Haïti's Viv Ansanm Revolution The Middle-Game and the Path to Victory

By W. Bernell Brooks III, The Vesey Republic, July 17, 2026

 

Introduction - The Viv Ansanm Revolution - From Street Gangs "For Hire" to a Powerful Non-State Actor    

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February 29, 2026 marked the 2nd Anniversary of Haïti's Viv Ansanm (Living Together) Revolution. 

 

Over the past two years, Viv Ansanm has emerged as a powerful non-state actor. Their heavily armed coalition of youth-led militias now controls Haïti's capital, Port-au-Prince, and central Haïti, where they have created a shadow state in one-third of the country.

 

Viv Ansanm's leader is Jimmy Barbeque Chérizier, a former police officer-turned modern-day Charlemagne Péralte​ who never leaves home without his Alpha-AK-47 and a loaded banana clip. Chérizier describes Viv Ansanm as,

 

"an organization of nationalists, focused on the country and the ghetto, who united to dismantle a number of vagabonds and gangs that politicians use to harm the ghettos each time they seek to take power. We’re not in a peaceful revolution. We are making a bloody revolution in the country because this system is an apartheid system, a wicked system. The first step is to overthrow Ariel Henry, and then we will start the real fight against the current system, the system of corrupt oligarchs and corrupt traditional politicians."  ​

 

On February 29, 2024, Viv Ansanm's paramilitary forces surged out of Port-au-Prince. They attacked 30 police stations and sacked the National Police Academy. The gates of Haiti's two largest prisons were breached, and 3,800 inmates were freed. Viv Ansanm laid siege to the government's National Palace, the Port-au-Prince seaport, and the Toussaint Louverture International Airport. Demanding the corrupt U.S.-backed dictator Ariel Henry resign, Viv Ansanm surrounded the airport to prevent his return to the country. Within 60 days, Ariel Henry was deposed as Prime Minister, and Haïti's one-man, U.S.-backed despotic government collapsed. 

 

Joe Biden, the senile ethnic-cleanser of the Palestinians, responded to Viv Ansanm's insurgency by strong-arming the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to create a puppet nine-member Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) to govern Haïti for two years. He also forced the TPC to accept an illegal occupation force of 1,000 Kenyan mercenaries to liquidate Viv Ansanm. The U.S. Congress never approved new appropriations for the mercenary Haiti Multinational Security Support mission (MSS). Biden bypassed Congress and drew down $370 million of emergency defense and foreign assistance funds. Nor was Biden's mercenary army authorized by the United Nations; it was "approved" by a resolution.      

 

As the Vesey Republic predicted in March 2024, the Biden-CARICOM Transitional Presidential Council (TCP) was a corrupt and incompetent governance body. Approval of the illegal UN occupation of Kenyan mercenaries was a requirement to serve on the council.

 

The Kenyan mercenaries failed to "restore order" or neutralize Viv Ansanm.  Quite the opposite: Viv Ansanm's ranks expanded during the occupation; so did their control of critical roads leading to the border crossing with the Dominican Republic. The defeated Kenyan mercenaries departed for Africa on April 28, 2026. 

 

Enter the second American dementia-ridden ethnic cleanser: Nero Germanicus, who vowed to turn Gaza into a luxury beachfront Riviera, and  "bomb Iran into the Stone Age​."  He's done neither. 

 

​On April 1, 2026, America's Fourth Rome regime commenced its fifth foreign invasion of Haïti since 1915. Headed by Major General Erdenebat Batsuuri of Mongolia, the first 800 troops of the proposed 5,500 illegal mercenary United Nations Gang Suppression Force (GSF) arrived in Haïti from Chad, Guatemala, and El Salvador. 

 

Nero's legions combine a planned enlargement of the Haïtian National Police force (HNP), the FAd’H (Haiti's Army), and Vectus Global, a private American firm security run by Erik Prince, former founder of Blackwater Inc. In 2014, four Blackwater employees were convicted of unlawfully killing 14 unarmed civilians while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy in Baghdad. The killers were pardoned by guess who: Nero Germanicus. For the second time in as many years, the new machinery of dispensing mass death has been assembled and plussed-up in Haïti to annihilate Viv Ansanm. 

