In Haiti, gang massacres and assassinations of journalists reveal the country’s fragility

A new batch of about 150 foreign officers arrived in Haiti this weekend to support an international security force tasked with taking on powerful, well-armed gangs that have brought misery to the country for months.

But if we are any guide, this latest infusion is unlikely to make much difference.

The successive massacres that killed more than 300 people, followed by the attack on Haiti’s largest public hospital on Christmas Eve, highlighted the Haitian government’s increasing lack of control over the country’s worsening crisis.

A press conference to announce the reopening of a public hospital that had been closed for nine months due to gang violence was attacked again by a gang, killing two journalists and a police officer.

More than twenty journalists were trapped in the ambush for two hours while seven of their wounded colleagues were triaged before they were rescued. They tore off their clothes to make a tourniquet and used tampons to stop the bleeding because, witnesses said, the few doctors in the hospital were running for their lives. The journalists escaped by climbing the back wall.

“There was blood on the floor and on our clothes,” said Yefty Bazile, a reporter for online news site Machan Zein Haiti, adding that the hospital did not have anything “available to treat the victims.”

The shooting at the hospital came on the heels of two massacres in different parts of the country that killed more than 350 people and sharply highlighted the failures and shortcomings of local authorities and the international security force deployed to protect innocent civilians.

One massacre took place last month in a sprawling, gang-controlled slum in Port-au-Prince, where the lack of any police presence led to elderly people being dismembered for three days and thrown into the sea without the authorities finding out. At least 207 people were killed between 6 and 11 December, according to the United Nations.

Around the same time, another three-day killing spree occurred 70 miles north in Petite-Rivière. Community leaders say 150 people were killed when gang members and vigilante groups attacked each other.

The violence is part of an ongoing series of bloodshed that Haiti has witnessed in the past two months, exposing the fragility of its interim government, raising concerns about the feasibility of a US-brokered security mission, and leaving a planned transition to elections more stable. Driving on the verge of collapse

With President-elect Donald Trump set to take charge of an international deployment that has been criticized as ineffective and underfunded, Haiti’s future has never looked more bleak.

Justice Minister Patrick Pélissier said he believed the 150 soldiers, most of them from Guatemala, should help turn the tide. He stressed that some areas controlled by gangs had been restored and that the government was taking care of the displaced.

“The country did not collapse,” Mr. Pélissier said. “The state is there. The state is working.”

But many experts believe Haiti is a failed state, with different factions in the interim government embroiled in political wrangling in the absence of a clear strategy to address the worsening violence and provide a path to elections, which were supposed to be held this year.

“Political conflicts are translating into violence,” said Diego Da Ren, a Haiti analyst with the International Crisis Group. “Gangs know very well when the right moment is to move from defensive to offensive mode. They flex their muscles when they need to.

The guerrilla attacks also drew attention to the weakness of the US-backed Multinational Security Support Mission, a detachment of several hundred Kenyan police officers, which began arriving in Haiti last June.

The mission was supposed to include up to 2,500 officers, but with little international funding, the force is now far outnumbered and lacks the staff to deal with many of the areas where gangs have holed up.

Many experts said the Christmas Eve killings gave a sense that the government was incompetent. The ceremony to announce the reopening of the hospital was held in a gang stronghold, with almost no security. Even when people were attacked, the police took at least an hour to respond, even though their headquarters were nearby.

The country’s health minister, Dr. Dokinson Loreth Blima, who was ill and late, believed he was the intended target.

“I’m not crazy,” Dr. Blima, who was fired following the attack, said in an interview. “I wanted to do well, but things went wrong.” “It’s turned into a fiasco. The scapegoat is me.”

Dr. Blima insisted that he had requested the deployment of police forces to the event and did not know the reason for the lack of protection. He defended the hospital’s supply shortages, saying he intended to open the facility “gradually” as an outpatient clinic, which was not intended to treat gunshot wounds.

The Minister of Justice admitted that there was no coordination between the Ministry of Health and the police, and no proper security assessment had been conducted in advance.

“The neighborhoods are controlled by gangs, and the police are working to reclaim them,” he added, noting that despite the severity of the crisis in the capital and the rural Artibonite Valley, most parts of the country were operating normally.

Haiti’s descent into chaos is largely due to the assassination of its last elected president, Jovenel Moise, in July 2021. Gangs that make their income from illegal checkpoints, extortion and kidnapping have exploited the political vacuum to expand their territory.

With no elected national leaders, the country is governed by a transitional council made up of competing political parties, with an interim presidency rotating among its members.

The latest wave of violence began on November 11, when the council replaced the prime minister, and gangs took advantage of the political unrest to shoot up American commercial airliners and escalate their brutality. Haiti’s main airport has been closed since then.

More than 5,300 people were killed in Haiti last year, and the total number of people forced to flee their homes now exceeds 700,000, according to UN estimates. International Organization for Migration.

Checkpoints and ambushes set up by gangs have disrupted food supplies and the non-profit group mercicorp, It is estimated that nearly 5 million people – half the country’s population – face acute food insecurity.

In his only press conference since taking office nearly two months ago, the new Prime Minister, Alex Didier Fels-Aime, announced pay increases for police officers and said he was committed to restoring the rule of law.

The Prime Minister and members of the Presidential Council declined to comment on this article.

In a New Year’s speech, Council President Leslie Voltaire insisted that elections would be held this year, but likened the current situation to war. A police spokesman said he had no comment.

The commander of the Kenya-led mission, Godfrey Otong, who did not respond to requests for comment, complained that the mission’s successes were not adequately praised.

In a recent message posted online, he said that “Haiti’s future is bright.”

The US State Department, which allocated $600 million to the Kenya mission, defended its record, noting that the recent operation with the police led to the killing of a prominent member of the gang.

The Foreign Ministry said two police stations had recently reopened, and the Kenyan mission now had a permanent presence near the main port that has long been controlled by gangs.

The US government sent several shipments of the materials in December, the agency said.

But without much greater outside help, experts say Haiti’s deteriorating trajectory is unlikely to be reversed.

“The Haitian government is not really clear about what it is doing,” said Sophie Rotenbar, a visiting scholar at New York University, who helped run UN operations in Haiti until 2023. Worse options.”

Some injured journalists blamed the gangs – and the government – for the disaster that cost precious lives.

“If the state had shouldered its responsibilities, none of this would have happened,” said Velunde Miracle, who was shot seven times in her leg, temple and mouth. “The state is a legal force and must not allow bandits to reach places where the state cannot respond.”

Andre Boulter Contributing reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.