Patrolling with UN forces in the gangster war zone

Two-year-old Shayna is on an intravenous drip at one of the few working hospitals in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. Her mother, Wenda, desperately hopes this will alleviate the acute malnutrition the emaciated young girl suffers from.

Shayna is one of 760,000 children on the brink of starvation in Haiti.

Terrified by the gang warfare raging in her neighborhood, for weeks Wenda was too scared to leave her home to seek treatment for her daughter.

Now that she's made it to the pediatric ward, she hopes it's not too late for Shayna.

“I want to get proper care for my child, I don't want to lose her,” she says through tears.

Haiti has been engulfed in a wave of gang violence since the 2021 murder. of then President Jovenel Moise and now approximately 85% of the capital is under gangster control.

Even in the hospital, Haitians are not safe from the fighting, which the United Nations says has killed 5,000 people this year alone and left the country on the brink of collapse.

The hospital's medical director explains that the day before, police had encountered gang members in the emergency room among terrified patients.

Victims of violence are everywhere. One ward is full of young men with gunshot wounds.

Pierre is one of them.

He says he was on his way home from work when he was caught in the crossfire of a street fight, a bullet ripping through his collarbone.

“I think if the government had been more stable and had put in place better youth programs, they wouldn't have gotten involved in the gangs,” he says of the young men who make up much of the gangs terrorizing the capital.

To combat the growing violence, the UN Security Council authorized the creation of a Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in October 2023.

Funded primarily by the US, the Kenyan-led force was deployed to Haiti six months ago with the task of restoring law and order.

On patrol in downtown Port-au-Prince, the brutality of gang violence is clear.

Kenyan officers drive through the streets in heavily armored vehicles (APCs) through once-bustling areas of the capital that are now deserted. Shops and houses are boarded up.

Burned out cars and debris are piled high on side streets – barricades built by the gangs to block access.

The convoy makes its way through the rubble when it suddenly comes under fire.

Bullets ricochet through the armor of the APC as Kenyan police return fire with their assault rifles through pistol holes in the vehicle's sides.

After nearly an hour of firing back and forth, the convoy continues.

But it wasn't long before there were signs of more horrific gang violence. A human body is burning in the middle of the street.

One of the Kenyan policemen in our APC says he suspects it is a gang member cornered and killed by a rival group, his body set on fire to send a terrifying warning.

The Kenyan officers on our patrol are used to seeing this kind of brutality on the streets of Port-au-Prince, but they also tell us they are exhausted.

Four hundred officers arrived in June, but they were greatly outnumbered. In July, the Haitian government estimated that there were 12,000 armed gang members in the country.

Kenyans have been promised additional staff. When the UN authorized the mission, a force of 2,500 was envisaged, but this support, which was due to arrive in November, has yet to materialise.

Despite the situation, the leadership of the force remains optimistic. Commander Godfrey Otunge is under pressure from the Kenyan government to make this mission a success.

The mission commander says there is “overwhelming support” for MSS in Haiti.

“The population is demanding that our team expand and go to other places and calm down,” he says.

The uphill battle they face is clear at a former police station in Haiti that was occupied by a gang but has now been retaken by Kenyan forces.

It's still completely surrounded by gangs, and when the officers climb onto the roof, they come under sniper fire.

Kenyan officers return fire while urging everyone to stay low.

Kenyan officers say some of their long-delayed reinforcements will arrive by the end of this year, bringing their total to 1,000.

And support is urgently needed. There are areas in Port-au-Prince that are so tightly controlled by gangs that they are virtually impenetrable to the police.

In one such area, Wharf Jérémie, almost 200 civilians were killed by a gang in one weekend earlier in December.

A total of around 100 gangs are believed to operate in the Port-au-Prince area, with boys as young as nine joining their ranks.

And it seems the problem is only growing. According to the UN children's agency Unicef, the number of children recruited into gangs has increased by 70% in one year.

One of the gang leaders they flock to is Tee Lapley, whose real name is Renell Destina.

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

Gangs like his exacerbate an already dire situation in Haiti and are known to massacre, rape and terrorize civilians.

Gran Ravine is infamous for carrying out kidnappings for ransom, a practice that earned Ty Lapley a spot on the FBI's most wanted list.

Tee Lapley tells us that he and his gang members “love our country a lot” – but when pressed about the gang-rapes and murders he inflicts on civilians, he claims his men “do things they shouldn't to do (to rival gang members) because the same thing is being done to us.”

The reason kids join Gran Ravine is simple, he says: “The government doesn't create any jobs, it's a country without any economic activity. We're living on garbage, it's basically a failed state.”

He failed to recognize the suffocating impact gangs like his had on the Haitian economy. Often afraid to leave their homes for work, civilians are also regularly extorted for money.

With 700,000 residents forced from their homes due to violence by groups such as Gran Ravine, the capital's schools have become camps for internally displaced people.

A negociant is one of those who had to seek shelter.

She sits with her five children huddled on the small part of the school balcony they now call home.

“Just weeks ago I was living in my own house,” she says. “But the gangs took over my neighborhood.”

She explains that she went to an area of ​​the city called Solino until it too was taken over by gangs and she fled with hundreds of other people.

“Today I am running again to save my life and my children,” she says.