 

At the top of the Fourth Rome's kill list is the assassination of Viv Ansanm leader Jimmy Barbeque Cherizier. This far-reaching counterinsurgency war against the Haïtian people to reclaim the island with the highest poverty rate in the Western Hemisphere is backed by  Canada, the UK, France, the United Nations, and the CARICOM Community. In short, Haïti's 12 million people continue to confront an illegal international military occupation. 

 

Nero's escalating military, legal, political, and propaganda campaign to reestablish the rule of pro-U.S. Haïtian oligarchs is predicated on three components of its matrix of domination: mass intimidation, lethal violence, and promoting the myth that the U.S. and its Western allies want to create a democracy in Haïti. Any semblance of democracy is the last thing they want.

Viv Ansanm's goal is to create a populist-democratic power-sharing arrangement among political parties, civic organizations, and grassroots groups to raise a new Haitian republic. To end two centuries of U.S. and European imperialist domination and military intervention, in league with Haïti's traitorous predatory oligarchs, Viv Ansanm has unapologetically embarked on an armed revolution as the path to power. Overthrowing  Haïti's oligarchic state and defeating the military intervention forces of the Fourth Rome is its currency. 

 

Viv Ansanm has won the opening phase of its Nouvo Revolisyon Nasyonalis (New Nationalist Revolution). They consolidated and expanded their ranks and geographic control to the Artibonite, West, and Centre departments. Viv Ansanm also repelled and discredited Biden's UN Kenyan mercenary army, and exposed the Transitional Presidency Council as a clique of toadies and an abject failure as a political alternative. 

 

However, the revolution has now entered a new stage: the middle game. In this new phase, Viv Ansanm will have to make adjustments and devise new strategies to survive Nero's escalating military and legal offensive. More importantly, Viv Ansamn must begin to engage in the politics of persuasion at a new level to establish support among political parties, civic groups, NGO's, and community organizations.

 

America's Fourth Rome Offensive to Liquidate Viv Ansanm   

It should come as no surprise that the despot who called Haïti "a shithole country in 2018 is ramping up a counterinsurgency war to eradicate Viv Ansanm. And while Nero Germanicus makes incessant threats about invading Greenland, bombing Iran into the Stone Age, and replacing Cuba's government, he is remarkably quiet about the carnage the U.S. is and will visit on Haiti in the coming days. Under the directives of the Western Hemisphere's Colonial Governor Marco Rubio, the following actions have been set in motion to brutalize and then pacify Haïti:

  • Coerced the United Nations to create a new Gang Suppression Force (GSF) in September 2025. The GSF was created as a thirteen-country, 5,550-man force with a 12-month mandate that includes intelligence gathering, arrest powers, securing critical infrastructure, and rules of engagement to dismantle armed gangs. The GSF portfolio far exceeds the Kenyan MSS mission's 1,000-man force, which was primarily a support and training unit for the corrupt Haïtian Police Department. The GSF has the authority to take action and engage in military operations outside the Fils-Aimé government's chain of command. 

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  • In May 2025, the New York Times reported that private security executive Erik Prince of Vectus Global signed a contract with Haïti's Transitional President Council. Under the 10-year contract, Vectus Global has deployed 200 international contractors to supplement the Haitian National Police with drones and helicopters to target gang-controlled territory. Vectus quadcopter drones strapped with explosives have been used in densely populated areas of Haïti.

 

Vectus Global secretly began military counterinsurgency drone strikes in March 2025. Prime Minister Fils-Aimé did not acknowledge Haïti's contract for services with Vectus Global, signed with the TCP before the council's dissolution in February 2026. 

 

The Haitian Times reported on March 11, 2026, that, "Over a 10-month period...nearly 1,250 people have been killed, including 17 children, with no clear links to criminal groups." Among the dead in the attacks carried out between March 2025 and January 2026 by Haïtian security forces and Prince’s Vectus Globe was Jimmy Cherzier, whose home was bombed on January 16, 2026. Very much alive, Cherizier posted a video the same night after the drone attack.

