#jimmy chérizier
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#haiti#biden#fuck joe biden#gang violence#prime minister ariel henry#security crisis#armed conflict#international news#community safety#government instability#jimmy chérizier#g9#american imperialism
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[ABC is Private US Media]
Attacks on the international airport in Port-au-Prince generated headlines worldwide. Coordinated assaults on multiple prisons freed thousands of prisoners over the weekend. But all that could be just the beginning of what an increasing number of Haiti experts are openly referring to as a full-blown rebellion against the country's sitting government.
I was speaking to a senior diplomatic official in Haiti on Monday, a very sober and calculated person not prone to hyperbole. In discussing the situation, I used the word "gangs" and he cut me off.
"I would stop using that term if I were you," he said, arguing that gangs are what you find in American cities. In Haiti, there are multiple large criminal groups with enormous firepower, now unified with the stated goal of toppling the sitting government.
"They are armed rebel groups and this is civil war," the source said.[...]
Some 80% of the capital is under gang control, if not more, according to the UN. Those groups have fought each other and the government for years[...]
But things have fundamentally changed in the last month. We will get to the "why" in a moment, but consider the following:
-Haiti's dozens of gangs, largely grouped into two competing alliances, have seemingly set aside their differences and rather than attack each other, are working together to attack the government.
-The gangs are not hiding their goal. It is a change in government. Gang leadership, most notably a man called Jimmy Chérizier, aka Barbecue, has said the fighting won't stop until the unelected acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry is no longer in power. He's called for Henry's arrest.
-The gangs have launched a series of well-planned, massive attacks against key targets around the city. Nearly 30 police precincts have also come under fire, many completely taken over or destroyed. Government buildings have also been attacked, including one just 500 meters from the U.S. embassy. There is random, sporadic violence constantly around the city, but these attacks are strategic and targeted.
As to the why—gangs have long sought to fill a power vacuum left behind when President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021. But an inflection point came last month.
Henry, in charge since just a few weeks after Moïse's death, had said he would step down by early February. But then, he changed course. The U.S.-backed Henry said the security situation needed to improve before he could leave and new elections could take place. Last week, he committed only to holding elections in August of 2025, a full 18 months away.
That appeared to be the final straw.
In a way, this gang-fueled violence is the armed manifestation of widespread popular anger against Henry and his government. Ordinary Haitians are furious over the ever-worsening poverty, hunger, and violence we've seen under Henry. He is a near-universally loathed public figure.
It is not hard to find people in Port-au-Prince who fully support the actions taken by the gangs, even if they are terrified that they themselves or their families could be collateral damage.
It is not that most in Haiti support the gangs or the chaos they cause. Far from it. Most despise the death and destruction they’ve wrought in the country. But for now, some feel the gangs are the only group capable of forcing Henry out.[...]
Remember this staggering fact: in this democratic country, there is not one elected leader serving at any level of government anywhere in the country. No elections have been held since 2016.[...]
So the rebellion, the attempted revolution, has begun--alongside the seemingly never-ending suffering of millions of innocents.
6 Mar 24
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On March 5, Haiti’s acting prime minister took off on a chartered Gulfstream jet from a New Jersey airport with nowhere to go.
Ariel Henry—Haiti’s unelected leader since July 2021—had spent weeks traveling in Africa and the Americas trying to rally international support for his country, which has been mired in chronic poverty, political instability, and an insurgency of criminal groups led by a former Haitian police officer turned gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier, known as “Barbecue.”
While Henry was out of the country, Barbecue and his allies coordinated an armed assault calling for Henry’s ouster. They stormed police stations and prisons, released around 3,700 inmates, and attacked the airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, making it too dangerous for Henry to land there.
Instead, Henry tried to negotiate a plan to land in neighboring Dominican Republic, but he was rebuffed at the last minute by the government there, according to U.S. officials, Caribbean officials, and regional experts familiar with the matter. Other Caribbean countries reacted coolly to the prospect of hosting Henry as his support domestically and abroad began collapsing. Finally, he landed in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, where he remained in limbo until March 12, when he announced his intention to resign.
The chaos and uncertainty of Henry’s final flight as prime minister underlined the political tumult that has gripped Haiti—and the tepid response to Haiti’s downward spiral by an overstretched international community reluctant to tackle yet another crisis.
If Haiti isn’t yet formally deemed a failed state, it’s well on its way. Government institutions and basic services have broken down and gang violence has sparked one of the worst humanitarian and refugee crises in the Western Hemisphere.
“It’s an extremely dangerous situation,” said Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s former foreign minister who now runs the Haitian Observatory of International Relations think tank. “Without a change, we are facing a possibility of an entire nation becoming a big open-air jail run by gangs.”
