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Abstract
Haiti is experiencing the most severe security collapse in its modern history with gangs consolidating territorial control, degrading state authority, and evolving into what Max G. Manwaring defines as “third-generation gangs,” criminal-insurgent hybrids that challenge the state’s monopoly on force. As of September 2025, armed groups control approximately 85 percent of Port-au-Prince, govern critical routes in Artibonite and Centre, regulate economic life through taxation and extortion, and conduct coordinated military-style assaults against state institutions.1 The result is a de facto criminal state within the state. Haiti’s instability now represents an acute threat to regional security, migration management, and U.S. strategic interests in the Caribbean. The crisis exemplifies an irregular warfare environment in which nonstate actors contest the state’s legitimacy through armed coercion, economic predation, and information manipulation—blurring the line between criminality and insurgency.
This report concludes that Haiti is not facing a conventional crime problem but an entrenched insurgency. The country sits at a tipping point: Without rapid, coordinated, and adequately funded international action, Haiti risks fully transitioning into a criminally governed state with profound regional consequences. To reverse this trajectory, the report offers a tiered set of near-term, medium-term, and long-term policy recommendations for the U.S. interagency, regional partners, and the incoming GSF.