Violence is battering Haiti’s fragile economy and causing food and water shortages
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Rotting fruit, withered vegetables, empty water jugs and spent gas canisters now stock the stores and stands that serve Haiti’s poor — a consequence of the unrelenting gang attacks that have paralyzed the country for more than a week and left it with dwindling supplies of basic goods.
The terrifying violence as anti-government gangs battle police in the streets has crippled the fragile economy and made it extremely difficult for many of the country’s most vulnerable to feed themselves.
The main port in the capital, Port-au-Prince, closed down, stranding scores of containers full of food and medical supplies at a time when U.N. officials say half the country’s more than 11 million inhabitants don’t have enough to eat, and 1.4 million are starving.
Grocery stores in upscale parts of the capital remain stocked, but their goods are out of reach to most in a country where most people earn less than $2 a day.
“People are desperate for water,” said Jean Gérald, who was hawking blackened tomatoes and shriveled scallions on a recent day, confident they would sell quickly because food is so scarce in parts of Port-au-Prince. “Because of gang violence, people will go hungry.”
Next to him were rows of empty jugs he hadn’t been able to refill because the violence had forced one of the country’s main bottled water operators to shut down.
Gérald noted that he was running out of things to sell because the depot where he usually buys rice, oil, beans, powdered milk and bread had been set on fire and its owner had been kidnapped.
As he spoke, gunfire echoed in the distance.
Scores of people have been killed and more than 15,000 have been forced from their homes since coordinated gang attacks began on Feb. 29 while Prime Minister Ariel Henry was in Kenya to push for the U.N.-backed deployment of a police force from the East African country to fight gangs in Haiti.
A Kenyan court, however, ruled in January that such a deployment would be unconstitutional.
As the gangs rampaged through Port-au-Prince, freeing more than 4,000 inmates from the country’s two biggest prisons, attacking its main airport and setting police stations on fire, Haiti’s least powerful have suffered the most.
“It’s a pretty bad situation,” said Mike Ballard, intelligence director at Global Guardian, a Virginia-based international security company. “The gangs are trying to fill a power vacuum.”
Schools, banks and most government agencies remain closed. Gas stations have also shuttered, and the few who can afford to pay $9 a gallon — more than twice the usual rate — have flocked to the black market.