Yet what that change should look like—and who might be willing and able to step in to make it happen—remains as unclear now as it has for more than two years.
Haiti’s near collapse has led to frantic meetings among regional leaders in recent weeks and heated debates between the Biden administration and Congress over what role, if any, the United States should play in the unfolding emergency in its own backyard. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Jamaica on Monday to meet with Caribbean leaders on the issue, and he pledged an additional $100 million in U.S. funds to finance the deployment of a multinational force to help stabilize the country.
The Biden administration is urging Congress to unlock even more funds. Two powerful Republican lawmakers—Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee—argue that the administration doesn’t have adequate plans for how it would use those funds. They also charge that the administration let its Haiti policy fester in indecision for too long, exacerbating the country’s current predicament.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has faced chronic instability for decades, fueled in part by devastating natural disasters and international aid mishaps, including a U.N. mission that brought a deadly cholera outbreak to the country as well as sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children by U.N. peacekeepers, and a 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000, followed by bungled international relief efforts that sparked a cycle of mismanagement and stunted development projects.
In 2021, then-President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated by a group of gunmen in his home, sparking the current political crisis in the country. (A Haitian judge last month indicted three prominent individuals—Moïse’s widow, an ex-prime minister, and a former Haitian chief of police—for involvement in the assassination, charges they have denied as baseless political reprisals.) Henry took over as acting president shortly after and soon began pleading with foreign powers for a military intervention to address the country’s spiraling instability.
Gangs have taken control of much of Port-au-Prince, and rights groups say the gangs have used rape and torture as weapons against the civilian population. Thousands of Haitians have been killed and kidnapped.
“It is difficult to overstate the gravity of the political, security, human rights and humanitarian situation in Haiti today,” the U.N. mission in Haiti wrote in a report to the U.N. Security Council in January, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy. The violence has led to a surge in Haitians fleeing the country; the report noted that the number of Haitians fleeing to Central America with the aim of making it across the U.S. southern border increased 23-fold in 2023—from 1,550 people in July to 35,500 people in October.
The U.S. Embassy in Haiti this week evacuated some diplomats and nonessential personnel as well as deployed a specialized detachment of U.S. Marines to bolster the embassy’s security. Gen. Laura Richardson, commander of U.S. Southern Command, told lawmakers in a hearing on Thursday that the U.S. military had plans ready to evacuate U.S. citizens if the crisis worsened.
“It’s absolute chaos. People are crying out for even some basic level of security,” said Nicole Widdersheim, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “We need to see the international community doing something very rapid to bring security and stability and protection from the violence.”
The international community, meanwhile, procrastinated on the matter for over two years, officials and experts said.
After Moïse’s assassination, the United States balked at the prospect of leading a multinational force. In 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden privately asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if Canada would take the lead, current and former officials said. Canada declined, but it offered to contribute $100 million to help fund such a force. No other country in South or Central America stepped up. Haiti, coordinating with the Biden administration, then turned to Africa. Kenya agreed to lead a mission and deploy 1,000 police officers to Haiti as part of an effort that would be coordinated and bankrolled mostly by the United States.
That plan stalled when Kenyan opposition politicians challenged the program’s legality. The U.S. government, meanwhile, already overstretched by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, let Haiti fall by the wayside, current and former U.S. officials told Foreign Policy. Biden didn’t nominate a U.S. ambassador to Haiti until May 2023, nearly two years after Moïse’s assassination. Biden’s nominee, career diplomat Dennis Hankins, was confirmed to the post by the U.S. Senate on Thursday.
“A lot of countries at the beginning were reluctant to take the lead, though Haiti needs urgent help,” Edmond said. But, he added, “At the end of the day, we also need to take our own responsibilities for our own country. I don’t think I will throw the blame only on the international community.”
Henry’s resignation announcement was quietly seen as a relief by some U.S. and regional officials, but it also created new challenges as the region tries to cobble together a temporary governance structure from afar to lead Haiti out of its crisis.
His announcement came after quiet pressure from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), officials said, as well as repeated threats from gang leaders should he return to the country. (The White House has denied reports that it also pressured Henry to resign.)
Now, CARICOM is helping craft a new presidential transitional council composed of seven voting members and two observers, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by Foreign Policy. Candidates for the council would be put forward by at least five active Haitian political parties with input from CARICOM-screened civil society organizations. Once appointed, the new council, in theory, would help restore legitimacy to Haiti’s absent government and lead the country on a path toward stability and, eventually, elections. Henry has said he’ll officially step down once the new council is in place.
