About 150 foreign officers arrived in Haiti this weekend to bolster international security forces tasked with taming the powerful, well-armed gangs that have brought so much misery to the country for months.
But if the past is any guide, this latest injection is unlikely to make much of a difference.
The series of massacres that killed more than 300 people and the subsequent Christmas Eve attack on Haiti’s largest public hospital further highlighted the Haitian government’s lack of control over the country’s deepening crisis.
Another gang attack left two journalists and a police officer dead during a press conference announcing the reopening of a public hospital that had been closed for nine months due to gang violence.
About 20 journalists caught up in the ambush were trapped for two hours and were rescued after treating seven injured colleagues. They tore their clothes, made tourniquets and used tampons to stop the bleeding, while witnesses said the few doctors at the hospital ran for their lives. The reporters escaped by climbing the back wall.
“There was blood all over the floor and clothes,” said Yefte Basil, a reporter for Machann Zen Haïti, an online news outlet. “There was nothing in the hospital that could treat the victims.”
The hospital shooting followed two massacres in different parts of the country that killed more than 350 people and cast a harsh spotlight on the failures and shortcomings of local authorities and international security forces deployed to protect innocent civilians.
One of last month’s massacres occurred in the poor, gang-controlled neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. For three days, due to the absence of police, elderly people were dismembered and thrown into the sea without the authorities noticing. According to the United Nations, at least 207 people died between December 6 and December 11.
Around the same time, another three-day massacre took place at Petite Rivière, 70 miles to the north. Community leaders said 150 people were killed as gangs and vigilantes attacked each other.
The violence is part of a wave of merciless bloodshed that has swept Haiti over the past two months, exposing the vulnerabilities of the interim government, raising concerns about the viability of the U.S.-brokered security mission and leaving plans for a more stable transition to elections in place. I created the situation. Leadership on the verge of collapse.
Haiti’s future looks bleaker than ever as President-elect Donald J. Trump takes command of an international deployment that has been criticized as inefficient and underfunded.
Attorney General Patrick Pelissier said the 150 soldiers, mainly from Guatemala, would help change the situation. He stressed that some gang-controlled areas have been recaptured and the government is taking care of the displaced people.
“The country has not collapsed,” Mr. Pelissier said. “The country is there. “The country is working,” he said.
But many experts believe Haiti is a failed state, with different factions of the interim government locked in political bickering without a clear strategy to deal with the worsening violence and provide a path for elections that were due to be held this year.
“Political conflict leads to violence,” said Diego Da Rin, a Haiti analyst at the International Crisis Group. “Gangs know when the right moment is to switch from defensive mode to offensive mode. They flex their muscles when necessary.”
The gang attacks also drew attention to weaknesses in the U.S.-backed multinational security assistance mission, comprised of hundreds of Kenyan police officers, who began arriving in Haiti last June.
The mission was supposed to include up to 2,500 officers, but with little international funding, the number of troops was much lower and there were not enough manpower to deal with the areas where the gangs were hiding.
Some experts said the Christmas Eve killings created a sense of government incompetence. The event to mark the hospital’s reopening was held in a gang stronghold with little security. Despite people being attacked and police headquarters being nearby, police took at least an hour to respond.
The country’s Minister of Health, Dr. Sick and late. Duckenson Lorthe Blema believes he was the intended target.
Dr. Blema, who was fired in the aftermath of the attack, said in an interview: “I’m not crazy. I wanted to do well, but the results were bad.” “It turned into a failure. “I am the scapegoat.”
Dr Blema requested police presence at the event but claimed he had no idea why there was so little protection. He defended the hospital’s supply shortages, saying he had planned to “progressively” open the facility as an outpatient clinic and not for treating gunshot wounds.
The Minister of Justice acknowledged that there was no coordination between the Ministry of Health and the police, nor was there a proper security assessment in place beforehand.
“The neighborhood is controlled by gangs and police are working to restore it,” he said. He said most of the country was operating normally, although the crisis was severe in the capital and the rural Artibonite Valley.
Haiti’s plunge into turmoil was largely triggered by the July 2021 assassination of the country’s last elected president, Jovenel Moïse. Gangs, which derive income from illegal checkpoints, extortion and kidnappings, have taken advantage of the political vacuum to expand their territory.
Without an elected national leader, the country is ruled by a transitional council made up of rival political parties, with interim presidents rotating among its members.
The most recent surge in violence began on November 11, the day Congress replaced the prime minister, and gangs took advantage of the political upheaval to open fire on U.S. commercial airliners and escalate their brutality. Haiti’s main airport was later closed.
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 5,300 people lost their lives in Haiti last year, and the number of people forced to leave their homes now exceeds 700,000.
Gang checkpoints and ambushes have disrupted food supplies, and nonprofit Mercy Corp estimates that nearly 5 million people – half the country’s population – face severe food insecurity.
At his only press conference since taking office nearly two months ago, new Prime Minister Alix Didier Pilsaime announced pay increases for police officers and said he would do his best to restore the rule of law.
The Prime Minister and Blue House lawmakers declined to comment on this article.
In his New Year’s speech, Parliament Speaker Leslie Voltaire insisted that elections would be held again this year, but likened the current situation to war. A police spokesman said: “We have no comment.”
Godfrey Otunge, commander of the Kenya-led mission, who did not respond to a request for comment, complained that the mission’s success had not been publicized enough.
“Haiti’s future is bright,” he said in a recent message posted online.
The U.S. State Department, which donated $600 million to the mission in Kenya, defended the record, noting that a high-profile gang member was killed in a recent operation with police.
The State Department said two police stations had recently reopened and Kenya’s mission was permanently stationed near a major port that had long been controlled by gangs.
The U.S. government sent several shipments of materials in December, the agency said.
But without much more external support, experts say Haiti’s worsening trajectory is unlikely to be reversed.
“The Haitian government is not really clear about what they are doing,” said Sophie Rutenbar, a visiting scholar at New York University who helped run UN operations in Haiti until 2023. “Unfortunately, now they are faced with a bad choice and an even worse choice.”
Some of the injured journalists blamed gangs and the government for the carnage that claimed precious lives.
“If the state had taken responsibility, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Bellondi Miracle, who was shot seven times in the leg, temple and mouth. “The state is a legal force and must not give thieves access to places where the state cannot respond.”
André Poltre Contributing reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
