Attacks have escalated in Haiti this week, with gunmen firing on a U.S. embassy vehicle and a United Nations helicopter as criminal gangs overwhelm the country’s security forces, some of whom are tasked with fighting gangs. This includes international missions.
The helicopter was hit by gunfire in mid-air while flying over the capital Port-au-Prince on Thursday, United Nations officials said. It was carrying three crew members and 15 passengers.
Arnaud Royer, head of the U.N. human rights office in Haiti, said no one was injured and the helicopter landed safely. The helicopter is used by the United Nations’ World Food Program to deliver humanitarian aid to Haitians living in communities divided by gangs.
On Monday, a gang fired on two US embassy vehicles as they drove through Port-au-Prince. A State Department spokesperson confirmed that no employees were injured. Officials told the Times that about 20 embassy staff will be evacuated.
“The United States strongly condemns the ongoing gang violence in Port-au-Prince that is aimed at destabilizing governments,” Brian A. Nichols, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said in a statement after Monday’s attack. . “Those responsible will be held accountable by Haitian and international authorities.”
Multinational security forces were sent to Haiti in June in an effort to restore order in the gang-ravaged country. The mission, which has so far comprised about 430 police officers from Kenya, Jamaica, the Bahamas and Belize, is intended to serve as reinforcements for the Haitian police, which are outgunned, underfunded and severely underpaid.
Some progress has been made.
Port-au-Prince Airport has reopened. Many street vendors have resumed operations in some areas of the capital. Gang members were kicked out of Port-au-Prince’s main public hospital, which remains closed. Haitian police then re-entered parts of the city they had abandoned.
Still, experts question whether these improvements indicate success for the coalition or the result of a pause in hostilities between some armed groups.
What is clear is that multinational security forces have been deployed for several months and have “not had a significant impact on the security situation,” said the Haitian Institute for Justice and Democracy, a legal advocacy group. said senior staff attorney Alexandra Filippova. “People remain in deep fear.”
More than 10,000 people have been displaced in the past week due to armed attacks in and around Port-au-Prince, according to a report by the United Nations Migration Agency. More than 700,000 people in the capital are unable to return to their homes after gang attacks in their neighborhoods.
“Unfortunately, the situation in Haiti is deteriorating,” Maria Isabel Salvador, head of the country’s UN mission, told the UN Security Council this week. She added that in the past three months, murders, rapes and kidnappings have increased and spread beyond Port-au-Prince.
William O’Neill, the United Nations human rights expert on Haiti, said the central problem was that there were not enough police officers or members of multinational forces to confront the heavily armed gangs.
“It’s a game of whack-a-mole,” O’Neill said, adding that he feared the attack on the helicopter could cause the United Nations to suspend humanitarian flights.
Haiti’s southern peninsula, with a population of 3 million people, is effectively held hostage by a gang of about 1,000 members, “half of whom are teenagers,” he added.
Some experts say international missions do not appear to have a clear strategy for combating gangs.
It’s too early to call the deployment a failure, but there is an urgent need to “get our act together,” said Rosie Auguste Dussena, a lawyer and program director at the Haiti National Human Rights Defense Network. .
Multinational force spokesman Jack Ombaka declined to comment.
Gangs have also stepped up attacks in areas outside Port-au-Prince, where police presence is minimal.
In one particularly horrific episode, at least 88 people were killed this month in a gang massacre in the small agricultural town of Ponsonde in central Haiti. Entire families, including children, were wiped out and more than 6,700 people were evacuated from their homes, human rights groups said.
Experts say there are an estimated 200 gangs in Haiti, ranging from small, poorly equipped groups to professional, hierarchical organizations, with a variety of interests and motivations.
Some are involved in transnational criminal networks that traffic in weapons and drugs. Other groups appear to want to exert political influence, mimicking the origins of some of these groups as militias used by Haitian political actors to maintain power.
Experts said it was unclear why the U.N. helicopter and U.S. embassy vehicle were targeted, other than the escalation in violence. But the latest attack highlighted the chaos in the country and the lack of government control.
The transitional council that runs Haiti is supposed to pave the way for a presidential election, but the previous president was assassinated more than three years ago. But the council has been hampered by infighting and corruption accusations.
Ms Filippova of the Institute for Justice and Democracy said: “Haiti’s crisis is a crisis of governance compounded by insecurity.” “So we cannot end the insecurity unless we address governance.”
David C. Adams and Andre Paultre contributed reporting.
