Criminals gain advantage in war with Haitian police

Bullets ricocheted off the armored vehicle as police carried an inert civilian to the sidewalk – another casualty of the brutal daily gunfights that plague the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, and beyond. Here, inside the gang-controlled territory of Croix-des-Bouquets, the Haitian SWAT team got into a firefight that once destroyed a civilian bus.

“Can you see where it came from?” the SWAT members breathlessly asked each other inside the armored vehicle. It provides only a small sliver of window to the streets outside, which one moment seem deserted, the next filled 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 of their hostages, they say. But the gang – one of dozens terrorizing the capital – was not evicted from these streets.

“Can you see that red ‘SMS’ sign? It’s them,” a SWAT officer said, indicating the position of the snipers. As his team, he declined to be named, citing his security. He pointed down the road towards a small shack as dozens of people flooded from an alley to the street.

“Back off,” he told the crowd over the loudspeaker of the armored car. “You’re too exposed. It’s dangerous”.

The officer ordered the vehicle to shift to a new position. “Once we get there, open up to anything that moves,” he said. Intense firefights between police and gang members ensued.

It’s a common scene of wounds, gunfire and panic in one of dozens of gang-controlled neighborhoods, as Port-au-Prince appears to be descending into an all-out war between the police and increasingly well-equipped and organized criminal groups.

And this is a familiar routine: the police investigate gang areas to show their reach, and the gangs respond with intense bursts of bullets.

In the Cité Soleil area, ten days of violence in July left more than 470 people dead, injured or missing, according to the UN, after the G9 gang tried to expand its reach in the area, taking territory from rival gangs.

Social media videos from inside the area show gangs using an excavator covered with steel plates to act as armored vehicles demolishing homes, presumably of rivals. Other houses were burned, with another video showing dozens of residents fleeing the area on foot at night, during the height of the fighting.

Civilians who fled Cité Soleil found little respite, with dozens receiving food donations from the World Food Program and taking shelter outdoors at the Hugo Chávez recreational park.

Flies cover the rain-soaked concrete floor of the sports amphitheater’s stage, where children as young as four months struggle to sleep, exposed to the elements. One has bruises from a fall, the other a painful, ugly rash, but they’re alive.

Here, Natalie Aristel angrily shows us her nasty 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 says, referring to gang members.

“I can’t afford to go see him. [no hospital]. In this park, even if they brought food, there is never enough for everyone. 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 were totally abandoned by the state and we even have to pay to use a toilet,” added another.

One boy added: “My mom and dad died. My aunt saved me. I want to go to the school, but it was demolished.”

Residents speak of a perfect storm of calamity – and warn that the country is increasingly on the brink of social collapse.

What remains of the country’s emergency interim government, created last year after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, is starting to crumble and mired in accusations of inactivity. His successor, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, has vowed to fight insecurity and hold new elections, but has so far shown little progress on either goal.

Meanwhile, analysts estimate the country’s inflation at 30%. Gas is scarce and the reason for angry queues at gas stations. The UN has warned that gang violence can put young children in active combat areas at risk of imminent famine, as their parents cannot access food or work.

A source from the Haitian security forces speaking to the CNN estimated that gangs control or influence three-quarters of the city.

Frantz Elbe, director general of the Haitian National Police, rejects the claim. “It’s not a general problem in the metro area,” he told CNN refusing to provide a percentage.

However, it is indisputable that vital parts of the national infrastructure are now entirely in criminal hands. The city’s vital port – Haiti’s main one – is controlled by gangs, which dominate the road outside. So is the main road to the south of the country, meaning the fragile part of the country that was hit by an earthquake last year was effectively cut off from the capital. The gangs are also expanding their control in the east of the city, where Croix-des-Bouquets is located, and in the north, around Cité Soleil, observers said.

Kidnappings are rampant and indiscriminate – one of the few thriving industries in Haiti. Seventeen American and Canadian missionaries were kidnapped last year after visiting an orphanage in Croix-des-Bouquets, and were only released after a ransom was paid to the gang of 400 Mawozo.

The police, often unarmed, are doing what they can, Elbe told CNN .

“Gangs are changing the way they fight. Before it was with knives, now it’s with big guns. The police need to be well equipped. With what little we have, we will do what we can to fight gang members,” she said.

The challenge they face is exposed by a brief checkpoint set up in Croix-des-Bouquets, where a truck was dragged down a main road by gangs and set on fire.

Police bring in an armored military excavator to push the wreckage to the side of the road, which is already littered with other truck carcasses. The excavator operator, asked if he works under fire, replies: “Many times”.

SWAT police set up a perimeter, scanning nearby rooftops. Residents and the vehicles they travel in 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 talking to the press, or the police, or what the gang might find out he said later.

Running away from that fear, however, requires more resistance. A short boat ride from the mainland is the island of La Gonave, a hub for human traffickers.

The carefree pace and blue water of a small cove in La Gonave belie its poverty. Heat, garbage, hunger and the business of departure rule this world.

One of them, a smuggler who introduced himself as Johnny, calmly explained how his business works.

The trip is often one-way for the boat, so each venture requires that the boat be purchased in cash, at a cost of about $10,000, he says. To cover that cost, Johnny needs at least two hundred customers, who will swarm into his disheveled hull.

Fragments of netting seem to plug any gaps in the hull, and loose wooden planks make up the boat’s interior. Johnny shows where the bomb and engines will eventually go.

“If we die, we die. If we can do it, we can do it,” he said.

He added that he hopes to take his boat with 250 passengers, as he considers it to be in “good” condition.

The final destination is the United States, with Cuba and the Turks and Caicos Islands sometimes making accidental stops along the way.

And it is from these three places that the International Organization for Migration has reported increasing numbers of forced repatriations of Haitians in the first seven months of this year, with 20,016 so far, compared to 19,629 for the whole of 2021.

Some Haitians appear to be nearing the end of the journey, with the US Coast Guard interdicting 6,114 Haitians between October and late June – four times as many as between October 2020 and October 2021. This past weekend alone, more than 330 migrants from Haiti were rescued by the US Coast Guard near the Florida Keys.

The numbers are as impressive as the risks. Previous voyages of this cove ended in tragedy. Johnny is unclear about the timing of the last boat, but he was clear about the potential losses: a recent trip he organized led to the deaths of 29 people.

“The boat had an engine problem,” he said. “Water got into the boat. We asked for help, but it took too long. The boat was sinking while I was trying to save people. When help arrived, it was too late.”

although the CNN cannot independently confirm Johnny’s account of the system, two other residents who said they were involved in trafficking independently described similar details. Officials from neighboring Caribbean nations, the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, have repeatedly reported finding the remains of would-be migrants after boats capsized in their waters.

Despite the risks, many Haitians are still desperate for a way out. La Gonave residents told CNN that at least 40 people who intended to try the boat trip were already on the island and the rest would follow from the mainland as soon as Johnny said the boat was ready.

One potential passenger, a university graduate who was once a professor, described why he would risk everything to make the trip.

“I worked as a teacher, but it didn’t work out. Now I ride my motorcycle every day in the sun and dust. How will I be able to take care of my family when I have one?”

He said he saved a year’s worth of money to make the trip and didn’t fear the boat’s poor condition. “I can get eaten by a shark or make it to America.”