FRANCE 24 exclusive report in Haiti: The Iron Grip of the Gangs

FRANCE 24 flew into Port-au-Prince by helicopter this May, when the international airport was still closed, and spent weeks filming on the ground in and around the Haitian capital. Their aim: to get an understanding of what it’s like for the inhabitants there, and how this deep-rooted crisis has spiralled so spectacularly out of control.

The Haitian capital’s myriad gangs now control more than 80 percent of the city, and their notorious spokesman Jimmy Chérizier, also known as “Barbecue”, told FRANCE 24 they’re not counting on laying down their weapons any time soon. “We demand to be at the negotiating table,” he said from his stronghold in the slums of lower Port-au-Prince. “If not, we will continue to fight.”

Barbecue is the frontman of a powerful alliance of the capital’s gangs called Viv Ansamn  ("Live Together", in Creole). Instead of fighting each other, the armed groups have united and turned their firepower on the state, forcing prime minister Ariel Henry to resign during an overseas trip in March. 

Violent business

Today, the gangs wield considerable economic and military leverage. They control most of Port-au-Prince’s seafront, and therefore the zones surrounding the strategically vital ports. Haiti relies heavily on imports, shipping in more than 50 percent of its food, a figure shocking for a country with an abundance of fertile land. Many Haitians blame corrupt, ultra-wealthy elites for nurturing the situation and building up vast family fortunes via monopolies on the trade in staple goods.

“Whoever controls imports into the country controls a huge part of the economy,” says Widlore Mérancourt, editor-in-chief of the investigative Haitian news website Ayibo Post. What's the link to the gangs? “Doing business in Haiti often involves violence … and the use of criminal gangs to gain territory and advance one’s business interests,” Mérancourt explains.

“At first, some businessmen used youths and bandits to attack rivals, pillage and set on fire the businesses of those they didn’t want to deal with, and kidnap competitors … [but] the gangs became more structured and much more powerful and now in most cases, they’ve turned against their former masters.”

Now putting the gangs back inside Pandora’s box seems a near-impossible task, not least because they’ve also been fostered for years by members of Haiti’s political class. Haiti hasn't had a president since the last holder of that office, Jovenal Moise, was assassinated by gunmen just over two years ago.

‘Connivance’ between state and gangs

The current head of Haiti’s replacement Transitional Presidential Council, Edgard Leblanc Fils, readily admits the challenges of working within a corrupt political universe: “We have to recognise that state institutions have collapsed,” he says, in light of a “connivance between state authorities and gangs, and groups wishing to use gangs to win elections and occupy the sphere of power”.

Read moreExclusive report from Haiti: Inside the brutal war between gangs and police in Port-au-Prince

Speaking from the heights of Port-au-Prince, Leblanc insists that Haitian police, under Garry Conille, the new prime minister appointed by the Transition Council, can fight back. With the help of the multinational force, he hopes, the police will be able to surround and dismantle the gangs, although he admits that at the moment, they’re still very much at the stage of just trying to contain them.

FRANCE 24 saw firsthand what that containment looks like by spending a day patrolling the devastated city centre with the Haitian police's specially formed anti-gang unit. They patrol streets near to the site of the presidential palace – destroyed in the 2010 earthquake and never rebuilt – in an armoured personnel carrier already riddled with bullet marks.

Urban warfare

The police officers are weary but determined, saying they want to make their country proud, but it’s clearly hard, relentless work trying to root out the gang members hiding in the ruins of the destroyed homes and businesses of this urban front line.

Circling the streets littered with debris and burnt-out cars, the police vehicle comes under fire several times. The policemen try desperately to work out where the gunmen are. They tell FRANCE 24 they can’t often leave the vehicle to patrol on foot because they’re understaffed.

When one officer thinks he spots a gang member inside a house, he’s given the order instantly to “shoot it up”, and does so with determination. Another officer tells FRANCE 24 that they shoot at any suspicious target. For him, there can be no civilians remaining in this zone, and so if they spot someone, “[they] don’t need to know whether they’re armed or not, we just strike”. 

Trapped civilians

Whatever civilians do remain in the ruins of this central area are therefore caught in the crossfire. FRANCE 24 filmed a handful of men unwilling to give up their home to gangs or looters who said they'd become accustomed to police vehicles firing rounds down their street and gang members pillaging the buildings nearby.

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In the lower shantytowns of Port-au-Prince which are the gangs’ bastions, thousands of people remain, unable or unwilling to flee. The gangs like to portray themselves as revolutionaries, defenders of poor Haitians against the corrupt elite, and sometimes distribute food from aid agencies to the population in their areas.

But this is not their true nature, says Rosy Auguste Ducéna, programme director of the National Network for the Defence of Human Rights: “The gangs are involved in assassinations, kidnappings, rapes, gang rapes, fires, burning down homes, businesses, banks, courts and police stations.” As for Barbecue, she says grimly, “it is clear that he is not a revolutionary and never will be … he is an armed bandit.”

During a fortnight filming in and around the Haitian capital, FRANCE 24 met a population held hostage by this drawn-out crisis, which for the moment has no solution in sight.