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PaperclipPerfector  13hr ago (text post)   100 thread views

Transnational Thursday for August 14, 2025

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Reuters:

The prominent Donald Trump supporter and private security executive Erik Prince says he has a 10-year deal with Haiti to fight the country's criminal gangs, and then take a role in restoring the country's tax-collection system.

In an interview with Reuters, Prince said his company, Vectus Global, would be involved in designing and implementing a program to tax goods imported across Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic once the security situation is stabilized.

He said he expected to wrestle control of major roads and territories from the gangs in about a year. “One key measure of success for me will be when you can drive from Port-au-Prince to Cap Haitian in a thin-skinned vehicle and not be stopped by gangs,” Prince said in the interview.

Prince would not comment about how much the Haitian government would pay Vectus Global, nor how much tax he expects to collect in Haiti.

A person familiar with the company's operations in Haiti told Reuters that Vectus would intensify its fight against the criminal gangs that control large swathes of Haiti in the coming weeks in coordination with the Haitian police, deploying several hundred fighters from the United States, Europe and El Salvador who are trained as snipers and specialists in intelligence and communications, as well as helicopters and boats. Vectus's force includes some French and Creole speakers, the person said.

Haiti used to collect half of its tax revenue at the border with the Dominican Republic, but gang control of key transport routes has crippled trade and cut off state income, a report commissioned last year by Haiti's government and several multilateral organizations found. This has undermined the government's ability to respond to the crisis or deliver basic services, the report said.

Other security firms working in Haiti have raised questions about how Vectus would hold onto cleared gang territory as well as the wisdom of channelling resources to private security firms instead of the country's own security forces.

Wait, I am confused - does this have anything to do with Trump or journos are so addicted that they are just unable to report any news, no matter what they are, without mentioning Trump somehow?

Setting that aside, I think that's pretty much what Russians, including the infamous Wagner, had been doing in Africa for a while? And in general some state hiring mercenaries to keep the order - this seems to be a common picture for millenia (Carthage did something like that, and probably more ancient examples exist) though I guess it has been out of fashion for a while, but never really went away.

Does this have anything to do with Trump?

The article does mention some connections with Trump specifically and with the US government in general.

Prince, a former U.S. Navy Seal, founded the Blackwater military security firm in 1997. He sold the company in 2010 after Blackwater employees were convicted of unlawfully killing 14 unarmed civilians while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy in Baghdad's Nisour Square. The men were pardoned by Trump during his first term in the White House.

Since Trump's return to the White House, Prince has advised Ecuador on how to fight criminal gangs and struck a deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo to help secure and tax its mineral wealth.

“It’s hard to imagine them operating without the consent of the Trump administration,” said Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, head of the Haiti program at Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

When asked for comment about Le Cour Grandmaison's assertion, a State Department spokesperson said it has not hired Prince or his company for any work in Haiti.

A senior White House official said: "The U.S. government has no involvement with the private military contractor hired by the Haitian government. We are not funding this contract or exercising any oversight.”

"Since Trump's return to the White House" is a temporal mark. Since Trump's return to the White House I've lost five pounds, but Trump didn't really help me do it. The assumption that Trump personally controls every Prince's operation is quite ridiculous. Which is par for the course for an "expert" from "Geneva-based" NGO, but including this nonsense in the article is on Reuters. And of course no private business needs prior "consent" of the government - that's the opposite of how this works, the government is only supposed to intervene if something is wrong, and if nothing is wrong, the "consent" is implied. US govt, undoubtedly while rolling their eyes very hard, confirmed that they had absolutely nothing to do with it, as expected. Overall it looks like Reuters went to ridiculous length to mention Trump here.

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