The platform’s users flagged the house of criminal warlord Wilson Joseph for destruction by Nayib Buklele’s forces
Salvadoran forces have destroyed the alleged headquarters of Haiti’s largest criminal gang, after a social media user shared its location with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. He has vowed to eradicate the gangs if they refuse to return four hostages.
In a post on Friday, a Haitian X user shared a picture of a palatial compound, which she alleged that the notorious ‘400 Mawozo’ (‘400 Simpletons’) gang had built on the eastern outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Led by Wilson ‘Lanmo San Jou’ Joseph, 400 Mawozo is the largest of Haiti’s criminal gangs.
“Give us the exact address, and we’ll destroy it,” Bukele responded in Haitian Creole. Multiple users shared GPS coordinates with Bukele, but the original post was deleted over the weekend.
However, Bukele kept his word. A fleet of Salvadoran light attack helicopters blitzed the compound, firing rockets and partially destroying its main structure and outbuildings as its occupants fled the scene. Bukele posted a video of the attack on X on Tuesday, calling the gang members “cowards” for running away “without even trying to fight.”
“Some guy on X called in a killstreak on a gang’s HQ and Bukele went through with it. Insane timeline,” one X user responded, summing up the online reaction to the strike.
Haitian police and private security contractors stormed the compound after the rocket barrage, the Miami Herald reported.
What is El Salvador doing in Haiti?
Bukele deployed around 2,500 troops to Haiti late last month, after four Salvadoran military aircraft technicians were kidnapped while assisting the UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force (GSF) mission. The technicians were reportedly kidnapped by Chen Mechan, a smaller member of the broad confederation of gangs that has de facto ruled Haiti since 2021.
The hostages have not yet been returned, despite an attempt by a Chen Mechan-linked NGO to pass four unrelated corpses to Salvadoran forces last week. Bukele has claimed that El Salvador has “no interest in coming to dominate the Haitian people, nor in laying hands on Haiti’s wealth,” but has promised to wage war against the “Satanic” gangs until the captives are handed over. Bukele has also suggested that Salvadoran forces could remain longer in Haiti to assist the anti-gang mission.
Joseph initially vowed to drive the Salvadoran troops out of Haiti, but has since requested mediation from UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, according to AP. Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime will reportedly travel to El Salvador next week to meet with Bukele’s government, the news agency reported on Tuesday.
Crowdsourced airstrikes
Bukele may be the first national leader to solicit targeting data from social media, but the concept of crowdsourced airstrikes is not a new one. During the height of the Syrian Civil War in 2016, a group of 4chan users geolocated videos posted by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and other jihadist fighters and fed their locations to a Russian military blogger who went by the alias ‘Ivan Sidorenko’.
At least one jihadist training camp was subsequently destroyed by Russian airstrikes, although it remains unclear whether ‘Ivan Sidorenko’ supplied the coordinates to the Russian Defense Ministry, as he claimed.
Throughout the Russia-Ukraine conflict, both sides have used information gleaned from social media videos to locate and strike military deployment points, arms factories, and critical infrastructure.
