Considering one of the worst gang attacks to strike the Caribbean nation in recent memory, Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille recently began a tour to the United Arab Emirates and Kenya to request security support.
Almost 6,000 citizens were forced to evacuate and at least 70 people, including newborns, were killed when members of the Gran Grif gang tore through the village of Pont-Sonde in the western Artibonite area.
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Even in a society used to violent outbursts and with an underfunded and outgunned national police force, the tragedy shocked the world.
Conille stated at a news conference before the trip, “As you can see, we are being attacked on several fronts.”
An international security force that is meant to support local police in combating gangs and maintaining law and order has been granted another year of authorization by the U.N. Security Council.
With barely 400 police officers—mostly from Kenya—on the ground, the operation hasn’t done much to assist Haiti restore order thus far.
Conille stated, “One of the aims of this trip is to go to Kenya to discuss with President Ruto how we can speed up the deployment of remnants of the Kenyan troops as quickly as possible to continue supporting the national police force.”
In response, Conille stated that he would speak with his colleague in the United Arab Emirates about “how we can find regular flows to help the Haitian national police to combat security.”
Conille recently visited patients at a hospital receiving treatment for wounds sustained in Thursday’s attack, accompanied by heavily armed police. He assured the public that troops from Port-au-Prince, the capital, were on their way.
Reporters were recently informed by a national police spokeswoman in Haiti that the Artibonite department’s director of police had been removed.
Security analysts claim that Gran Grif is the biggest gang in Haiti’s Artibonite district. Many of Haiti’s rice farms are located in this area.
According to the gang’s commander Luckson Elan, the assault was carried out in punishment for the public’s silence while law enforcement and vigilante organizations murdered his warriors.
The deaths this week were the most recent indication of a deepening crisis in Haiti, where armed gangs are gaining control of much of Port-au-Prince and are spreading to neighboring areas, causing hundreds of thousands of people to become homeless and famine-ridden. Promised international assistance has not materialized, and neighboring countries have repatriated migrants.
In the meantime, the number of conflict-related internal displacements has increased by over 700,000, almost tripling in only six months.
