“Can you see where it comes from?” wondered the breathless SWAT members inside the armored vehicle. It offers only a tiny sliver of window onto the streets outside, which at one moment seem deserted, the next teeming with civilians trying to flee to safety.
In the past 72 hours, police have killed a leader of the 400 Mawozo gang and rescued six hostages from them, they say. But the gang – one of dozens terrorizing the capital – has not been removed from these streets.
“Can you see that red ‘SMS’ sign? It’s them,” a SWAT officer said, pointing to the gunmen’s position. Like his team, he declined to be named, citing their safety. He pointed the way to a small shack, as dozens of people streamed from a side lane into the street.
“Move away,” he told the crowd, over the armored car’s loudspeaker. “You’re too exposed. It’s dangerous.”
The officer ordered the vehicle to move to a new position. “When we get there, open up to anything that moves,” he said. Heavy gunfire between police and gang members followed.
It’s a common scene of injuries, gunshots and panic in one of dozens of gang-controlled neighborhoods as Port-au-Prince appears to descend into an all-out war between police and criminal groups more moreover well equipped and organized.
And it’s a familiar routine: police survey gang areas to show their reach, and gangs respond with intense volleys of bullets.
Video on social media from inside the area shows gangs using a bulldozer covered in steel plates to act as armor demolishing homes, presumably those of rivals. Other homes had been set on fire, with another video showing dozens of residents fleeing the area on foot at night, at the height of the fighting.
Civilians who fled Cité Soleil found little respite, with dozens receiving food aid from the World Food Program and taking shelter in the open air at the Hugo Chavez leisure park.
Flies blanket the rain-soaked concrete floor of the sports amphitheater stage, where children as young as four months old struggle to sleep exposed to the elements. One has bruises from a fall, another a painful, ugly rash, but they’re alive.
Here, Natalie Aristel angrily shows us her unpleasant new home.
“This is where I sleep in a puddle,” she said, pointing to the water. “They burned my house and shot my husband seven times,” she said, referring to gang members.
“I can’t even afford to go see him. [in hospital]. In this park, even though they brought food, there is never enough for everyone. The children are dying.”
Others are missing. “I have four children, but my first is missing and I can’t find him,” said another woman. “We have been totally abandoned by the state and even have to pay to use the toilets,” added another.
A young boy added: “My mum and dad died. My aunt saved me. I want to go to school but it was demolished.”
Locals speak of a perfect storm of calamity – and warn that the country increasingly feels on the brink of societal collapse.
What remains of the country’s emergency interim government, created last year after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, is beginning to crumble and steep itself in accusations of inactivity. His successor, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, has pledged to tackle insecurity and hold fresh elections, but has so far made little progress towards either goal.
Meanwhile, analysts calculate inflation in the country at 30%. Gas is scarce and the subject of angry queues at stations. The UN has warned that gang violence could put the youngest children in areas of active fighting at risk of imminent starvation, as their parents lack access to food or work.
A Haitian security force source speaking to CNN estimated that gangs control or influence three-quarters of the city.
Frantz Elbe, director general of the National Police of Haiti, rejects the claim. “It’s not a general problem in the metropolitan area,” he told CNN, declining to give a percentage.
Yet it is indisputable that vital parts of the national infrastructure are now entirely in criminal hands. The city’s vital port – Haiti’s main – is controlled by gangs, which dominate the road outside. The same goes for the main highway to the south of the country, meaning the fragile part of the country that was hit by an earthquake last year has effectively been cut off from the capital. The gangs are also extending their control in the east of the city, where Croix-des-Bouquets is located, and in the north, around Cité Soleil, observers said.
Police, often underarmed, are doing what they can, Elbe told CNN.
“Gangs are changing the way they fight. It used to be with knives, and now it’s with big guns. The police have to be well equipped. With what little we have, we’ll do what we can to fight the gang members,” he said.
The challenge they face is revealed by a brief checkpoint set up in Croix-des-Bouquets, where a truck was dragged down a main road by the gangs and set on fire.
Police bring in an armored military bulldozer to push the wreckage to the side of the road, which is already littered with other wrecked trucks. The bulldozer operator, asked if he works under fire, replies: “Often”.
SWAT police established a perimeter, scanning nearby rooftops. The inhabitants and the vehicles in which they travel are stopped and checked. One man says the situation is “bad, very bad”, before another gives him a stern look.
He suddenly changes his tone: “We don’t know anything.
Fear is the currency of this war, though it’s unclear whether he fears speaking to the press or the police, or what the gang might learn, he later said.
To escape this fear, however, one must endure more. A short boat ride from the mainland is the island of La Gonave, a hub for human traffickers.
The nonchalant tempo and blue water of a small creek in La Gonave belie its poverty. Heat, waste, hunger and starting business dominate this world.
One, a smuggler who introduced himself as Johnny, calmly explained how his business works.
The trip is often one-way for the boat, so every effort requires the purchase of the boat, priced at around US$10,000, he says. To cover this cost, Johnny needs at least two hundred customers, who will huddle in his disheveled shell.
Shreds of netting seem to plug all the spaces between the hull and loose wooden planks will make up the interior of the boat. Johnny shows where the pump and motors will eventually go.
“If we die, we die. If we do, we do,” he said.
He added that he hoped to pack his boat with 250 passengers, as he considered it in “good” condition.
The ultimate destination is the United States, with Cuba and the Turks and Caicos Islands occasionally stopping accidentally along the way.
And it is from these three places that the International Organization for Migration has reported an increasing number of forced repatriations of Haitians in the first seven months of this year, with 20,016 so far, compared to 19,629. for all of 2021.
The numbers are as staggering as the risks. Previous trips from this cove have ended in tragedy. Johnny is unclear on the timing of the last boat, but specific on potential casualties: A recent trip he organized resulted in the deaths of 29 people.
“The boat had an engine problem,” he said. “Water got inside the boat. We called for help, but they took too long. The boat was sinking as I tried to save people. When help arrived, he was too late.”
Despite the risks, many Haitians are still desperately looking for a way out. Residents of La Gonave told CNN that at least 40 people who wanted to attempt the boat trip were already on the island and the rest would follow from the mainland once Johnny said the boat was ready.
One would-be passenger, a college graduate who was once a teacher, described why he would risk everything to make the trip.
“I worked as a teacher, but it didn’t work out. Now I ride a motorbike every day in the sun and the dust. How am I going to be able to take care of my family when I have one?”
He said he had saved a year’s worth of money to make the trip and was not afraid of the rickety conditions of the boat. “I can be eaten by a shark or come to America.”