 

The attempted assassination of Cherizier raises two important issues. First, it's not clear what will happen if Cherizier is assassinated. Nero Germanicus and Netanyahu assassinated Iran's Supreme Leader and upper-echelon military officials on the first day of the February 28 Martyrs War. They assumed Iran's vertical hierarchical structure would automatically collapse. Instead, Ayatollah Khamenei's more radical son, who was closer to IGRC hardliners than most clerics, came to power.

 

Cherizier has always been open to negotiations with the government. He may be the only militia leader with the gravitas to broadly influence Haïti's paramilitary forces to pause the fighting. Erik Prince wants to kill Cherizier or kidnap him and spirit him away to a U.S. prison. He doesn't give a damn about the internal politics of Haïti. Does PM Fils-Aimé really think it's wise to have a foreign white mercenary like Prince perform a cowardly act of digital drone execution of Cherizier? The ten-year contract with Vectus Global suggests that for the foreseeable future, Haïti will have an ongoing electronic assassination program to eliminate "enemies of the state" without due process of law controlled by a foreign country. Moreover, Fils-Aimé has opened a door that invites serious peril. If he is going to green light drone attacks on Haïti's citizens, he should not be surprised if Viv Ansanm acquires its own drones on the Black market and reciprocates.    

 

Second, drone strikes are not quite the equivalent of bombing strikes, but the military and political effect is much the same. No country has ever won a war with a bombing campaign. Conquering or reclaiming territory requires a commitment of ground forces, which is why Fils-Aimé and the GSF are ramping up their security forces.  

 

But drone strikes like carpet bombing populations also create another dynamic; it intensifies the outrage and determination of those being bombed to fight back even harder and not surrender. Mass outrage at the Vectus Global drone strikes is growing as the Fils-Aimé government, the United Nations, and Western journalists are manipulating the numbers of civilian and "gang member" deaths in a despicable cover-up.    

 

As reported by haitiliberte.com, BINUH (United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti) has produced four quarterly reports since the explosive drone campaign began. In their fourth quarterly report, BINUH claimed almost 6,000 Haitians have been killed by generalized violence in 2025. The report conceded that the vast majority of deaths were not caused by “gang violence.” Instead, PNH, government-allied paramilitary groups (“brigades”), and Vectus Global mercenaries account for 68% of the deaths, according to BINUH. This includes PNH officers carrying out at least 58 summary executions.

 

The haitiliberte.com article goes on to say,

 

"On March 10, 2026, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that under the guidance of Erik Prince’s Vectus Global mercenaries, at least 1,243 Haitians were killed between Mar. 1, 2025 (when the program began) and Jan. 21, 2026. HRW also stated that “at least 43 adults were reportedly not members of criminal groups, and 17 children.” ​This phrasing could lead one to believe that the remaining 1,183 Haitians (according to their count) killed by drones were Viv Ansanm members, or what the report calls “criminal groups.”

​However, senior HRW researcher Nathalye Cotrino clarified in an interview that, for the remaining 1,183 Haitian victims, HRW was “not able to verify whether [they] were affiliated with criminal groups or not.” ​This clarification presumably also applies to HRW’s assertion that “the drone strikes injured 738 people, at least 49 of whom were reportedly not members of criminal groups.”

 

If we are looking at a scandalous cover-up of a privatized security firm inflicting mass lethal drone strikes on the civilian population, one has to ask, where in the hell is the Black press in the U.S.?  Largely absent, we would say. Where is the Congressional Black Caucus?

 

On July 21, 2026,  Representative Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY), the ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, delivered an opening statement that supported the Gang Suppression Force (GSF) and did not mention Eric Prince's Vector Global drone strikes once.  

 

Furthermore, with all the guns, tanks, helicopters, drones, and mercenary soldiers flooding into Haïti, the hypocrisy of the Homeland Security Department's determination that "Haiti no longer meets the conditions for Temporary Protected Status is quite stunning. On que, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executive decisions to end TPS are not subject to judicial review. Thus, 350,000 Haïtians, many of whom have been living and working in the United States for years, are suddenly facing deportation as of July 27, 2026. They could well be thrust back into Haïti and the middle of an unfolding civil war.  


