The resignation of Haiti’s prime minister Ariel Henry marks an important victory for the 200 or so criminal gangs which, rivalries put aside, control the country’s streets, turning capital Port-au-Prince into a bloody battleground and a no-go area for desperately needed food supplies.
Henry, appointed – not elected – following the assassination of the country’s last president, Jovenel Moïse in his home in 2021, was widely seen as illegitimate and vastly unpopular. His dictatorial term has been marked by a sharp intensification of gang and street violence, murders and kidnappings. Last year alone 5,000 people were killed and 200,000 displaced The unrest culminated in the organisation of a mass breakout of 3,800 inmates from two jails in the city followed by attacks on police stations, the airport and the seaport.
Henry, who was in Kenya at the time to finalise the terms for a UN-mandated peace-enforcement mission to reinforce and train the police, had been unable to return to the country and is set now to hand power to a transitional council whose shape has been agreed with Caribbean neighbouring states. The US has pledged a further $100 million to support the UN mission.
It is far from clear whether Henry’s departure will do anything to bring peace. Civil war threatens. Gang leaders have spoken of fighting on. One of the most powerful and bloody, quasi-revolutionary Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, insists that Haitians “have to decide who is going to be the head of the country and what model of government we want. … It is a battle that will change the whole system.”
“To avoid collateral damage,” he warned recently, " keep the kids at home.”
The humanitarian situation in the capital is critical. Hospitals have been looted, and food supplies are drying up . Nearly one million of Haiti’s 11 million people are on the brink of famine, the UN says, about 350,000 of them on the run, living on the streets, or in tents or overcrowded schools, as gangs invade their neighbourhoods.