Haiti ramps up the fight against gangs in the capital, but violence spreads elsewhere

At least 47 people were killed and 22 wounded in the raid, according to news reports, in one of the deadliest recent attacks on the once relatively peaceful area, which has increasingly become a target for armed groups seeking to expand beyond Port-au-Prince.

The massacre offered a grim coda to a new UN report released Tuesday documenting how Haiti’s gang violence is spreading geographically even as the authorities’ anti-gang campaign intensifies in Port-au-Prince.

At least 1,408 people were killed and 656 injured from April through June, according to the UN Integrated Office in Haiti, known by its French acronym, BINUH. That was about 14 per cent fewer casualties than during the first three months of the year, a modest decline masking starkly different realities across the country. More than half of the casualties were attributed to gangs, while about 40 per cent occurred during security operations against them and 5 per cent were linked to self-defense groups and vigilantes.

“These figures show that the population continues to bear an unacceptable toll from violence,” Carlos Ruiz Massieu, the head of BINUH and the UN’s top representative in Haiti, said in a statement accompanying the report.

Security operations have constrained gang activity in parts of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, including Delmas and Tabarre. But the pressure appears in some cases to have displaced violence rather than suppressed it.

In the capital’s sprawling Plaine du Cul-de-Sac and Cité Soleil, rival gangs fought extraordinarily violent battles over territory and illicit revenue during the quarter. The fighting killed 463 people, while hundreds more were wounded or raped. More than 18,000 residents fled their homes, and health and education services were suspended.

The report partly attributes the intensity of the clashes to security operations elsewhere in the capital, which pushed gang members toward the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac. The area is strategically located along two major roads connecting the capital’s container port and the Varreux oil terminal with northern Haiti.

Outside Port-au-Prince, gangs continued to push into new territory. In the Artibonite, Haiti’s major agricultural region northwest of the capital, armed groups attacked communities, killing residents in their homes and farmers working in their fields. Farther south, the Village de Dieu gang carried out a series of raids around Séguin, an area that had previously been largely spared such violence. BINUH said the incursions could reflect an attempt to establish new sources of revenue, including through control of roads leading toward the port of Marigot.

The assault on Kenscoff this week underscores how difficult it has been to contain that expansion. The hillside community has endured a dozen gang attacks since last year, according to the UN.

Perhaps the starkest evidence of the collapse of civilian protection is the scale of sexual violence.

BINUH documented at least 796 victims of gang-related rape during the second quarter. In the vast majority of cases, multiple perpetrators were involved, and the UN cautioned that sexual violence remained severely underreported because survivors feared reprisals and stigma or distrusted the police and courts.

In areas contested by rival gangs, rape has been used to punish and terrorize residents. The report described women being beaten and raped, sometimes in front of their children, because they lived in territory controlled by opposing gangs. Their homes were sometimes ransacked and set ablaze.

Kidnappings also rose sharply, with at least 81 people abducted for ransom during the quarter.

As the authorities have intensified their campaign, however, civilians have also been caught in the operations meant to dislodge the gangs.

More than 800 people were killed or injured during security-force operations in the quarter, which increasingly include explosive drones deployed by a government task force composed of Haitian police officers and members of a foreign private military company. At least 95 of the casualties were civilians unaffiliated with gangs, according to the report.

BINUH said nine civilians, including six children, were killed or wounded specifically in explosive-drone operations. The UN also said it had received no information that the authorities had opened investigations into casualties caused during security operations, including those involving the private military company.

The report arrives as Haiti and its international partners are betting on a substantially expanded international security presence. The UN-backed Gang Suppression Force, an international contingent created to reinforce the Haitian police, has yet to be fully deployed.

Yet the violence documented by BINUH suggests the challenge is no longer simply to retake neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. Haiti’s gangs are adapting to pressure, seeking new territory and revenue, while the methods used against them are themselves creating risks for civilians.

By May, nearly 1.47 million people were internally displaced across Haiti, more than half of them children.

The bodies found in Kenscoff on Monday were not included in the UN’s latest quarterly tally. They belong to the next one.