Almost immediately, though, current and former officials said, those efforts hit a wall as Haitian elites began wrangling with CARICOM officials over who should make the final cut, and some potential member candidates voiced fear for their families’ lives if they joined the council. On Friday, Blinken said that most of the parties have named their representatives for the council but that several still have not.
Edmond said many Haitians are skeptical of the plan and “don’t believe it’s the right solution.” Edmond said he believes a better alternative would be for the Haitian Supreme Court to take temporary control and appoint a technocrat as prime minister to strengthen Haiti’s national police forces and lead the country into elections.
Meanwhile, Henry’s resignation has put on hold the U.S.- and U.N.-backed plan for Kenya to deploy a police force to Haiti to help restore order to the country. Kenyan President William Ruto said he remained committed to the plan but that it would only occur after the transitional council was established. It’s unclear whether Henry’s resignation will create new legal hurdles for Ruto to carry out the deployment.
Biden administration officials also considered offers from Senegal and Rwanda to lead the security assistance force, but those proposals were ultimately rejected in favor of Kenya, current and former U.S. and Haitian officials said. Rwanda faces widespread criticisms over its checkered record on human rights and authoritarian bent, and Senegal is currently mired in its own political crisis over delayed elections. However, Kenya’s police have also been accused of committing abuses at home by human rights groups, including the use of excessive force and the killing of more than 100 people in 2023.
The planned Kenyan operation, even if it is able to commence, faces significant practical and logistical challenges, U.S. officials and congressional aides said. For starters, neither Kenya, the United States, nor other regional powers have stated what the rules of engagement would be for Kenyan forces once they are deployed to the country, where they face the daunting task of quelling powerful and heavily armed gangs and a weakened and embattled local police force.
There is also the broader question of whether adding more police will solve the deeper systemic issues that led to the current situation. “The police cannot make significant inroads against gangs absent a broader political breakthrough,” Pierre Espérance, the executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti, argued in Foreign Policy last July. “In Haiti, gang members are not independent warlords operating apart from the state. They are part of the way the state functions—and how political leaders assert power.”
An unclassified U.S. intelligence assessment released this week predicted that Haitian gangs “will be more likely to violently resist a foreign national force deployment to Haiti because they perceive it to be a shared threat to their control and operations” and that Haiti’s national police have been “unable to counter gang violence and [have] been plagued by resource issues, corruption challenges, and limited training.”
Any deployment of Kenyan forces would also require substantial logistical support from the U.S. military, U.S. officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter said. Administration officials have told Congress that once given the green light, Kenyan police could be deployed to Haiti in a matter of 45 to 60 days in ideal conditions—and without U.S. boots on the ground. But Haiti has no clear base or logistics hub for the Kenyan police to be deployed to, particularly after gangs seized control of major power centers in Port-au-Prince.
Another complicating factor is the funding mechanism. After balking for nearly two years on proposals to deploy their own forces to Haiti, the U.S. and Canadian governments have both pledged to fund the Kenyan-led force, but no funding mechanism has been set up yet to do that. A multinational police mission in Haiti could cost an estimated $500 million to $800 million per year, State Department officials have told congressional oversight committees.
Risch has held up an estimated $40 million of the first tranche of U.S. funding for the Kenya-led mission. “[A]fter years of discussions, repeated requests for information, and providing partial funding to help them plan, the administration only this afternoon sent us a rough plan to address this crisis,” Risch said in a joint statement with McCaul. The administration “owes Congress a lot more details in a more timely manner before it gets more funding,” they said.
John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesperson, said the situation is getting worse in the meantime. “The violence has been increasing, not decreasing, as well as the instability. And, of course, the Haitian people are the ones that are suffering as a result,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Edmond said that even if the Kenya-led mission gets underway, the United States has a “moral obligation to consider, before the arrival of the Kenyan forces, a way to help the national police forces that are now being overwhelmed by the gangs.”
“The United States is the leader of the free world. Haiti is a member of that world, one of the closest neighbors to the U.S. There is a moral obligation here to step in.”
Widdersheim said the United States can’t dodge responsibilities. “Half measures won’t be good enough this time,” she said. “The U.S. government hasn’t in the past seemed to care enough to truly invest in Haiti’s long-term development, and it’s to our detriment because nothing ever sticks; we just get stuck doing half measures that always fail.”
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Haiti's government declared a 72-hour state of emergency on Sunday after armed gangs stormed a major prison. At least 12 people were killed and about 3,700 inmates escaped in the jailbreak.
Gang leaders are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, whose whereabouts are unknown since he travelled to Kenya.
Gangs control around 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Gang violence has plagued Haiti for years.