​On July 10, 2026, the State Department's Travel Advisory warned: "Do Not Travel to Haïti due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care." How, then, is it possible that the Homeland Security Department deemed Haïti a stable country safe enough for 350,000 people to return?

Viv Ansanm's Middle Game - Mosaic Defense & the Politics of Persuasion  

 

Viv Ansanm's success in Phase 1 of the revolution in building and expanding its influence thrived on waging asymmetric warfare. Surprise attacks, hit-and-run tactics, building a subterranean network of informers and spies, securing arms from illicit trade networks, and raising money on the internet were the stock-in-trade of its enterprise.  

 

Phase 2, the long Middle Game, has three distinct features that will require alternative strategies and tactics. 

 

Mosaic Defense and Asymmetric Warfare

 

  • ​From a military standpoint, to combat the combined buildup of the UN Gang Suppression Force, the HNP, FAd’H, and Vectus Global, Vis Ansamn may need to adopt a more decentralized Mosaic Defense structure similar to Iran's IGRC. The GSF is concentrating its forces to take back neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince and attack paramilitary units across the city with larger forces, armored vehicles, helicopters, and drone strikes. Thus, Viv Ansanm may need to disperse its forces to areas well beyond the capital and build new networks that help struggling communities, rather than abuse them. The weakness of the HNP and the FAd’H is their insufficient numbers to police Port-au-Prince, protect vital infrastructure such as ports, airports, and power grids, ensure safe passage on Haïti's roads, and patrol maritime spaces to interdict the weapons and narcotics trade, particularly with Florida. Smuggling and redistributing food, fuel, and goods for everyday use by the Commons will build much better relations for Viv Ansanm instead of weapons. 

 

        By building a decentralized Mosaic leadership and operations structure         Viv Ansanm can stretch out and stress GSF forces across the country,             establish new networks to move goods and services, develop new                   relations with the Commons, and protect its leadership from constant           close-quarter attack.

 

       The most important principle driving a Mosaic Defense strategy is that           Viv Ansanm does not have to militarily defeat the second GSF invasion           force; they just have to outlast it until Haïti occupation fatigue sets in;             and it will. As with the Iranian Martyrs' War, if Chérizier is assassinated,           a leadership succession plan needs to kick in immediately, and                         decentralized leaders must take responsibility for the ten departments           and their arrondissements. In the meantime, Viv Ansamn needs to                 improve its customer service skills; start making friends and providing           goods and services to the people.  

 

Civic Engagement and the Politics of Persuasion   

         

Fanon Internationale' predicts that 2026 will be a year of extraordinary bloodletting in Haïti unless a dramatic political intervention occurs to pause the spiraling cycle of violence. Such an intervention to reduce or temporarily halt the violence may be achieved if Viv Ansanm or its supporters seriously pursue a political track.

 

The greatest weakness in the Fourth Rome's counterinsurgency war is that Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé's government is an autocracy. Fils-Aimé is not accountable to Haïti's president or elected parliament because those institutions have been vacated, as has the Supreme Court for the most part. There is not one elected official serving in Haïti today. Fils-Aimé and the GSF project would prefer to keep it that way to ensure minimum pushback while they attempt to bury Viv Ansanm in blood.

 

The Fils-Aimé government's strategic weakness in Fanon Internationale's estimation will be exacerbated by the U.S's preoccupation with its three priorities:

 

  • Disrupting the gangs' access to U.S. sourced weapons and narcotics
  • Strengthening Haiti’s border and maritime security capabilities with investments in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technologies.
  • Working with the United Nations to strengthen coordination and training of new Haitian National Police recruits.  

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Our guess is that they will ignore the political dynamics and try to delay the elections as long as possible. In doing so, the unintended consequence will be weakening the Fils-Aimé regime. 

