23681: (pub) Slavin: NYT "Haiti's Political Vacuum Stokes Flames of Gang Violence" 110204 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JPS390@aol.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/international/americas/02haiti.html

November 2, 2004
PORT-AU-PRINCE JOURNAL

Haiti's Political Vacuum Stokes Flames of Gang Violence
By MICHAEL KAMBER

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Oct. 26 - Brinia Max Civil and her two children sleep on scraps of cardboard in a schoolroom here in Cité-Soleil, a slum in this capital, with dozens of other families. She has been there since Sept. 30, when the gang members arrived.

"I was inside my house with my two kids when the men came with guns," she said. "They told me to put my hands up. They took my husband and made him to lie on the ground and they started chopping him with machetes. They killed him, then they threw gas on the house and burned it."

She takes a moment from washing her year-old baby and offers up one of her few possessions, a glossy 4 by 6 photo of her husband, Dominique Avril, a handsome, lanky man smiling into a studio camera.

Cité-Soleil, the poorest slum in the poorest country in the hemisphere, is split in two by a gang war. Ms. Max Civil and her husband had the misfortune to live near the dividing line between two sections of gang turf - their neighborhood, Boston, and another, Route 9. A gang leader known as Labanière controls Boston. Dread Wilmé's gang holds sway over Route 9.

The gangs had been united behind the former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose Lavalas Party returned the favor with guns and money, critics and some gang members say. But Mr. Aristide was driven from office in February, and with his departure, the loyalties of the heavily armed gangs are fraying.

In recent weeks, they have viciously turned on one another, catching tens of thousands of ordinary citizens, like Mr. Avril, in the cross-fire. The death toll is impossible to know, but many residents describe dozens of bodies in the streets. Everyone seems to know someone who has been killed recently. The police, who do not enter Cité-Soleil, have no figures.

"When Aristide was here, all of Cité-Soleil was Lavalas," explained Claude Gérard, 22, a leader in the Boston gang. He wears a yellow mesh tank top and a silver chain. "Now we're just fighting for our neighborhood. When Aristide was here, he gave a little money to our group, a little to the other side; everyone was O.K."

The Boston gang is no longer allied with Lavalas, and rumor has it that its members are being paid by other political factions. "The gangs are mercenary," said a police spokeswoman, Dr. Marie Gessy Coicou. "They work for whoever pays them."

Now the schools and hospital are closed, nearly all aid organizations have pulled out, and a United Nations peacekeeping force, still not at full strength, is not up to the task. The police station sits empty as well. Cité-Soleil has effectively been ceded to the gangs.

No one crosses from one side of Cité-Soleil to the other - from Boston to Route 9. But if you choose to do so, you walk into no man's land, where the Avrils lived, block after block of empty homes, many of them burned. This past summer, the streets were thronged with pushcarts, the park was full of children, the market jammed with women selling produce. All are deserted now.

Crossing into the Route 9 area, three young men appear on a broken-down moped so bristling with guns it looks like a two-wheeled armored personnel carrier, replete with an AK-47, a Glock 9 millimeter and a .38 Special. Though the two visitors were identified as journalists, the men came running at them, pointing their guns at the visitors' heads and screaming, "Why are you coming from Boston? What were you doing there? Are you spying on us?" One, with a Glock, mirrored sunglasses and a Los Angeles Lakers jersey, bounced off the ground like a pogo stick while keeping his gun trained on the visitors.

The interpreter begged them not to shoot until he had a chance to show them something. He produced from his wallet a picture of Mr. Aristide, one that he keeps for such an occasion.

The men were somewhat placated and calmed further as he dropped the names of Tupac and Billie, two Cité-Soleil gang leaders that he has known since they were children. The police took Billie from the hospital after he was shot in the gang war. Tupac was buried last week.

A new Mitsubishi S.U.V. drove up. Inside were three senior gunmen with eyes like stones. They stared for a moment, nodded and drove away. The gunman with the Glock switched to flawless English with a southern drawl.

He spent his teenage years in Miami and goes by the street name of Yamoska. "Over there," he said, pointing to Boston, "they were Lavalas too, but since Aristide is gone, they're our enemy."

In the marketplace, a gang member waved his hand, and scores of women rushed forward to give testimony. They competed to praise Mr. Aristide and Dread Wilmé, the leader of the Route 9 gang. "Dread Wilmé is like a god for us. He protects us," said Emania Pierre, a market woman.

Not far away, on the edge of no man's land, Bahy Joseph, 26, sat in the midday heat with her three children and elderly mother. Burned out houses and rubble-filled lots surrounded the charred, roofless hovel where she and her family have sought refuge since her house was burned. "On Sept. 30, I saw the men coming with weapons," she said. "I took my three kids and ran. My husband was coming from work. He didn't know about the trouble. He came through Boston. The gang grabbed him and killed him."

Mrs. Joseph never found his body, but friends saw the killing. She pointed across the devastated landscape toward the other gang's turf. "I had friends over there," she said. "Now, they're my enemies."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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J.P. Slavin
New York
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