On patrol with UN forces inside gang warzone

Two-year-old Shaina is hooked up to an IV drip in one of the few functioning hospitals in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. Her mother, Venda, desperately hopes this will alleviate the acute malnutrition the emaciated girl is suffering from.

Shaina is one of 760,000 children at risk of starvation in Haiti.

Terrified by the gang war raging in her neighborhood, Venda was for weeks too afraid to leave her house and seek treatment for her daughter.

Now that she has arrived at the pediatric ward, she hopes it is not too late for Shaina.

“I want my child to be looked after properly, I don’t want to lose her,” she said in tears.

Haiti has been plunged into a wave of gang violence since the 2021 assassination of then-President Jovenel Moïse, and it is now estimated that 85% of the capital is under gang control.

Even inside the hospital, Haitians are not safe from the fighting that the U.N. says has killed 5,000 people this year alone and left the country on the brink of collapse.

The hospital’s medical director explains that the day before, police confronted gang members in the emergency room, among terrified patients.

Victims of violence are everywhere. A room is full of young men with gunshot wounds.

Pierre is one of them.

He said he was walking home from work when he was caught in the crossfire during a street fight, with a bullet ripping through his collarbone.

“I think if the government was more stable and had better programs in place for young people, they wouldn’t be involved in gangs,” he says of the young men who make up much of the groups that terrorize the country. capital.

To combat growing violence, the UN Security Council authorized the creation of a multinational security support mission (MSS) in October 2023.

Funded primarily by the United States, the Kenyan-led force deployed to Haiti six months ago with the mission of restoring law and order.

While patrolling downtown Port-au-Prince, the ferocity of gang violence is evident.

Kenyan officers roam the streets in heavily armored personnel carriers (APCs) in once-bustling parts of the capital that are now deserted. Shops and houses are boarded up.

Burnt out cars and debris pile up along side streets – barricades built by gangs to block access.

The convoy is making its way through the rubble when suddenly it comes under fire.

Bullets strike the APC’s armor as Kenyan police return fire with their assault rifles through weapons ports in the vehicle’s walls.

After nearly an hour of exchanges of fire, the convoy leaves.

But it won’t be long before signs of even more horrific gang violence emerge. A human body burns in the street.

One of our APC’s Kenyan police officers says he suspects it was a gang member cornered and killed by a rival group, his body set on fire to send a horrific warning.

The Kenyan officers on our patrol are now used to seeing this kind of brutality on the streets of Port-au-Prince, but they also tell us they are exhausted.

Four hundred officers arrived in June, but they are vastly outnumbered. In July, the Haitian government estimated that there were 12,000 armed gang members in the country.

The Kenyans were promised additional staff. When the UN authorized the mission, a force of 2,500 troops was envisaged, but this support, which was supposed to arrive in November, has not yet materialized.

Despite the situation, the force’s leaders remain optimistic. Commander Godfrey Otunge is under pressure from the Kenyan government to succeed in this mission.

The mission commander says there is “massive support” for the MSS in Haiti.

“The population demands that our team expand and go elsewhere and pacify,” he said.

The uphill struggle they face is evident at a former Haitian police station, which had been occupied by a gang but has now been taken over by Kenyan forces.

It’s still completely surrounded by gangs, and as the officers make their way to the roof, they come under fire from snipers.

Kenyan officers fight back while urging everyone to remain discreet.

Kenyan officers say some of their much-delayed additional forces will arrive by the end of this year, bringing their total to 1,000 troops.

And this support is urgently needed. There are areas in Port-au-Prince that are so tightly controlled by gangs that they are virtually impenetrable to police.

In one of these areas, Quai Jérémie, nearly 200 civilians were killed by a single gang in the space of a weekend in early December.

In total, nearly 100 gangs are estimated to operate in the Port-au-Prince area, and boys as young as nine years old are joining their ranks.

And the problem is only getting worse. According to Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency, the number of children recruited by gangs has increased by 70% in one year.

One of the gang leaders they are rushing towards is Ti Lapli, whose real name is Renel Destina.

At the head of the Gran Ravine gang, he commands more than 1,000 men from his fortified headquarters above Port-au-Prince.

Gangs like his have exacerbated an already dire situation in Haiti and are known for massacring, raping and terrorizing civilians.

Gran Ravine is infamous for carrying out kidnappings for ransom, a practice which landed Ti Lapli a place on the FBI’s wanted list.

Ti Lapli tells us that he and his gang members “love our country very much” – but when asked about the rapes and murders that gangs like his inflict on civilians, he claimed that his men “do things that they weren’t supposed to do. [to members of rival gangs] because the same thing is being done to us.”

The reason the children join Gran Ravine is simple, he says: “The government creates no jobs, it’s a country with no economic activity. We live on waste, it’s basically a failed state.”

He failed to recognize the stifling impact that gangs like his have on the Haitian economy. Often afraid to leave their homes to go to work, civilians are also regularly extorted of money.

With 700,000 residents forced to flee their homes due to violence inflicted by groups like Gran Ravine, the capital’s schools have become camps for internally displaced people.

The trader is one of those who had to seek refuge.

She sits with her five children, huddled together on the small section of a school balcony they now call home.

“Just a few weeks ago, I was living in my own house,” she says. “But the gangs have invaded my neighborhood.”

She explains that she left for a part of town called Solino, until that too was overrun by gangs and she fled with hundreds of other people.

“Even today, I am on the run to save my life and that of my children,” she said.