PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — If the burned-out cars, bullet-riddled schools, demolished buildings and desolate streets in downtown Port-au-Prince weren’t enough evidence of the terrible things that happened here, someone left an even more ominous hint: skulls in the middle of the street.
A human head propped up on a stick with another on the ground beside it in front of a government office was apparently intended as a menacing message from gang members to the Kenyan and Haitian police officers trying to restore order to Haiti: Beware, we rule these streets.
A Kenyan police officer wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet and patrolling in an American armored personnel carrier took a photograph with his cellphone, while another maneuvered the vehicle around the skulls.
I, along with a New York Times photographer, went on patrol through Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, with a Kenyan-led multinational security mission deployed in the country. During the six-hour tour, the Kenyans were mostly ignored by people on the street and occasionally heckled; the vehicle was shot at once.
The patrol offered a glimpse into the enormous challenges the Kenyan force faces in trying to wrest control of Port-au-Prince from armed groups that have unraveled life in the country, killing indiscriminately, raping women, burning neighborhoods and leaving hundreds of thousands hungry and in makeshift shelters.
READ MORE: Haitian gangs attack what many call a 'last bastion' against their expansion
The route taken by the officers revealed many buildings the police had demolished to try to eliminate gang hideouts.
The officers also traveled to the Port-au-Prince seaport — the main conduit for food, medicine and other goods into Haiti — at all times alert for potential snipers hiding on rooftops.
At the port, workers were loading a ferry for a new maritime route to move items to provinces by water, avoiding gang strongholds on land.
The officers, whose supervisors were not permitted to give interviews, said they had recently intensified their operations in an effort to “squeeze” gangs from several fronts.
A day later, a dockworker at the seaport was shot and injured.
That same day, the Kenyans engaged in a shootout with gang members on motorcycles and encountered the paths to the seaport blocked.
“What surprised me so much when I came here is how the gangs could dare to attack in broad daylight,” Godfrey Otunge, the Kenyan commander of the multinational police force, said in an interview. “How on earth can this happen?”
Since the first Kenyan officers arrived in June, officials cite important progress as life in some neighborhoods slowly returns to normal.
The Port-au-Prince airport has reopened after gangs were cleared from around its perimeter. Many street vendors are back working, and gangs have also been pushed out of the capital’s main public hospital.
But the Kenyan officers are vastly outnumbered, and the heavily armed gangs remain firmly entrenched in many parts of Port-au-Prince. Huge swaths remain no-go zones, including downtown and the area around the U.S. Embassy. Gangs no longer control the public hospital, but it is in shambles and has not reopened.
Criminal groups have also expanded their control outside the capital, seizing three key roads linking Port-au-Prince to other parts of the country and laying siege to smaller cities and towns that the international force does not have the resources to reach.
Last week, a gang in the Artibonite Valley in the central part of the country attacked a town, leaving 88 people dead, including 10 gang members.
More than 700,000 people who fled their homes during a wave of violence over the past year and a half are still unable to return. Half the country’s population — roughly 5.4 million people — struggles to eat every day, and at least 6,000 people living in squalid camps are facing starvation, according to an analysis released recently by a group of global experts.
“They came to help us — and we do hope they will help us — but we see no difference yet,” Junior Lorveus, 40, a cellphone repairman, said as the Kenyan officers patrolled the Champs de Mars downtown plaza on foot.
Gang violence forced Lorveus from his home and workshop, and he longs to go back.
Otunge, who projects relentless optimism, believes he can.
People should be able to return to the areas his officers have “pacified,” he said, “so at least we can now provide them with security.”
“Security is perception,” he added.
Haiti has been gripped by astonishing levels of gang violence for more than three years, since the country’s last elected president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated.
Many people who fled the violence took up residence in public schools and government buildings. Nearly 3,700 people have been killed this year, according to the United Nations.
The blocked roads leading to and from Port-au-Prince make it “almost impossible” for the police to intervene in time when gangs attack new locations outside the metropolitan area, Haiti’s prime minister, Garry Conille, said at a meeting in New York last month.
But the Kenyan-led force is woefully small.
Originally planned for 2,500 officers, it has just more than 400. On the other side, experts estimate that up to 15,000 people are members of 200 Haitian gangs.
The $600 million mission was sanctioned by the United Nations but largely financed and organized by the United States. It relies on voluntary contributions, and has so far been given $369 million by the United States and $85 million by other nations.
The Biden administration recently announced a separate aid allocation — $160 million — for the Haitian National Police.
Kenya’s foreign affairs minister, Musalia W. Mudavadi, said at last month’s meeting in New York that there was only so much 400 officers could accomplish, making clear that the force’s capabilities were “currently lacking.”
The Biden administration is trying to turn the deployment into an official U.N. peacekeeping mission, which would require member states to contribute money and personnel.
The Kenyan officers conduct joint operations with the Haitian police to take down gang roadblocks — usually shipping containers stolen from the port — but sometimes the sole bulldozer at their disposal breaks down, Otunge said.
He acknowledged that the mission needs air support and more personnel, adding that the operation “is expensive.”
Kenya’s president, William Ruto, plans to send 300 more officers this month and 300 more by the end of November. Jamaica and Belize have also sent a small number of officers.
Reinforcements would allow the Kenyans to set up a dozen forward operating bases throughout the metropolitan area and in the nearby Artibonite Valley so that an area retaken from gangs can be held, Otunge said.
When the Kenyans responded in late July to a gang attack in Ganthier, about 20 miles east of Port-au-Prince, the operation took a week because of the lack of air support, and officers had to sleep in their vehicles, Otunge said. There was no food for the Kenyan officers so the Haitian police shared theirs, he added.
Still, he added proudly, “we pushed the gangs.”
Recounting the deployment’s early days in Haiti when it was trying to force gangs out of the airport, Otunge said, “Our officers were being shot at each and every day.’’
But they pressed on, he added. “We said, ‘We can’t stop. We have to sustain whatever we are doing.’
“We sustained it.”
Shifting the Kenyan deployment to a peacekeeping mission could be the only way to free Haiti from the grip of gangs and allow the scheduling of elections to choose a new president, experts said.
The Biden administration believes it would be the most effective way to ensure that an international mission continues for as long as needed, a senior Biden administration official said in a briefing where reporters were told that the official could not be identified discussing diplomatic matters.
“We have a chance, a chance to build on this foundation of security, to build on this progress, to build on a renewed sense of hope,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during September’s meeting with Haitian and Kenyan officials.
U.N. peacekeeping operations have a long and complicated history in Haiti, rife with sexual abuse and poor sanitation that brought cholera to the country and caused thousands of deaths.
But despite the past troubles, the head of Haiti’s transitional presidential council, which is charged with setting elections, has urged the United Nations to return.
“I am convinced that this change of status, while recognizing that the errors of the past cannot be repeated, would guarantee the full success of the mission,’’ Haiti’s acting president, Edgard Leblanc Fils, told the U.N. General Assembly last month.
Carlos Hercule, Haiti’s justice minister, said he was feeling “impatient” because many Haitian police officers have left the country, adding that Haiti needed a beefed-up deployment soon.
Otunge, a former director of security operations for the Kenyan Police who has participated in peace missions in South Sudan and Somalia, urged patience.
He will not stop, he said, until Haiti “regains its glory.”
“I cannot fail the Haitian people,” Otunge said. “I’ve never failed, and I’m not ready to fail in Haiti.”
This article originally appeared in .