 

Haiti hasn't held elections in ten years. The middle classes, civic groups, political parties, NGO's, and the Commons are demanding that the first round of elections scheduled for December 13, 2026, and the second round on February 21, 2027, be held. That's unlikely to happen, even though $120 million has been set aside for the Provisional Electoral Council.  

 

On January 2, 2025,  Jimmy Chérizier announced that Viv Ansanm was forming a political party. Opinions differed within the Transitional Presidential Council, with some members apparently expressing support for Viv Ansanm's political integration in the electoral process. Others like Leslie Voltaire were adamantly opposed. When the Colonial Governor of the Western Hemisphere, Marco Rubio, designated Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif “Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” both organizations were barred from participating as political parties in the electoral process.    

 

Nevertheless, individuals who support the following political positions could help pause or derail the spiraling trajectory toward a full-spectrum civil war.  Furthermore, nothing prevents Viv Ansanm or its supporters from advocating an agenda to influence Haïti's political parties and civil society. Viv Ansanm should and must engage in public policy advocacy.

 

An Intervention Agenda

 

The following five points are positions that can win broad support, allow Viv Ansanm additional political maneuvering room, and put Prime Minister Fils-Aimé on the defensive. 

 

  • Initiate a cease fire between Viv Ansanm, the government of Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, and the U.N. Gang Suppression Force to open a discussion on reconciliation, political reintegration, amnesty, and the upcoming national elections. 

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  • Demand public disclosure of the amount and terms of the 10-year Transitional Presidential Council (TCP) contract with American Erik Prince's Vectus Global firm. A secret 10-year contract with a foreign firm authorized to kill Haïtians in military operations independent of government approval is an outrage and violates Haïti's constitution. That the TCP signed a 10-year contract with a business owner whose previous private security firm's employees were convicted on manslaughter and murder charges for killing 17 Iraqi civilians is unconscionable and a profound breach of the public trust.

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  •  Pursue immediate action to terminate the TPA contract with Vectus   Global. 

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  •  Freeze additional foreign troop deployments to Haiti by the UN Gang   Suppression Force to convene ceasefire discussions and negotiations.

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  •  Rescind the standing order to assassinate Jimmy Barbecue Cherizier.   On January 16, 2026, Cherizier's homes were bombed in a drone   attack. Cherizier has not been convicted of any crime in Haïti. He was   charged on July 19, 2024, with illegal possession of firearms, murder,   attempted murder, armed robbery, arson, kidnapping, false   imprisonment and criminal association in connection with the   massacre of 71 people in 2018 in the LaSaline neighborhood of Port-   au-Prince. Cherizier insists that he was not present at the scene of the   massacre, and he has never gone to trial. Why, then, is Prime Minister   Alix Didier Fils-Aimé allowing a foreign private security firm to try and   assassinate Cherizier? The attempted killing of Cherizier looks and   smells like a "stitch-up." Cherizier has also been indicted by U.S.   authorities for conspiring to send U.S. funds to finance his "gang"   activities in Haiti under the International Emergency Economic Powers   Act (IEEPA).   Prime  Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé should publicly   announce that if Cherizier is arrested in Haïti, he will not be extradited   to the   United States but will receive a fair trial in Haiti for any   indictments   issued against him. Haïti has just inaugurated two new   special courts  to prosecute complex crimes--— one for complex   financial crimes (including corruption and money laundering), and   another for mass crimes (including arms trafficking, organ trafficking,   and sexual  violence. Put Cherizier and the other high-ranking     government officials and policemen on trial and let the world see if     Haïti can dispense impartial justice or if it is just another rogue regime   of lackeys and assassins. If Cherizier cannot be apprehended,   adjudicate the case in absentia. Let us see the evidence and the   witnesses under cross-examination. And for good measure, how about   charging and bringing persons of interest to trial for the execution   of President Moise in 2021, instead of pretending the fake trials in   Miami in May provided a modicum of justice?    

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Currently, there is no indication that Viv Ansanm, its allies, and other independent youth militias are prepared to put down their weapons or cede territory they've gained.

