Article originally in the Financial Times. Other articles .
While the gangs besiege the last bastion of the decaying Haitian government, its inhabitants desperately plan to escape. “They come at night to steal everything they can, they start fires to maintain their positions,” said the business owner who is about to withdraw his family and 15 employees from the capital Port-Au-Prince. “We’re right in the middle of all this.”
Almost the entire capital is now under the devastating control of gangs, and the temporary presidential council is swept in internal conflicts and hides around the rich enclave of Pétion-Ville in the hills. However, time is running out. Several self -defense groups under the leadership of a police officer known as Samuel, according to humanitarian officials, is the only thing that costs between the advice and the complete collapse.
Nightmare in a white day
Ganges have been seized in Haiti since the assassination of President Jovenel Može in 2021. After years of mutual wars, they joined in February last year to overthrow the government deputy Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Since then, a brutal procedure has begun to turn the capital into a hellish landscape.
The whole parts of Port-Au-Prince, where more than 2.5 million people live, have become banned zones. The gangsters guard the borders of the neighborhoods and rules over a city full of ruins, balls and fired remnants of houses and vehicles.
The resistance warriors with gang members get into the streets on the streets, while police and private military suppliers have begun to use Kamikadze drones loaded with explosives. In order to avoid revelation, the gangs of revelation, the journey through the neighborhoods that are fought are embarrassed by the destruction of the walls of ordinary people.
Finance Minister Alfred Métellus said drones could help reverse the course of the fighting, but only if they supported two thousand or three thousand other security forces. “The use of drones is necessary, but it is not enough,” he said. “They must be accompanied by the deployment of security forces to definitely take over the areas under the control of gangs.”
You never know when something falls
UN missions, led by Keny, sent approximately a thousand foreign soldiers to strengthen the overloaded police forces in Haiti. However, during a four -day visit to the capital, the Financial Times did not meet any patrol. “The security situation is a nightmare on a white day,” said Claude Joseph, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and a temporary Prime Minister for Moise. “You never know when something will fall somewhere.”
It seems that “gang intentions are now going further than just to the ordinary overthrow of the government, as they did last year,” said the analyst of the International Crisis Group Diego da Rin. According to him, they want a “open channel” with a government that would be willing to give up international support.
The gang leader Jimmy Cherizier, known as Barbecue, said the government must work with criminal groups to end violence. “We ask us to sit behind the negotiating table,” he said in February. “Otherwise we will continue to fight.”
Stunning humanitarian disaster
Gangs were created decades ago and received money from political and business elites for the persecution of opponents and the control of the poorer neighborhoods of the country. As the gangs ricked, they gained autonomy. The murder created a power vacuum that quickly filled.
The temporary government, plagued by accusations of corruption and paralyzed by internal disputes, tried to stop it. In November, it has deposed her first leader, but in her role to organize the first elections in the country since 2016 it does not show big signs of progress. The extent of humanitarian disaster in Haiti is stunning.
A million people had to leave his homes throughout the country, which is almost a tenth of the population. The UN states that more than 5,600 people were murdered last year, and 5.7 million people are expected to face acute food shortages this month. More than a third of the Haitians live from less than $ 2.15 per day.
Services in Port-Au-Prince collapsed. Two -thirds of the main public hospitals were forced to close. Ganges control roads around ports and blackmail importers of food, basic goods and fuel, thereby increasing their prices. Those who can have fled from the capital to Cap-Haitien, the second city of Haiti.
The streets spread anxiety
In addition to the capital, gangs spread in the artibonite area, which is the heart of Haiti, and in the city of Mirebalais, which lies on the way to the border with the Dominican Republic, and is a transport artery for imports. In May, the United States described two large criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
The streets of Pétion-Ville, the last government bastion, spreads anxiety. Luxury houses and hotels are hidden behind steel and concrete walls, protected by shoarding guardians. The mountains of garbage – some of them burn – line the sidewalks, while police cars and armored vehicles stand in constipation on narrow, potholes covered by roads.
When the gangsters with AK-47 and machetes attacked the house of Nadine Anee in the capital, she took her three little children and started to escape. She hid behind the buildings and escaped bloodshed. “They just appeared and started shooting,” she said. “We had nothing else to do but to run for life.”
They ended up with approximately eight thousand people in the government building in Port-Au-Prince, which was converted into a refugee camp. The labyrinth of shelters that climbed into the surrounding streets is full of odor of feces, urine and decomposing garbage. There is a steel heat in the camp and water is flooded during tidal rains.
More than 15 people sleep in a drained pool on a roof that is covered by a mosaic of recycled sails. Orienne Hector, an older woman sleeping there, had to escape several times from the gangs and now she has no “anyone”. “It’s not safe anywhere,” she said. A nurse from the Ministry of Health stated that it has rarely seen cases of cholera and tuberculosis in a camp that international non -governmental organizations visit.
The government claims that to suppress gangs it needs the full deployment of the UN blue berets, but China and Russia have previously vetoed such proposals. Washington is engaged in a possible mission led by the organization of US states, a regional diplomatic forum, which has little experience with such operations.
Security analyst in Port-Au-Prince James Boyard said that although international support is needed to fight the gangs, any long-term solution of the Haiti crisis must include building its own security forces and improving the living conditions of the population.
Despite chaos and devastation, however, many Haitians are determined to stay in the country. “Most of us don’t see their future outside Haiti. All I have is thanks to this country,” said the owner of a business preparing for evacuation from Port-Au-Prince. “Haiti is the only place that Haitians will be able to call home forever.”
© The Financial Times Limited 2025. All rights reserved. It must not be further spread, copied or modified. Ringier Slovakia Media is responsible for providing this translation. The Financial Times Limited is not responsible for the accuracy or quality of the translation.