A government statement said two prisons - one in Port-au-Prince and the other in nearby Croix des Bouquets - were stormed over the weekend.
It said the acts of "disobedience" were a threat to national security and said it was instituting an immediate night-time curfew in response, which started at 20:00 local time (01:00 GMT on Monday).
How gangs came to dominate Haiti
Haitian media reported that police stations were attacked, distracting authorities before the coordinated assault on the jails.
Among those detained in Port-au-Prince were suspects charged in connection with the 2021 killing of President Jovenel Moïse.
In the capital, gangs have erected barricades to prevent security forces from encroaching on their territory, while their strongholds in Port-au-Prince's vast shantytowns are still largely on lockdown.
Schools and many businesses are closed, and there are reports of looting in some neighbourhoods.
Police have set up roadblocks and there is much uncertainty on the streets.
The latest upsurge in violence began on Thursday, when the prime minister travelled to Nairobi to discuss sending a Kenya-led multinational security force to Haiti.
Gang leader Jimmy Chérizier (nicknamed Barbecue) declared a co-ordinated attack to remove him.
"All of us, the armed groups in the provincial towns and the armed groups in the capital, are united," said the former police officer, who is accused of being behind several massacres in Port-au-Prince.
Haiti's police union had asked the military to help reinforce the capital's main prison, but the compound was stormed late on Saturday.
On Sunday the doors of the prison were still open and there were no signs of officers, Reuters news agency reported. Three inmates who tried to flee lay dead in the courtyard, the report said.
A journalist for the AFP news agency who visited the prison saw around 10 bodies, some with signs of injuries caused by bullets.
One volunteer prison worker told the Reuters news agency that 99 prisoners - including former Colombian soldiers jailed over President Moïse's murder - had chosen to remain in their cells for fear of being killed in crossfire.
They have now been transferred to a different prison.
The US embassy in Port-au-Prince on Sunday urged its citizens to leave Haiti "as soon as possible". The French embassy said it was closing visa services as a "precaution".
While Haiti has been plagued by gangs for years, the violence has further escalated since President Moïse's assassination at his home in 2021. He has not been replaced and presidential elections have not been held since 2016.
Under a political deal, Mr Henry was due to stand down by 7 February. But planned elections were not held and he remains in post.
A spokesperson for the White House's National Security Council said it was "monitoring the rapidly deteriorating security situation" with "grave concern".
They said the path forward "lies with free and fair elections" and violence serves "only to delay a democratic transition while... upending the lives of thousands".
Speaking to the BBC's Newsday, Claude Joseph - who was serving as acting prime minister when President Moïse was assassinated and who is now head of the opposition party called Those Committed to Development - said Haiti was living through a "nightmare".
Mr Joseph said Prime Minister Henry wanted "to stay as long as possible in charge".
"He agreed to step down on 7 February. Now he decides to stay, despite the fact that there are huge protests throughout the country asking him to step down - but it's unfortunate that now those criminals are using violent means to force him to step down."
In January, the UN said more than 8,400 people were victims of Haiti's gang violence last year, including killings, injuries and kidnappings - more than double the numbers seen in 2022.
Many health facilities have stopped operating because of the bloodshed.
Anger at the shocking levels of violence, on top of the political vacuum, have led to several demonstrations against the government, with protesters demanding the resignation of the prime minister.
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Haiti's Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier: Gang leader or revolutionary?
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A long-simmering crisis over Haiti’s ability to govern itself, particularly after a series of natural disasters and an increasingly dire humanitarian emergency, has come to a head in the Caribbean nation, as its de facto president remains stranded in Puerto Rico and its people starve and live in fear of rampant violence.
The chaos engulfing the country has been bubbling for more than a year, only for it to spill over on the global stage on Monday night, as Haiti’s unpopular prime minister, Ariel Henry, agreed to resign once a transitional government is brokered by other Caribbean nations and parties, including the U.S.
But the very idea of a transitional government brokered not by Haitians but by outsiders is one of the main reasons Haiti, a nation of 11 million, is on the brink, according to humanitarian workers and residents who have called for Haitian-led solutions.
What is happening in Haiti and why?
In the power vacuum that followed the assassination of democratically elected President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, Henry, who was prime minister under Moïse, assumed power, with the support of several nations, including the U.S.
When Haiti failed to hold elections multiple times — Henry said it was due to logistical problems or violence — protests rang out against him. By the time Henry announced last year that elections would be postponed again, to 2025, armed groups that were already active in Port-au-Prince, the capital, dialed up the violence.