 

Similarly, the proposed larger 5,500 GSF mercenary force, the planned expansion of the Haitian National Police to 4,000 officers by the end of 2027, and the FAd’H's (Haïtian Army) rolling training classes to scale up to 3,000 troops by the end of 2026, demonstrate that Haiti's state is militarizing at an unprecedented pace. Events are careening toward cataclysmic social violence and chaos. No one seems to be able to pump the brakes.  

 

Unless a group of personalities with cooler heads and a measure of credibility can intervene to slow down Haïti's climb up the escalation ladder, the confluence of events is barreling toward full-spectrum civil war. The call for a pause and discourse could come from anyone: Wycliffe Jean, Naomi Osaka, Dominique Dupuy, or Pope Leo XIV, if that's what it takes. An urgent intervention is needed. 

 

The 316 political parties approved by the Provisional Electoral Council to participate in the upcoming elections, and the 90 faith-based, humanitarian, peace-building, and non-profit organizations that signed a letter in 2022 to Joe Biden rejecting military intervention in Haiti, have a critical decision to make.

 

Whenever the elections occur, if there is no attempt to invite Viv Ansanm and other youth militias to engage in preliminary talks regarding reconciliation, reintegration, and asylum, the militias will have no choice but to fight to the death. They are being subjected to lethal drone attacks anyway without any legal due process. What do they have to lose? 

 

At the most base and opportunistic level, clever politicians and civic groups would advocate for Viv Ansanm's inclusion, reintegration, and amnesty, as well as rail against Vectus Global's drone program if for no other reason than to strengthen their own bargaining position with the autocrat Fils-Amie and Nero's aggressive extermination campaign.    

 

Concluding Remarks  

 

Many question whether Viv Ansanm is a revolutionary movement whose goal of overthrowing Haiti's oligarchs and America's bloc of Western imperialists is being done to serve the interests of Haiti's people.

 

Fanon Internationale believes Jimmy Barbeque Cherizier and the G-9 core group that initiated Viv Ansanm by merging with G-Pep in 2024 are genuine anti-imperialist revolutionary nationalists. 

 

Viv Ansanm's broad church coalition, however, is a confection of predominantly youth-led militia groups with varying motivations. Without a doubt, some groups are engaged in nefarious, extractive, and criminal enterprises that victimize the masses, but revolutionary struggles are not pristine events.

 

For some groups, bandwagoning with Viv Ansanm is a collective security issue; their chances of surviving attacks by the state are enhanced by aligning their groups with Cherizier.  At the end of the day, Viv Ansanm militias are fighting against Haiti's oligarchs who were, in many cases, their former bosses. They are risking their lives going up against the mercenary Gang Suppression Force, Vectus Global, and the Haitian police and army, who are the enemies of the people. 

 

If Viv Ansanm survives, some factions will reform, some will splinter and fight for their own groups, and some will disappear. The decisive factor is leadership. Despite all the lies, invective, and propaganda aimed at portraying Cherizier as a villain and Viv Ansanm as a terrorist organization, Fanon Internationale's assessment is that Cherizier is an exceptional organic nationalist leader of a movement lacking a strong cadre of revolutionary intellectuals. 

 

In 2021, immediately following President Jovenel Moise's assassination, the Vesey Republic broached the question of Cherizier as a potential revolutionary leader in this passage: 

 

​​​"Today, New Black Nationalists urge the people of Haiti to take control of Port-Au'-Prince and establish a provisional governing structure. We call on the people of Port-Au'-Prince to defy emergency rule, flood the streets, and remain there until the government resigns. The police will not commit mass genocide against its people. Nor is there a commanding figure in Haiti's government that can compel them to do so: not Mathias Pierre, not Ariel Henry, not Claude Joseph, and not Joseph Lambert.

 

There are rumors that Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier and the “Revolutionary Forces of the G-9 Family and Allies” are calling for a "people's revolution." Mr.Chérizier, the ex-policeman and "reputed gang leader," may have a checkered background. He may not be another Toussaint Louverture, but could a people's coalition government include a role for the G-9 Family?"

 

Five years later, the Cherizier and the G-9 question has been answered on the streets of Haiti; the endgame has yet to be determined.

 

Posted Sept. 1, 2026