauma is in Haiti and how many years it's going to take to try and clean that up, even if you manage to stop the immediate kind of hemorrhaging of the violence now.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  What does this look like as seen from Washington? I mean, taking it, I guess, from the, just the muck that we were just describing of, you know, and the, the absolute horror on the ground. I mean, if you kind of zoom out, I mean, and you look at this from the standpoint of the US, you know, ambassador or even more broadly, I mean, what's the sense of, of Haiti now as seen from the US? And maybe in particular, what's, what's the, what's the perspective on Prince and Vectus and their presence there?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know, the US UN ambassador, Mike Walz, has been to Haiti a couple of times vocally supporting the gang suppression force. And it's clear too, that, you know, the Vectus operation is not functioning there without some American government support. They're not paying for it. It's paid for by the Haitian government, but money moves around. And so I think the US is seeing this as a problem which needs to be fixed, not least because logistically landing, well, you know, potentially 300,000 people who've no longer got temporary protective status in the United States, the Haitians there, back in a country with zero law and order is exceptionally hard to do. They can't use the main airport in Port-au-Prince for deportations at the moment, weekly flights that can deliver dozens, maybe a hundred back.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  They get dropped off at Cap-Haiti in the north and then have to make their way home somehow. So if you want to begin deportation on La Masque, you've got to sort Haiti out. And that's a slightly down the line, ambitious concept. But you certainly, if the US government wants to stop the things that cause people continuing to try to flee. It's also a cocaine route, said to be massive source of insecurity, pretty close to the US maritime borders. But I think they view this as. Another potential way of trying to fix this. However, much you know, I often struggle to look for cogency in the Trump administration's behaviour, you know, is this all joined up? Or is this Marco Rubio thinking something's a good idea and the White House not even knowing about it? It's so hard to tell a lot of the time.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  But if there is a strategy here, then it seems, I think, to be to allow the Haitian government to get on with this with an American well-known to the US government, to try and make sure enough money gets to the gang's oppression force, to be sure that they can hold the ground and try something else. Particularly, as I say, at this key time when they want to begin deportations, probably on a larger scale than they're currently doing.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Do you have a sense from, you know, talking with most of the major players and being on the ground there of where the idea to bring in Vectus Global came from? Like, was that, was it a pitch from Prince? Was it somebody in the Trump administration who mentioned it to the Haitians, where the Haitians just think, looking around and saying, we need private military contractors? Like, where did the idea generate?

• 29:36Speaker 01

  You know, I have to be straight with you and say, I do not know what the progeny of this was, but I cannot imagine a situation where this was not Eric Prince suggesting the idea. Because I can't see the Haitian government sitting down in its, you know, very compromised, damaged form, struggling for cash, sitting there going, right, I tell you what, who do we need? And then settling on Eric Prince of all the potential solutions. This is clearly for Eric Prince, an idea that he's had for a while, that can I take my new interest and the world's new interest in this new technology of drones, the guys that I already know, the sort of ex-special forces guys, and all that capability, and bring the private sector in to increase revenue generation, to take on really complex

• 30:21Speaker 01

  security problems, where the UN fails again and again and again? You know, I mean, it's pretty clear, the UN, someone said it's their 15th international mission now that's in Haiti, is not going to fix this anytime immediately soon. I'm sure I'll be proven wrong within seconds of having said that. You know, and he's looking to see where else in the world potentially might be interested in this.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Kind of broadening this out, I mean, one of the, obviously, this dynamic of a private, you know, military company. It's very interesting. I was reading a few months ago, a book called Death is Our Business by a guy named John Lechner, and it's about the Wagner Group specifically. But he makes this broader point, which I think is quite interesting, and it made me, you know, sort of, I was reminded of it as I was watching a report, which is that we've gone through this sort of 400-year period where private military companies have been sort of out of vogue, as the state has gotten stronger and stronger and increasingly had kind of a monopoly on force.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  And we now seem to be going back to a form of warfare that is actually quite common in human history, which is private mercenaries brought in individuals who may not have themselves a vested political interest in what happens, but are, you know, paid financially to participate at the war. We saw it with Wagner. You know, I think you make the point that Prince and Vectus are also, they're active, I believe, in the DRC. There's, you know, UAE-funded Colombian mercenaries in Sudan, I believe. We're kind of returning to an era where this is increasingly common. I mean, how do you see this? A, I mean, A, do you agree with that take?

