Corruption in successive Haiti interim governments forces civilians to opt for self-protection against coordinated gangs

Corruption in successive Haiti interim governments forces civilians to opt for self-protection against coordinated gangs

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Haiti’s problems are political too. Corruption in turn undermines international stabilisation mission, create room for gangs to reign.

The Transitional Presidential Council has been dogged by corruption allegations against three of its members who refuse to step down and power struggles led the council in November to fire Garry Conille, the prime minister it had designated in late May – all of which just provides more political oxygen to the gangs.

The armed groups have also been acting in a more coordinated and unified manner, often attacking simultaneously on several fronts, displacing thousands of people, sometimes in a matter of days. They now control at least 85 per cent of the capital and the area around it, as well as all the main highways out of Port-au-Prince and large parts of the neighbouring Artibonite department.

Following Conille’s ouster, violence escalated to the point that several planes were hit after gangs opened fire on them, prompting the US Federal Aviation Administration to ban all flights into Port-au-Prince until March 2025, further isolating the capital.

“The gangs are very powerful,” said Renois. “I have talked to young people who live in gang-controlled areas, and they told me that [the gangs] have plenty of weapons and munitions and that they can resist much longer.”

It’s no surprise that Haitians have increasingly felt the need to protect themselves. A vigilante movement known as the Bwa Kale, and whose members systematically kill and burn people they suspect of being gang members, has grown significantly in recent months.

“The Bwa Kale is gaining more and more strength; we see more lynching and more attacks, including in coordination with members of the [Haitian police], who are also desperate for support,” a source close to the UN said.

A Haitian politician, who also requested to speak anonymously, said the anarchic situation is leading many frustrated police officers to simply “eliminate” any potential enemy.

“They say: ‘there is no prison, there is no justice system’. So, as soon as they catch someone, they kill them or deliver them to the Bwa Kale population,” he said. “The policy is that everything must be eliminated because there is no other measure to get rid of the suspects who come from lawless neighbourhoods.”

Just walking in the street without identity papers can be enough to raise suspicion. The growing strength of the Bwa Kale is, in turn, enraging gang leaders and leading to clashes that some are already describing as a “civil war”.

An appalling example of the level of violence is the massacre of Pont-Sondé that saw at least 115 people slaughtered in October when a gang leader took revenge on a local self-defence group for attempting to counter his group’s activities in the area.

On December 10, the same gang (the Gran Grif) killed at least 20 people in reprisal for the lynching of 10 of their members by the Bwa Kale movement in the Artibonite department.

“We have a youth that has been abandoned by successive governments. There have been no policies to give them any occupation, be it professional, cultural, or sport activities.”

Despite such massacres, gangs still have a strong appeal among parts of the population, especially the young. Hunger and devastation are driving more and more children and teenagers to join their ranks. The armed groups are also taking advantage of years of poor governance and the current political vacuum to spread a political discourse that resonates with young people who have no good options.

“We have a youth that has been abandoned by successive governments,” said Renois. “There have been no policies to give them any occupation, be it professional, cultural, or sport activities. So, they don’t [see a future for] themselves in the state, and they experience a feeling of revolt that can lead to anything.”

Jimmy Chérizier – alias Barbecue – the leader of Viv Ansanm, presents himself as a follower of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, and as a provider for those in need. After his base was attacked by the MSS and the Haitian police in November, he circulated a video complaining about the destruction of his property, including his swimming pool, which he claimed to have built “for children in the area”.

According to UNICEF, minors now make up around half of the gang members. Child recruitment rose by 70 per cent in 2024 compared to 2023.

Chérizier has been a political player for years and is now wielding that power to demand a seat at the table in Haiti’s political transition. On 2 January, he announced that he had turned his gang coalition into a political party, although this new entity has no legal backing.

As the security crisis escalates, Haiti’s humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. According to the World Food Programme, 5.4 million Haitians – nearly half the population – don’t have enough to eat. Two million of them face emergency levels of food insecurity.

In the Artibonite region, considered the country’s breadbasket, agricultural production has been severely disrupted as farmers “face intimidation, restricted access, and land disputes”, according to a new Mercy Corps report. Limited production is forcing Haitians to depend on imports for survival, but the prices are often too high for families to afford. The closure of the airport and of key seaports is also making provision difficult.

A woman displaced by gang violence cooks in a makeshift kitchen at Port-au-Prince’s Antenor Firmin high school, which was transformed into a shelter, and where people continue to live in poor conditions, on 1 May 2024.

“The concomitant issues of gang intimidation, poor road conditions, and limited market availability are undermining Haiti’s ability to sustain its agricultural base, further threatening food security in the long term,” the report says.

Compounding the crisis is the fact that aid groups face insurmountable barriers.

In late October, a UN helicopter used by the WFP to provide assistance was forced into an emergency landing after gangs fired on it. Two weeks later, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was forced to suspend its operations after Haitian police officers and the Bwa Kale attacked one of its ambulances, killing at least two people and threatening their staff. They have since resumed their activities, except those requiring emergency transportation.

A month later, the escalation of gang attacks in Port-au-Prince forced aid groups and UN agencies to urgently relocate or evacuate staff.