Even before Moïse’s assassination, these militias and armed groups existed alongside politicians who used them to do their bidding, including everything from intimidating the opposition to collecting votes. With the dwindling of the country’s elected officials, though, many of these rebel forces have engaged in excessively violent acts, and have taken control of at least 80% of the capital, according to a United Nations estimate.
Those groups, which include paramilitary and former police officers who pose as community leaders, have been responsible for the increase in killings, kidnappings and rapes since Moïse’s death, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program at Uppsala University in Sweden. According to a report from the U.N. released in January, more than 8,400 people were killed, injured or kidnapped in 2023, an increase of 122% increase from 2022.
Armed groups who had been calling for Henry’s resignation have already attacked airports, police stations, sea ports, the Central Bank and the country’s national soccer stadium. The situation reached critical mass earlier this month when the country’s two main prisons were raided, leading to the escape of about 4,000 prisoners. The beleaguered government called a 72-hour state of emergency, including a night-time curfew — but its authority had evaporated by then.
Aside from human-made catastrophes, Haiti still has not fully recovered from the devastating earthquake in 2010 that killed about 220,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless, many of them living in poorly built and exposed housing. More earthquakes, hurricanes and floods have followed, exacerbating efforts to rebuild infrastructure and a sense of national unity.
Since the earthquake, “there have been groups in Haiti trying to control that reconstruction process and the funding, the billions of dollars coming into the country to rebuild it,” said Beckett, who specializes in the Caribbean, particularly Haiti.
Many armed groups have formed in recent years claiming to be community groups carrying out essential work in underprivileged neighborhoods, but they have instead been accused of violence, even murder. One of the two main groups, G-9, is led by a former elite police officer, Jimmy Chérizier — also known as “Barbecue” — who has become the public face of the unrest and claimed credit for various attacks on public institutions. He has openly called for Henry to step down and called his campaign an “armed revolution.”
But caught in the crossfire are the residents of Haiti. In just one week, 15,000 people have been displaced from Port-au-Prince, according to a U.N. estimate. But people have been trying to flee the capital for well over a year, with one woman telling NBC News that she is currently hiding in a church with her three children and another family with eight children. The U.N. said about 160,000 people have left Port-au-Prince because of the swell of violence in the last several months.
Deep poverty and famine are also a serious danger. Gangs have cut off access to the country’s largest port, Autorité Portuaire Nationale, and food could soon become scarce.
Haiti's uncertain future
A new transitional government may dismay the Haitians and their supporters who call for Haitian-led solutions to the crisis.
But the creation of such a government would come after years of democratic disruption and the crumbling of Haiti’s political leadership. The country hasn’t held an election in eight years.
Haitian advocates and scholars like Jemima Pierre, an associate anthropology professor at Columbia University, say foreign intervention, including from the U.S., is partially to blame for Haiti’s turmoil. The U.S. has routinely sent thousands of troops to Haiti, intervened in its government and supported unpopular leaders like Henry.
In fact, the country’s situation was so dire that Henry was forced to travel abroad in the hope of securing a U.N. peacekeeping deal. He went to Kenya, which agreed to send 1,000 troops to coordinate an East African and U.N.-backed alliance to help restore order in Haiti,but the plan is now on hold. Kenya agreed last October to send a U.N.-sanctioned security force to Haiti, but Kenya’s courts decided it was unconstitutional. The result has been Haiti fending for itself.
“A force like Kenya, they don’t speak Kreyòl, they don’t speak French,” Pierre said. “The Kenyan police are known for human rights abuses. So what does it tell us as Haitians that the only thing that you see that we deserve are not schools, not reparations for the cholera the U.N. brought, but more military with the mandate to use all kinds of force on our population? That is unacceptable.”
Now that Henry is to stand down, it is far from clear what the armed groups will do or demand next, aside from the right to govern.
“It’s the Haitian people who know what they’re going through. It’s the Haitian people who are going to take destiny into their own hands. Haitian people will choose who will govern them,” Chérizier said recently, according to The Associated Press.
Haitians and their supporters have put forth their own solutions over the years, holding that foreign intervention routinely ignores the voices and desires of Haitians.
In 2021, both Haitian and non-Haitian church leaders, women’s rights groups, lawyers, humanitarian workers, the Voodoo Sector and more created the Commission to Search for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis. The commission has proposed the “Montana Accord,” outlining a two-year interim government with oversight committees tasked with restoring order, eradicating corruption and establishing fair elections.
#What to know about the crisis of violence#politics and hunger engulfing Haiti#Haiti#Commission to Search for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis
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The move came during the absence of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is in Kenya trying to finalize details for the deployment of a foreign armed force to Haiti to help combat gangs.
