On patrol with UN forces inside gang warzone

A two-year-old girl named Shaina smiles nervously at one of the few working hospitals in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Her mother, Venda, is fervently hoping it will cure the frail girl’s malnutrition.

Shaina is one of the 760,000 children who are on the verge of starvation in Haiti.

Afraid of the war going on in the area where he lived, for several weeks Mr. Venda was so scared that he did not leave his house to receive treatment for his daughter.

Now that she has reached the children’s ward, she hopes that Shaina is not too late.

“I want to take good care of my son, I don’t want to lose him,” she says through tears.

Haiti has been plagued by terrorist violence since the assassination of then-president Jovenel Moïse in 2021, and now approximately 85% of the capital is controlled by terrorists.

Even inside the hospital, Haitians are not safe from the war, which the UN says has killed 5,000 people this year alone and left the country on the brink of collapse.

The medical director of the hospital explains that the day before, the police fought with terrorists in the emergency room among panic patients.

Victims of this violence are everywhere. In the room there are young men with open wounds.

Pierre is one of them.

He says he was coming home from work after a street fire, with a bullet going through his collar bone.

“I think that if the government had been stable and implemented good programs for young people, they would not have joined the gangs,” he said, referring to the young men who make up the majority of the gangs that threaten the capital.

In order to combat the increasing violence, the UN Security Council approved the creation of the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in October 2023.

With the support of the US in particular, a Kenyan-led military force was sent to Haiti six months ago to restore law and order.

When patrolling the city of Port-au-Prince, the danger of terrorist attacks is clear.

Kenyan officials drive through the streets in armored personnel carriers (APCs) through the depopulated former capital. Shops and houses are built.

Burnt-out cars and debris are piled up on the side of the road – barricades erected by thugs to block them.

The group walks through the ruins when suddenly they are set on fire.

Bullets hit the APC as Kenyan police fire their rifles through the walls of the vehicle.

After about an hour of gunfire back and forth, the group is on its way.

But soon there are signs of more serious gang violence. A man’s body is burning in the middle of the road.

One of the Kenyan police in our APC says he is suspected to be a terrorist who was cornered and killed by a rival gang, his body was set on fire to give an ominous warning.

The Kenyan officials who patrol our streets are now used to seeing this kind of violence on the streets of Port-au-Prince, but they are also telling us that they are fed up.

Four hundred officers arrived in June – but they are too many. In July, the Haitian government estimated that there are 12,000 terrorists in the country.

Kenyans were promised more workers. When the UN approved the project, a force of 2,500 was considered, but this aid, which was supposed to arrive in November, was not fulfilled.

Despite this, the group’s leadership remains optimistic. Army chief Godfrey Otunge is being pressured by the Kenyan government to do the job well.

The head of the mission says there is “a lot of support” for MSS in Haiti.

“People want our team to expand and go to other places to calm down,” he says.

The problems they are facing are best seen at a former police station in Haiti, which was occupied by terrorists but has now been retaken by the Kenyan military.

It is still surrounded by thugs and, as the officers climb onto the roof, they are threatened by the thugs.

Kenyan officials are firing as they urge everyone to stay low.

Kenyan officials say some of the delayed additions will arrive by the end of this year, bringing the total to 1,000.

And help is urgently needed. There are areas in Port-au-Prince that are under the control of the rebels that are beyond the reach of the police.

In one such area, Wharf Jérémie, about 200 civilians were killed by a single terrorist group within a week at the beginning of December.

About 100 groups are said to be operating in the Port-au-Prince area, and boys as young as nine have joined their ranks.

And the problem is only getting worse. According to the UN Children’s Organization, Unicef, the number of children recruited into terrorism has increased by 70 percent annually.

One of the gang leaders he visits is Ti Lapli, whose real name is Renel Destina.

As the head of the Gran Ravine gang, he commands more than 1,000 men from his walled headquarters high above Port-au-Prince.

Gangs like his have exacerbated an already existing crisis in Haiti, and are known to kill, rape and terrorize civilians.

Gran Ravine is notorious for kidnapping people for ransom, a practice that has landed Ti Lapli on the FBI’s wanted list.

Ti Lapli tells us that he and his gang “love our country” – but when forced to rape and kill gangs like civilians, he said his men “do things they shouldn’t do. [to members of rival gangs] because we have too.”

The reason why children join Gran Ravine is simple, he says: “The government doesn’t do any work, it’s a country with no economic activity. We’re living on garbage, it’s actually a failed country.”

He failed to acknowledge the extent to which gangs were destroying the Haitian economy. Often afraid to leave their homes to work, ordinary people are also deprived of money.

With 700,000 people forced to flee their homes due to violence by groups such as Gran Ravine, the capital’s schools have become refugee camps.

Negociant is one of those who had to seek shelter.

He lives with his five children, huddled together in a small part of the school corridor that they now call home.

“A few weeks ago I was living in my own house,” he says. But the terrorists took over my area.

He explains that he left for another part of the city called Solino, until he was also attacked by terrorists and fled with hundreds of other people.

“Today, I am fleeing to save my life and my children,” he says.