(Dobbs) A Living Hell

For now, and maybe for an torturous stretch of time, there is no government.

If you haven’t paid much attention to Haiti— shattered for decades by gangs, by corruption, by mayhem, and not to be forgotten, by earthquakes and cholera— it’s worth your attention now.

After decades as a textbook example of dysfunction, Haiti now has become a textbook example of anarchy. But we haven’t paid much attention. While it’s in our hemisphere and our sphere of influence, it sits in the Caribbean beyond the far end of Cuba and has no strong strategic value to the United States. Its agony has become so normal— it had a cholera outbreak just last year and we hardly noticed— it had all but been dropped from the news.

Now it is back with a vengeance.

From CNN correspondent David Culver, reporting over the weekend from Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital: “All roads leading out of the city are blocked by gangs, as is access to the port, and the city’s international airport has been shuttered, its walls pocked with bullet holes. Nothing is coming in either; the city’s grocery stores are running out of food. Gas stations are out of fuel. Hospitals are short on blood.”

Haiti’s power company, Electricité d’Haïti, says four key power stations “were destroyed and rendered completely dysfunctional.”

Jean-Martin Bauer, Haiti director for the United Nations’ World Food Program, laments, “Haiti is facing a protracted and mass hunger.”

From Garry Pierre-Pierre, publisher of the New York-based Haitian Times: “The images have been graphic and disturbing: people forced from their homes by roving bands of gunmen, clutching their meager belongings and dodging bullets in the streets in a desperate attempt to find safety. Public order has disintegrated and there is little to no police protection. The army is outnumbered and outgunned and there is effectively no government.”

Lydia Polgreen of The New York Times writes, “Dead bodies are rotting on the streets of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. Clean drinking water is scarce, and a cholera outbreak threatens. Hunger looms. The outgunned police force has all but disappeared.”

Dr. Ted Higgins is struggling to keep the doors open and his staff alive at a medical clinic called Higgins Brothers Surgicenter for Hope, which started life doing kidney dialysis but became a 24/7 refuge for trauma care of all kinds. The gangs won’t let supplies through: “They presently paralyze the country with no foreseeable resolution of this crisis condition. Several important medical facilities have recently closed after suffering through gang encounters.”

David Adams and Frances Robles of The New York Times report: “Many hospitals in Haiti’s capital have been looted by gangs or abandoned by their staffs amid the violence. Some are open, but too dangerous for people in need of care to reach.”

From Widlore Mérancourt and Samantha Schmidt of The Washington Post: “Violent armed gangs have taken control of more than 80 percent of the capital, the United Nations estimates. Gunfire crackles at all hours. Residents who dare leave their homes stumble across bodies that have been left where they fell. The gangs terrorized the population with systematic rape, indiscriminate kidnapping, and mass killing, all with impunity.”

Kenson Dimanche, a volunteer vigilante against the gangs who is manning a barricade in the capital, told the Associated Press, “They burned down houses. They burned people. They raped. They looted.”

And now, the gangs run so rampant that they have banded together and actually become a political force. Leaders on the lam who once had to hide now hold court on city streets. This leader, known as “Barbecue,” has even created a gang alliance called “Living Together.” 

Yet they are doing anything but that. People have been driven from their homes, they are hungry, they are sick. With more firepower than the government, the lawless gangs that run the streets won’t let relief reach the people.

Nor any semblance of government. After the nation’s president was assassinated almost three years ago, there has been no framework to hold new elections which might bring stability. Last week the gangs wouldn’t let the prime minister, who had traveled to Kenya to strike up support for a peacekeeping force, return to his country. From exile, he resigned. 

So for now, and maybe for an torturous stretch of time, there is no government. There is talk of an internationally cultivated “transitional council” but the gang leader Barbecue says his alliance would fight that too, because any government must come from the grass roots. Maybe a Kenyan-led peacekeeping force, with a $100 million infusion that has been pledged by the United States, could tame the gangs, but now Kenya says it won’t deploy until there is a government in place.

Catch 22.

There are lot of embattled places around the world right now, where citizens feel helpless and people are suffering. Ukraine and Gaza top they list and they get our attention for good reason. We don’t have a strategic obligation to help the Haitians, but we do have a moral one, because for all our political chaos, we live in a functional society. They don’t.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.