21-05-2025
Battle to reclaim a capital: The Kenyan police mission taking the fight directly to Haiti's 'mutating' gangs
I peer out of the bulletproof windows and steel protective grills of an American-made MRAP armoured vehicle.
People stare up at the huge truck as it passes teeming night-time markets in Haiti's capital. We're heading for gang territory.
The roads are narrow, but it's after dark so the usual traffic jams have eased, allowing the convoy of trucks to squeeze by.
We've joined a Kenyan-led peacekeeping mission into the heart of gang territory in the city.
You know you have arrived in their territory when the people disappear - and it happens in an instant.
The United States is ramping up its support for the mission - as it declares the gangs terrorists.
That designation, combined with the use of increasingly sophisticated surveillance equipment, means this unit and others can now aggressively target gang leaders using lethal force.
It's understood those kinds of operations are already under way.
The streets are deadly quiet and there is almost no light, there is little electricity in this part of town.
There is a brooding sense of menace, the soldiers and police we are with scan roads and alleyways, and use spotlights to peer into darkened buildings, many now ruins after heavy fighting between the gangs and the Haitian police supported by the Kenyans.
They know gang members are hiding inside, even inside the ruins of their former hideouts, which were once family homes, now taken by the gangs.
The soldiers tell me it will soon start raining. I ask if they're worried about getting stuck in the torrential downpours so common in this mountainous Caribbean country.
"I'm not talking water," one of them tells me, faceless in the pitch dark of the vehicle's interior.
"I'm talking bullets," he says laughing. The rest of his crew laugh with him.
Ahead of us I see a motorcycle appear from a turning in the road.
Apart from the convoy there is nobody else to be seen, and the Kenyans say in this neighbourhood the motorcyclists are likely to be gang spotters - but they ignore him.
Within minutes the mission commander's radio crackles into life, one of the other vehicles in the convoy reports gunshots.
In return for increased support for operations - America wants results.
Force Commander Godfrey Otunge says: "It's very clear from the commitment and the agreement that we need to look into the quick wins within the short term, rather than thinking about long-term things.
"With the equipment, with the personnel that we are going to get, so at least within three to six months, we'll be talking of a new Haiti, and that is where we are focused on."
The Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission is a UN-mandated international police and military force. Its mission began in June last year but has been criticised for failing to curtail gang activity, particularly in Port-au-Prince, where some 90% of the capital is under gang control.
Mr Otunge says the expansion of what he described as "decisive operations" against the gangs and the building of forward-operating bases (FOBs) in gang territory will be a game changer.
"Due to the fact that we are now pushing them and choking them, the gangs are coming up with other new strategies, like for example, burning of facilities or burning of houses, just to create panic and fear."
By creating forward-operating bases, he hopes his forces will be able to reassure the public with their presence.
But Mr Otunge says the gangs are mutating and have high ambitions.
"That mutation and that sophistication in terms of weaponry is what has made America, to my understanding, now to designate the gangs as terrorists," he said.
Haiti has long been the poorest country in the Western hemisphere with a legacy of slavery, foreign occupation and dictatorships.
But escalating gang control in the past few years has plunged millions of people into a humanitarian crisis.
Violence has surged since 2021 when the country's last president, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated.
Security forces have struggled to stave off attacks, with around 90% of the capital now believed to be under gang control.
In June 2024 - nearly two years after Haiti urgently requested help - the first contingent of foreign police arrived in Haiti as part of a UN-backed mission to help restore order.
But the Kenya-led mission remains understaffed and underfunded, with only about 40% of the 2,500 personnel originally envisioned so far deployed.
Last month, the top UN official in Haiti, Maria Isabel Salvador, warned the country could reach "a point of no return" if security forces cannot break the gangs.
In February and March alone, 1,086 people were killed and 383 injured, the official said, adding to the 5,600 reported killed last year.
After the report of gunfire, the entire convoy goes dark, all lights are off.
These huge trucks suddenly disappear into the darkness. The police and soldiers are looking for flashes from gunshots, they are looking for targets.
We hear rounds being fired, and the gunner in our MRAP lifts a cover to his roof-mounted machine gun.
"We want to see if they fire at us again, if they don't we move on," Inspector Mwangi, a Kenyan police officer, tells me.
"The MRAP is safe, but it only has the roof position to fire from, so it's a bit restrictive," he says.
Indeed, the roof position is not armoured, so the gunner is vulnerable to attack from the roofs of buildings that hem the convoy in.
Urban fighting is considered one of the most dangerous, and the mission teams face that ever-present danger every day.
This is a real war with the gangs - and it looks it.
The optimism of the MSS force commander that he will soon have the extra resources he needs to finish his job in Haiti and take down the gangs that have all but taken control of the country's capital is palpable.
There is certainly a sense that a fully powered force could beat the gangs in a straight-up fight, but there are caveats.
Firstly, these badly needed resources promised from the international community have so far not been supplied.
Second, and this is important, the gangs have strategies of their own that might create political problems insurmountable by firepower alone.
In recent weeks one of the more well-known leaders of the gangs in Haiti, Jimmy Cherizier - known as Barbecue - has been reaching out to an old police colleague publicly on social media. He goes by Commander Samuel, and he leads the most effective civilian brigade fighting gangs in Port-au-Prince.
An elusive figure, Commander Samuel has renounced his allegiance to the government but has so far refused overtures by Cherizier to join together and overthrow the transitional council currently struggling to run the country.
If Commander Samuel was to join Barbecue, in something akin to a political revolutionary group, it would be powerful, and the government could fall.
It would spell chaos here, but it is not inconceivable that some more legitimate political operators, who have some relations with both men, could step into the political void if they were to overthrow the government.
One advantage that the force commander has of course, is that the gangs are now classified as "terrorists" by the United States, which gives him far-reaching power to take the fight directly to them.
Much of the downtown area of the city near the presidential palace and the long-since closed General Hospital - once the biggest in the country - is now a derelict landscape of ruins, burnt-out cars, and bullet-riddled buildings.
The roads are narrow, and manoeuvring these vehicles is difficult, and as they make multiple point turns, they're vulnerable to attack.
The night missions are designed to try to keep the gangs from populated areas. They do this by keeping roads dividing the territories open to the mission teams.
"We do what we call dominance patrols, we want to block the routes that gangs can use to access where the public are staying, so we block those areas," says Inspector Mwangi.
During the day the missions focus more on getting into the gang territory proper and taking the fight to them.
This UN-mandated mission is nearly a year old, and it's had some successes. But the Kenyans need more equipment and support if they are ever to rid Port-au-Prince - and Haiti - of the gangs.
