Gangs in Control of Haiti’s Capital

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Schools and hospitals have closed. Kidnappings are an everyday risk, and gang warfare rages openly on the streets. But now, the chaos that has long consumed many parts of Portau-Prince, the capital of Haiti, has spread: The national police — outgunned, outnumbered, underpaid and demoralized — have ceded control of most of the city to gangs.

Almost no one is safe, analysts and residents say, even the wealthy who have long looked down at the gang-ridden city from homes in the mountains. Youri Mevs, a partner in an industrial park who lives in the mountains, said security “is a matter of avoiding the wrong place at the wrong time. And, the wrong place is almost everywhere, just as the wrong time is literally all the time.”

Gangs operate with impunity, analysts say, attacking police officers and destroying police stations. The collapse of law and order has even led officials to tell residents that they should take their protection into their own hands, not count on the government.

The violence has advanced beyond the capital: Over 200 people were killed across the country in the first two weeks of March, mostly from snipers randomly shooting at people in their homes or on the streets, the United Nations said.

The assassination of Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, in July 2021 tipped the country into terror and disarray: The acting prime minister is widely viewed as inept. There is no legislature since the terms of the last remaining members of Parliament expired in January, and the judiciary is seen as fundamentally corrupt.

A U.N. official in Haiti said in December that gangs controlled about 60 percent of Port-au-Prince. Now analysts estimate that figure is more than 90 percent.

“The government is deeply concerned” about the violence, Jean-Junior Joseph, a spokesman for Ariel Henry, Haiti’s acting prime minister, said in a statement. He acknowledged that the police can no longer take on the gangs.

The national police force has shrunk to fewer than 9,000 members, according to the U.N., from as many as 15,000 three years ago, after many officers quit or left the country, among other factors. At least 12 police officers were killed in January, leading many others to abandon their stations and checkpoints.

Entry-level officers earn less than $200 a month, higher than the minimum wage but not enough for many officers to perform an increasingly lethal function, said Gesnel Morlant, a spokesman for a Haitian police union.

“If nothing is done, the police force could collapse in the weeks to come,” he said.

In October, Mr. Henry’s government appealed for outside military intervention to quell the violence, a remarkable request that underscored the dire situation in a country deeply resentful of foreign intervention. Biden administration officials are pushing to rally a multinational armed force to Haiti, though the effort has stalled, largely because no country wants to lead it.

In Port-au-Prince, many residents are in a self-imposed lockdown as gun battles erupt near neighborhoods that had been considered relatively calm. Videos posted to social media show residents fleeing their homes as fires burn. Other videos show crowds of people fleeing gunfire, and groups of men armed with rifles patrolling the streets.

Gangs have used sexual violence against women and girls to terrorize and pressure families to pay ransoms for abductees, according to a U.N. report released recently. Many children have also been forcibly recruited by armed gangs, the report said.

Doctors Without Borders, the global humanitarian organization that is helping keep the Haitian health system functioning, closed its hospital in Cité Soleil — the country’s largest slum — last month because heavily armed groups were battling just meters from the hospital compound’s gate, according to Vincent Harris, a medical adviser who worked at that hospital.

“We had bullets flying over the hospital,” he said.

An outnumbered police force may be close to collapsing.