Mercy Corps relocated some international staff to other regions and temporarily suspended activities in the capital. It has been able to maintain its programmes in rural areas of the Nippes and Grand’Anse departments, including food assistance, support for farmers to improve productivity and cash distribution. But it fears even this may not last, as the platform for these programmes relies on imported tools to function.

“Now, with the international airport and the main seaport not accessible, field operations may also be affected in the near future,” said Laurent Uwumuremyi, the organisation’s country director. “We are deeply concerned about the isolation of Port-au-Prince from the rest of Haiti and the world.”

The director of another NGO working in Haiti, who asked to speak anonymously to avoid worsening access issues, explained how – even before reaching the gangs’ checkpoints – aid groups have to go through those set up by the Haitian police and the Bwa Kale.

“With them, negotiations for access are harder, because there is now a tendency to consider that NGOs support gangs,” he explained.

Access to healthcare has also become extremely limited, even as injuries soar and sexual violence against women and girls has reached unprecedented levels. Only 37 per cent of health facilities in Port-au-Prince are fully operational, and managing to get to one in a city that is effectively in a state of constant siege is a whole other challenge.

In December, part of Bernard Mevs Hospital, a key trauma centre, was ransacked and destroyed. A week later, the reopening of the Hospital General, Haiti’s largest health centre, ended in bloodshed – five months after the Haitian police managed to retake it from gangs.

“The majority of the medical structures still functioning are private,” said Jean-Marc Biquet, MSF’s head of mission in Haiti. “Haitians suffering more than ever from the economic crisis can’t afford it, so access to care is almost at zero. It is a catastrophe.”

Given the risks they face, the lack of healthcare is a major concern for Haitian police and has become a source of unease with Kenyan officers. According to the RNDDH, 34 Haitian police officers were killed in 2024.

Neither Kenyan nor Haitian authorities have been vocal about the number of casualties on the Kenyan side, but Jack Mbaka, the spokesperson for the MSS, said on January 10 that the force has lost no officer so far and that typically there “were just slight injuries due to ricochets [that] are usually managed any time they occur”.

Mbaka added that there was one officer who had wounds serious enough for them to be flown to the Dominican Republic for medical treatment. However, this potentially life-saving evacuation allowance, which was included in the MSS mission’s protocols, is not available to Haitian police.

“One day a Kenyan police officer was injured and quickly healed in the Dominican Republic, but sometime later a Haitian police officer from the SWAT team was wounded during an operation and died due to lack of care. This created a lot of turmoil,” said the UTAG policeman.

There are other tensions too.

“The relationship isn’t always cordial,” said Ricardo Germain, a Haitian security expert based in Port-au-Prince. “Mistrust is an important factor and is sometimes due to the language barrier. During joint patrolling operations, Haitian police officers speak Creole and the Kenyans Swahili language, while English and French were supposed to be the spoken languages.” Some Kenyan officers have recently started classes in basic Creole, he added.

Haitian police say they also resent the fact that they are underpaid compared to the Kenyans – about $230 a month versus $1,000, according to the UTAG policeman. But the Kenyans have faced their own financial hurdles too. In June 2024, when the first batch of officers left for Haiti, some said they were given about $155 each a month, around one fifth of what they had been promised.

Two months later, several relatives of the deployed Kenyan police told the Nation, speaking on condition of anonymity, that the school year was about to start but officers weren’t sending back money for the fees as expected.

In August, when the Nation reported complaints about the payments, a relative of one officer said the rest of the family in Nairobi was struggling to meet basic needs. “We have a challenge here, because even paying for meals and other bills has started becoming difficult,” said the relative, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

After the complaints were reported, the officers received their salary in a matter of days, and the leadership of Kenya’s National Police Service (NPS) apologised for the delays. However, the issue resurfaced in early December when Reuters reported that 20 Kenyan officers had submitted letters of resignation over pay delays and poor conditions, which General Godfrey Otunge, the MSS mission commander, has strongly denied.

What next?

With each passing week, the risks the Haitian police and the deployed Kenyan officers are facing in and around Port-au-Prince become more extreme.

Although several sources said that Kenyans initially refused to engage directly during operations and preferred to remain in the armoured vehicles while the Haitians were on the ground, others said they had recently noticed a change in the dynamics.

“In the past few weeks, the [Haitian police’s] work has been more coordinated, more strategic, and the MSS has met the needs more adequately,” said Salvador, from the UN’s political mission.

In an interview with the Nation in mid-December, Otunge highlighted that Kenyan officers – along with the Haitian police – have managed to recapture several police stations taken by gangs, and that they came close to arresting Chérizier in November during a major police operation in his Bas Delmas stronghold.

But these minor victories do little to quieten a growing chorus of voices looking now for almost any alternative.

Given the lack of funding, some, including RNDDH Executive Director Pierre Espérance, say a formal UN peacekeeping mission is now the only way forward. “A peacekeeping mission would be much better than the MSS because, as a UN mission, it will receive more contributions,” he said. “The lack of means is directly related to the fact that it isn’t one.”

Others would prefer Haitians to find their own solution.

“Previous peacekeeping missions are responsible for plunging Haiti into the current situation, and we know it will take one year for the case for a new one to be analysed, only to get an answer we already know,” said Rébu. “It belongs to Haitians to take charge of their problem, because it is Haitian women and young girls who are raped, Haitians who are getting killed, and Haitian families who have nowhere left to go.”

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