Massacre on the streets of Port-au-Prince as the world stalls on promised intervention in Haiti

port-au-prince
CNN
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The woman half-dragged her young child and forced her into a waiting car, her eyes covered. Other family members follow, carrying heavy suitcases and looking away. It’s dangerous to drive on gang-controlled roads, but they’re leaving the city.

The reason was the street in front of the house. Burnt corpse. A body believed to be a gang member killed by a neighbor. His knees buckle and his torso leans forward, as if pleading, metal wires wrapping around his charred flesh. This is the fourth similar body CNN has seen in the past two days.

Just up the hill, another mother races towards a waiting helicopter with her infant in her arms. Witnesses told CNN that she was urged to move quickly by armed guards, leaving her car seat behind. Unauthorized landings of helicopters are attracting attention. Video from the flight shows a fight breaking out on the ground as the helicopter takes off.

They are fleeing anarchy. Until yesterday, these people were resisters. They had a choice, but they stayed until Port-au-Prince became unbearable. Now even they are leaving in the midst of an unprecedented frenzy of terror in the Caribbean nation.

For three weeks, Haiti’s capital has been mired in a cycle of misery that far exceeds any known kidnappings or gang violence. A rebel alliance of heavily armed gangs seeks new territory and wages war on the city itself, targeting police and state institutions. Fear and anger have led vigilante groups to cordon off neighborhoods with felled trees and chains, killing and burning outsiders suspected of being gang members. They say it’s the only way to protect themselves.

Human bones lie on the streets, but the multinational security mission that Haiti’s neighbors have long touted as a game-changer on the gang problem is nowhere to be seen.

Haiti may change course. Nearly 18 months have passed since Prime Minister Ariel Henry first requested foreign military aid, during which time the gangs have steadily expanded their reign of terror across an estimated 80% of the city.

Other fugitives: Almost six months have passed since the UN Security Council approved a military support mission with US support. It’s been two months since Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez of the neighboring Dominican Republic warned his country’s parliament that Haiti was on the “edge of a precipice.”

When Haitian gangs started this wave of violence in late February, they demanded the resignation of the unpopular prime minister. He surrendered, but they continued their rampage.

Ten days have passed since CARICOM announced the creation of a transitional council in Haiti, but no council members have yet been named. The killings continue every day.

Leslie Voltaire, a candidate for the transitional council, told CNN on Thursday that she was frustrated that the political process was taking so long while gangs were gaining territory.

He was confident that a transition council could be held within the next 24 hours. Voltaire also made it clear that next steps would take more time, expecting a prime minister to be appointed within a week, followed by the establishment of a national security council.

He said the reopening of Haiti’s ports and airports could happen within the first 100 days. Long waits can occur in a country where nearly half the population doesn’t have enough food, according to the World Food Program.

Much of the Haitian state has collapsed, courts have been taken over by gangs, prisons remain open, and the prime minister has been effectively ousted and replaced by the finance minister. The Haitian Ministry of Communications building itself is filled with refugees fleeing gang attacks. In the front office building, hungry children are now sitting on the floor and rocking on rotating desk chairs.

The Haitian National Police may be the only fully functioning national institution. But they say they are underequipped and overburdened. Every day, the police respond to gang attacks and defeat them in gunfire that echoes throughout the city, but the next day they are taken to new neighborhoods while the gangs reclaim their hard-won territory.

Several police officers told CNN they did not have what they needed to continue fighting. “We are ready to fight and we are ready to save our country,” Garry Jean Baptiste, an adviser to Haiti’s National Police Union 17, told CNN. “But we lack leadership, our equipment is falling apart, and we need air and sea support.”

He estimates that only 30 to 40 percent of police officers have bulletproof vests, and the average officer makes less than $200 a month. With the government in flux and morale low, he fears the multinational force will fail.

The force will be commanded by Kenya and include personnel from Kenya, Jamaica, Benin, the Bahamas, Barbados and Chad.

“We have a multinational support force ready,” Baptiste said. “We are ready to work with them. However, no plans have been shown to receive the mission. We believe that this mission will fail like the others because there is no framework for cooperation.”

The city’s security and humanitarian issues are closely intertwined. Experts say the focus needs to be on getting Port-au-Prince’s port and airport back online because the country urgently needs clean water and food. But that means reclaiming territory and creating safe transportation corridors through cities that are now gang turf.

In a sign of uncertainty over Haiti’s ability to fight off gangs, council candidate Voltaire said the incoming government may consider hiring a private security company.

He added that bounty hunters should consider going after gang leaders.

The addition of foreign forces may be Haiti’s best chance to break gang control, but bringing them in is politically difficult.

“It is the international community that has put us in this situation. For more than 200 years, they have not given us the chance to live for ourselves,” he said, sitting on his motorbike, as he drove away on the road. one man told CNN as he watched a vehicle pass the charred body of a man.

Haiti’s enslaved people overthrew brutal French colonial rule and founded the world’s first free black republic in 1804, but were shunned by the international community for decades.

“How else can you explain the fact that CARICOM is making decisions for the Haitian people today?” he said.

Still, given the crisis in Port-au-Prince, some may even be uncomfortable with the idea of ​​foreign intervention in the country. As Dominique Dupuis, Haiti’s ambassador to UNESCO in Paris, told the morgue this week, there is nowhere else in Haiti to recover from a “bloody nightmare.”

“From the depths of the hole we are in, we can see the hands of those who pushed us into it,” Dupuis said. “This hand can still extend its rod towards us if it wishes.”

Marie-Lucy Macone, a fruit vendor in Port-au-Prince’s upscale Petion Ville neighborhood, told CNN she thinks the U.S. should do more.

“So many people are dying right now. Their bodies had to be picked up from the streets many times,” said the 69-year-old man. “We should speak to the American people and ask God to help us.”

Like many, she struggles to survive even away from direct violence, and crops are rotting in the stands as obstacles and fear keep customers at home, she said. told CNN.

However, if a multinational security mission arrives; That seems like a distant story, and any hopes for American intervention seem like the stuff of history books. The U.S. operation in Haiti has so far focused on evacuation flights for American citizens, which only began Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the skies above Port-au-Prince are constantly buzzing with commercial flights for diplomats and people with better transportation options.

Marie Lucie said she was scared of the frequent helicopter visits.

“Are we going to die? If you know, please tell me,” she said.