Gunmen shot at Haiti’s main international airport and other targets in a wave of violence that caught many people by surprise, forcing businesses, government agencies and schools to close early as parents and young children fled through the streets in panic. At least one airline, Sunrise Airways, suspended all flights.
Jimmy Chérizier, known as “Barbecue” and leader of the gang federation G9 Family and Allies, was seen in a recorded video announcing that the aim was to tie up the police chief and government ministers and prevent Henry from returning to Haiti.
“With our guns and with the Haitian people, we will free the country,” he said.
Probably taking too much from a quote that may not even be real but I do wonder what this guy means by "free the country." Is this his dream of rule by organized crime, does he dream of anarcho-capitalism? Probably just generic anti-foreigner stuff wrt Kenya I guess
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Why The US Won't Leave Haiti Alone
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#Youtube#haiti#gang violence#prime minister ariel henry#security crisis#armed conflict#international news#community safety#government instability#jimmy chérizier#g9
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Watch "Haiti's Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier: Gang leader or revolutionary? | The Chris Hedges Report" on YouTube
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Haiti's Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier: Gang leader or revolutionary? | The Chris Hedges Report
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"Haiti's Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier: Gang leader or revolutionary? | The Chris Hedges Report"
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#haiti#jimmy cherizier#chris hedges#cia#us foreign policy#deep research#ned#national endowment for democracy
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Haiti is fast descending into anarchy.
Over the weekend, the violence in the capital Port-au-Prince ramped up once again. Heavily armed gangs attacked the National Palace and set part of the Interior Ministry on fire with petrol bombs.
It comes after a sustained attack on the international airport, which remains closed to all flights - including one carrying Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
He tried to fly back to Haiti from the United States last week, but his plane was refused permission to land. He was then turned away from the neighbouring Dominican Republic too.
Mr Henry is now stuck in Puerto Rico, unable to set foot in the nation he ostensibly leads.
Among those who did manage to get into the stricken Caribbean nation, though, was a group of US military personnel.
Following a request from the US State Department, the Pentagon confirmed it had carried out an operation to, as it put it, "augment the security" of the US embassy in Port-au-Prince and airlift all non-essential staff to safety.
Soon after, the EU said it had evacuated all of its diplomats, fleeing a nation mired in violence and facing its biggest humanitarian crisis since the 2010 earthquake.
Millions of Haitians, however, simply don't have that luxury. They're trapped, no matter how bad things get.
The situation is dire at the State University of Haiti Hospital, known as the general hospital, in downtown Port-au-Prince. There is no sign of any medical staff at all.
A dead body, covered by a sheet and swarming with flies, lies in a bed next to patients waiting in vain for treatment.
Despite the overpowering stench, no-one has come to remove the body. It is rapidly decomposing in the Caribbean heat.
"There are no doctors, they all fled last week," said Philippe a patient who didn't want to give his real name.
"We can't go outside. We hear the explosions and gunfire. So, we must have courage and stay here, we can't go anywhere."
With no prime minister and a government in disarray, the gangs' power over the capital is near absolute.
They control more than 80% of Port-au-Prince and the country's most notorious gang leader, Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier has again told the prime minister to resign.
"If Ariel Henry doesn't step down and the international community continues to support him," he said last week, "they will lead us directly to a civil war which will end in genocide."
Meanwhile, the police, outnumbered and demoralised, are struggling to keep looters at bay. The Salomon police station in Port-au-Prince was attacked and burnt out, and charred police vehicles lie outside the still-smouldering building.
US evacuates Haiti embassy staff amid gang violence
Haiti's main port closes as gang violence spirals
Haiti gangs demand PM resign after mass jailbreak
Nevertheless, even in the face of the total collapse of law and order, people must still venture out to make a living.
At a nearby market, several street hawkers told the BBC they had no other option but to leave their homes, even with gunmen roaming the streets.
"I have three kids, and I'm all they have - I'm their mother and their father," said Jocelyn, a market trader who also didn't want to give her real name.
"So, I'm obliged to take to the streets. Yesterday gunmen came here and stole all our money. A lot of vendors lost all their money. But there's no way to stay at home when you have three mouths to feed."
"The anxiety is killing me when I'm in the street," echoed an older woman selling fruit. "I keep thinking what if I get shot dead? Who will take care of my children then? I have no family to support me."
To the west, in one of Haiti's nearest neighbours, Jamaica, the dignitaries, diplomats and heads of state of the Caricom regional group are gathering for an emergency summit.
The instability in Haiti is a problem for the entire Caribbean community, and for Washington too. The idea of a nation of some 11 million people being run by gangs is of huge concern, particularly the potential impact on outward migration during an election year in the US.
