Haitians pawns in gang warfare

It was about 6 a.m. when Venique Moïse flung open the door of her house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and saw dozens of people running, with children in one hand, scant belongings in the other, as gunfire intensified.

Minutes later, she joined the crowd with her own three kids and fled as fires burned nearby, collapsing homes. Over the coming hours and days, the bodies of nearly 200 men, women and children — shot, burned or mutilated with machetes by warring gangs — were found in that part of the capital city.

“That Sunday, when the war started, I felt that I was going to die,” Moïse said.

Gangs are fighting each other and seizing territory in Port-au-Prince with a new intensity and brutality. The violence has horrified many who feel the country is swiftly unraveling as it tries to recover from the July 7, 2021, assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and the United Nations prepares to debate the future of its longtime presence in the country.

Experts say the scale and duration of gang clashes, the power criminals wield and the amount of territory they control has reached levels not seen before.

Gangs have forced schools, businesses and hospitals to close as they raid new neighborhoods, seize control of the main roads connecting the capital to the rest of the country and kidnap victims daily, including eight Turkish citizens still held captive, authorities say.

Gangs also are recruiting more children than before, arming them with heavy weapons and forming temporary alliances with other gangs to take over more territory for economic and political gain ahead of the country’s general elections, said Jaime Vigil Recinos, the UN’s police commissioner in Haiti.

“It’s astonishing,” he said of the ruthless clashes.