• 32:05Speaker 00

  And then I guess, I mean, B, what does it mean that we now have, you know, companies like Vectus and people like Prince who seemingly have a lot of, you know, a lot of revenue generating opportunities around the globe?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  I mean, you're right. I think the gap was probably the sort of, the war on terror, I think, meant that the US military did a lot of those jobs too. But still, there was an opening for Blackwater there as well, right? And the sort of private security firms. And probably it's that sort of Arab Spring 2011 to sort of 2021, two, when Wagner popped back up again, that you see things slow down as it begins to also percolate into that against ISIS phase of the war on terror. What does it mean that we're seeing more of them? I think it's a reflection of, not the ubiquity of warfare now, but just how many multiple tiny conflicts there are, brutal and horrific, around the world simultaneously. And I'm not sure if that's like a sea change in how humanity's functioning.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  It may just be because they all feel so much closer and more omnipresent because of, like, these awful things in our hands every single day. I'm holding my phone there for those listening. But I think it's something likely to be a reflection of how governments want to be able to do things that they're not immediately answerable for. I think it's a sign, certainly in some of the places where Wagner and, to a certain degree, beginning Prince, operate, of the lack of potency of some of those governments in failing or failed states, saying we need outside help and having the money to pay for it from whatever means, but not having the time, the infrastructure, or the ability to build their own forces of their own. And certainly with Wagner, you know, they're stepping into countries in the Sahel, facing

• 33:48Speaker 01

  jihadist threats, and, I mean, spectacularly failing them, to protect them in a wider way, but making their own money and protecting sort of the key, most important people in those countries. So I think, yeah, we are in a world where that is growing, where we've got a lot more veterans potentially out there, able to sell their expertise, you know? And I think that is something to come. And combining that with the new era of drone warfare is, I mean, is something that's just startling. I mean, the implications of, you know, what the drone has now done to the battlefield

• 34:30Speaker 01

  are only just being felt across NATO after Ukraine. And what they're going to be able to do for private security companies who can harness that and take it against sort of, you know, poorly armed insurgents or criminal groups is going to be startling.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're right. I mean, you made the point earlier that, I mean, there'll be a reaction to this, obviously, from the gangs. So you wonder how long it will be before they, you know, at a smaller scale, are hitting back with their own, with their own armed drone capabilities. I mean, just to bring it back to Haiti for a second, and the people that you had countered, do you feel that there is a glimmer of hope, where individual humans there, hopeful about the future, cautiously optimistic? What was your sense of how they see the future unspooling for them and their country?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  No, I didn't get really much of a glimmer of optimism, frankly, from anyone. They see deterioration, but I think that's a mindset that is so imbued with just loss and awfulness for a decade plus, that, you know, the tiny little things where the UN says, oh, things aren't quite as bad in the Delman neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince as they were, you know, three years ago. That doesn't cut it if you're living in a really squalid IDP camp in the centre of Port-au-Prince, and your family were just murdered in Censcoff right in front of you a month earlier. You know, the, what people are experiencing in the main city is all having to cram into sort of the Pétionville hillside area so they can get away from the gang influence.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  And that's like a refugee crisis in a city, squeezing everyone together. Food problems, the heat's horrific, basic sanitation, that's what is forefront of people's minds. And as soon as you start changing that, like a suppressor is saying, oh, you know, certain parts of Port-au-Prince are slightly less contested and they won't be, aren't going to cut it. People are certainly aware of the Prince operation. And I was surprised, speaking to one of the main human rights lawyers in Haiti, like, she was like, well, they haven't killed any of the gang leaders yet. And I was like, oh, you're a human rights lawyer? Is that really, really what you should be? Really should be forefront of your mind. But that's the nature of what it is. Like, there's a lot of anger and there's very little sympathy for the gangs at all or those who live under them.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  And people simply want change. And I think that's where the window for the techniques of Vectus and the task force certainly has opened.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  Well, Nick, tremendous to talk to you. I would encourage everyone who is listening or watching this, if they haven't already, to go watch your report on the gangs, Haiti's dread warfare and Vectus Global. It really is an incredibly eye-opening graphic. It really, I mean, quite tragic and sad, but important piece of reporting. So Nick, thank you so much for being with me today.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you for giving time to Haiti and for our reporting. We really appreciate it.

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