It's clear Caricom favours seeing Mr Henry resign as soon as possible, from outside of the country if necessary.
The Biden administration in the US has publicly said the unelected prime minister - who had promised to hold an election in February - should return to Haiti, but only in order to stand down and begin a transition to a new government.
Privately, though, US diplomats are increasingly aware that it might now be impossible for him to return, and that even attempting to do so could further destabilise Haiti.
A UN-backed plan for a Kenyan-led rapid reaction force to tackle the gangs is still far from becoming a reality.
To add to the lawlessness, a week ago, around 4,000 inmates escaped after the gangs attacked the main prison in Port-au-Prince.
Those prisoners are now back on the streets and bolstering the ranks of their gangs.
In the aftermath, the cell doors are now wide open, the facility is virtually abandoned and there are blood stains on the ground after gunmen overpowered the guards.
A prime minister unable to return, violent gangs in control of the capital and dead bodies piling up on the streets: Haiti is currently a nation about as close to a failed state as it's possible to be.
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Haiti crisis: What we know about the gang takeover that has killed dozens and displaced 15,000
Haiti is spiralling further into chaos after armed gang members freed thousands of prisoners, burned government buildings, and forced the prime minister out of the country.
Dozens of people are dead and roughly 15,000 have been forced to flee their homes due to gang raids, according to the Associated Press, with many now facing dwindling supplies of food and water.
The violence escalated on 29 February when Haiti’s powerful criminal gangs, which already controlled large parts of the economy and most of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, launched a series of attacks on police stations, prisons, and other government buildings.
With all the capital’s international airports now seized by gangs, prime minister Ariel Henry is trapped outside the country and facing both domestic and international pressure to resign.
The US has airlifted in extra military muscle to guard its embassy in Port-au-Prince, while Caribbean leaders are meeting in Jamaica to find a solution to the crisis.
So how exactly did this happen?
Former police officer Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier, who leads an alliance of armed groups in Haiti, gives a news conference in Port-au-Prince on 11 March, 2024
Gunfire, mass jailbreaks, and an absent prime minister
The heightened upheaval this month began while Prime Minister Ariel Henry was travelling to Kenya to push forward a United Nations deal that would bring 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti to help restore security.
On 28 February, leaders of Caricom — a trade bloc comprised of 15 Caribbean countries or territories — announced that Henry had pledged to hold elections by mid-2025, after promising and then failing to do so twice before.
We don’t know exactly why Haiti’s powerful criminal gangs chose that moment to strike. But one day later, they unleashed a wave of violence that killed at least four police officers and forced airports, businesses, and schools to close and numerous Haitians to flee their homes.
In a recorded video, gang leader and former police officer Jimmy Chérizier — known by his childhood nickname, “Barbecue” — declared that he planned to capture various government ministers and prevent Henry from entering the country.
“With our guns and with the Haitian people, we will free the country,” said Chérizier, who has previously claimed that he is a “revolutionary” rather than a mere crook.
Former police officer Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier, leader of the ‘G9’ coalition in Haiti
On Saturday night, gangs led a mass jailbreak at Haiti’s national penitentiary, reportedly releasing nearly all of its roughly 4,000 prisoners. Three people were found fatally shot outside the facility, while the other Port-au-Prince prison, which held 1,400 people, was also taken over.
Several prisoners and prison staff members were injured in the two raids, Haitian government officials said in less than reassuring statement.
“Our police officers, on the scene of several operations – facing the rampages of heavily armed criminals wanting at all costs to free people in custody, particularly for kidnapping, murder and other serious offenses, and not hesitating to execute civilians, burning and looting public and private property – thanks to various collusions, did not succeed in preventing the bandits from bringing out a large number of prisoners,” the statement read.
Only a small portion of inmates did not flee. Among them were reportedly the 18 Colombian mercenaries accused of orchestrating the assassination of a previous Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, in 2021. Their attorney, Samuel Madistin, told The New York Times they remained in the prison out of fear for their lives.
Since Mr Moïse was killed, Haiti has faced widespread violence at the hands of gangs. According to a UN report, there were nearly 5,000 homicides in 2023 — twice as many as the prior year.
Haiti’s finance minister Michel Patrick Boisvert, who is acting prime minister while Henry is away, declared a state of emergency and imposed an evening curfew.
But by Sunday 10 March, the government was still struggling to quell the violence, with sporadic gunfire audible across Port-au-Prince while ordinary Haitians run low on basic supplies.
How did Haiti’s criminal gangs become so powerful?
On the afternoon of 13 November 2018, a police armoured vehicle drove into the La Saline neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince and unloaded its cargo of armed men, some of whom were wearing police uniforms.
