El Salvador's Military Push in Haiti Raises Questions About Bukele's Motives

Haiti has been mired in crisis since 2018, battered by mass protests, the assassination of a president and gang violence that has brought the country to its knees. This week, however, Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime pointed to what he called a significant victory against the gangs, crediting "the commitment of the Salvadorean forces in the fight against gangs."

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said a joint task force between the two countries had "destroyed" what he described as "the house of Lanmo San Jou and the 400 Mawozo gang's headquarters." He also posted a video, so far unverified, appearing to show helicopters firing on a sprawling property.

Salvadoran troops have been deployed in Haiti, nearly 2,000 kilometers from home, since the start of 2025, largely to counter gang influence. Last month Bukele sent more than 2,000 additional troops and special forces, officially to search for four Salvadorans who were ambushed on October 18 and remain missing.

Writing on the social media platform X, Fils-Aime thanked the Salvadoran military and said both nations are working with the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force, or GSF, to "regain control of the territory and restore state authority." The GSF has operated in Haiti since 2016, yet the legitimacy of El Salvador's role is under scrutiny.

"Where the lines are and where the coordination begins and ends between a bunch of distinct entities and security forces is a huge concern about how this actually plays out, and El Salvador are trying to frame it as their choice, their action," Jake Johnston, a Haiti expert and director of international research at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, told the non-profit news agency The New Humanitarian this week.

A UN report released on Thursday described "bloody turf wars, sexual violence and other horrors," warning that serious violations and abuses continue across the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area and in the Artibonite and South-East departments. It found that between July and September 2026 at least 1,167 people were killed and 459 injured, with more than half of that violence resulting from "ground or aerial operations carried out by security forces against gangs, sometimes with the support of a private military company using drones."

For many observers, the chaos is part of the appeal for Bukele, who appears eager to export his mano dura, or iron fist, approach. That policy jailed gang members on a massive scale and sharply cut the murder rate in a country once notorious for homicide. But Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, a Haiti expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, told DW this month that Haiti's gang problem runs deeper, saying: "Haiti does not currently have the conditions to replicate the Salvadoran model: Its prisons were emptied in 2024, its justice system is largely paralyzed and criminal groups resemble militias more than gangs, with territory, taxes, weapons of war and political networks that protect them."

Relations between Washington and San Salvador have improved markedly during Donald Trump's second term, despite the US president's notorious 2018 remarks disparaging El Salvador, which he later partially denied. Deportations of migrants from the US to El Salvador rose by 98 percent at the start of 2026, and Le Cour Grandmaison said the US plays "a central, albeit very discreet, role in public life" in the country.

Bukele's effort to cast himself as a Trump ally appears to have earned him latitude from Washington. "He said that he has a big problem with Haiti. I said: 'Look, you're running your country. You have to do what you have to do,'" Trump said in November, offering a level of endorsement for Bukele to act as he sees fit to protect El Salvador's security and that of its troops.