What happened next was one of Haiti's worst massacres in decades. At least 71 people were killed, 11 raped, and 150 homes looted and destroyed, according to a report by human rights observers.
The leader of the slaughter, the report alleges, was Jimmy Chérizier – then a serving police officer, allegedly acting with the support of senior Haitian politicians who wanted to punish La Saline for its role in a huge wave of protests against then-President Moïse.
That was the first of many atrocities allegedly backed by Moïse's government, which experts say increasingly colluded with criminals to keep a lid on unrest.
"'Barbecue' is a Frankenstein['s monster] who has broken free from his master," Sorbonne University geographer Jean-Marie Theodat told AFP, a French news agency, on Sunday.
Haiti has long suffered from poverty and political stability. Founded in 1804 by Black revolutionaries who had broken the shackles of slavery, it was eventually forced at swordpoint to pay vast sums in compensation to French former slave-owners, creating a debt that would cripple its development for more than a century.
Haitian politicians have relied on armed gangs to enforce their rule since at least 1959, when the infamous dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier formed a paramilitary militia known as the Tonton Macoute – named after a mythological boogeyman.
The problem continued long after the Duvalier family were overthrown in 1986, as Haiti stumbled between military coups and foreign interventions.
In 1995 the Haitian military was disbanded after one coup too many, but that put thousands of armed men out of work while creating a power vacuum. When a rogue police official attempted another coup in 2001, it was armed civilians, not soldiers, that thwarted him.
Meanwhile, Haiti's position between Latin America and the US made it an attractive route for drug smugglers, creating a new line of commerce for the gangs.
Experts say that some progress was made under René Préval, the only Haitian leader to democratically win and complete two terms, who took a hard line on gangs.
But in 2010, Haiti was struck by a massive magnitude 7.0 earthquake that flattened Port-au-Prince, killing anything between 100,000 and 316,000 people. The Haitian economy was more or less destroyed, while thousands of former gang members escaped from jail.
Since then, democratic government has steadily crumbled in Haiti. Before his death, Moïse was accused of consolidating power and ruling by decree, repeatedly violating the constitution while refusing to step down at the end of his term.
While the reasons for his assassination remain murky, a New York Times investigation found evidence that he was preparing to name names about senior Haitian politicians and businessfolk involved in the drug trade.
For his part, Ariel Henry has repeatedly reneged on promises to hold elections, saying that gang violence would make it impossible to ensure that they are fair.
Hence, Haiti has been trapped in fiendish double bind. The United Nations has warned that security must improve before elections can be held. But the lack of elections has created a crisis of legitimacy that empowers and emboldens the gangs.
"For the last the three years, the gangs started to gain autonomy. And now they are a power unto themselves," University of Virginia professor Robert Fatton told AP.
Just ask Jimmy Chérizier, who gave an interview to AP earlier this year as he strolled through the slums of La Saline, flanked by armed guards and watched from above by a personal monitoring drone.
"The government of Ariel Henry is a de-facto government. It’s a government that has no legitimacy," he said. "I’m not a thief. I’m not involved in kidnapping. I’m not a rapist. I’m just carrying out a social fight."
What happens next?
Henry is currently stuck in the US territory of Puerto Rico, having been refused entry by the Dominican Republic (Haiti’s neighbour on the island of Hispaniola, which shares a land border with it).
Chérizier and other gang leaders are dead set on removing him, and have promised to temporarily stop the violence if he agrees to resign.
“We are going to call for a truce just to evaluate the situation,” Chérizier told ABC News. “Everywhere around Port-au-Prince that is currently blocked or inaccessible will be reopened and we will automatically stop the attacks on the police stations.”
A growing number of government officials within Haiti are also calling for Henry to resign, although according to the Associated Press he has rejected these calls.
On Monday US secretary of state Antony Blinken arrived in Jamaica for an urgent Caricom summit aimed at resolving the crisis. Whether Henry was allowed to attend this meeting is unknown.
One possible solution on the table: Henry could resign and be replaced by a transitional council, which would select an interim president and arrange the country’s first elections since 2016.
However, it’s hard to imagine how free and fair elections could take place under the current conditions of violence, in a country where armed groups have usurped such power from the government.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has approved an intervention plan that would send 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti to help restore order. But this intervention faces several barriers.
For one, Kenya’s High Court has ruled it unconstitutional; for another, 1,000 police officers would not even replace the estimated 3,300 Haitian officers who have deserted since 2021.
The mission is also not very well funded: the US has pledged less than $200m, while Canada has said it will give $80m.
All of which leaves the future of Haiti, and the safety and prosperity of its people, severely in doubt.
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