Haiti seems to be on the verge of complete collapse. In the past few days, the country’s gangs – which already controlled 80 per cent of the capital city of Port-au-Prince – have waged a serious assault against the government while the de facto prime minister Ariel Henry is in Kenya.

On Saturday there was a mass prison break, with around 5,000 former prisoners on the loose, some of them notorious gang leaders. Just in the past few days, there have been attacks against police stations, the port, the police academy, border force officials and the international airport. Threats have been made against the state hospital, which was forced to close, and the national palace. US based airlines have suspended all flights in and out of Haiti. Domestic flights that operate in the country have also been curtailed.

At the same time, the few remaining neighbourhoods in Port-au-Prince that aren’t controlled by gangs are now experiencing a violent attempt at occupation.  This is being led by the G9 gang alliance, headed by the flamboyant and loquacious Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer who is behind much of the violence in the capital.

Cherizier, nicknamed ‘Barbecue’ (supposedly because he burns his enemies to death, which he denies), styles himself as a guerrilla opposition leader representing the masses, in the mould of the 1791 revolutionaries who freed Haitians from French colonialism and enslavement. He likes to appear before the media literally wrapped in the Haitian flag and holding an automatic rifle. More recently, he has been wearing full black body armour. His alliance is said to be responsible for Saturday’s prison break, which saw the national penitentiary in the centre of the capital, as well as the country’s next largest prison in a nearby area, attacked and emptied by the gangs.

Encircled by men wearing straw hats, hoods, black face masks and sunglasses, Cherizier spoke to the Haitian people and the national police on Friday:

‘We ask the Haitian people: this armed group is not against you. There is always collateral damage, when bullets fly and unlucky ones are hit, which we deplore. We beg pardon. But we have no desire to harm those who resemble us. Those whom we’ve identified as our real enemy are the government, its ministers, businessmen, the people who are responsible for keeping the country secure and who don’t do it. The police are safeguarding a prime minister who has no legitimacy. He has no mandate.  Haitian people, take to the streets and protest Ariel Henry. Protest with all our hate, with all our rage, all our anger.’

Notably, this latest call by Cherizier for the masses to protest against the president hasn’t been answered. Most people are too afraid to leave their homes because of the current surge in violence.

Although Cherizier’s stated motivations are risible, and cynical, the prime minister he opposes is seen by most Haitians as a tool of various political and business interests who want to keep hold of power and profits in Haiti. In the past few months, large demonstrations have been held in Haiti’s largest cities demanding Henry’s departure.

The country is poor, but large fortunes have been made by bilking customs, stealing government funds, and siphoning off money from quasi-governmental utilities like energy providers. There are also numerous protection rackets aimed at businesses and market vendors, and there is a thriving black market in various crucial goods, like gasoline. Cherizier calls Henry’s government ‘the biggest gang.’

There are plenty of people who agree with him. One Haitian friend I spoke to yesterday said he’s not concerned about the possibility of gangs running the country. ‘I couldn’t care less,’ he told me, ‘as long as there’s stability and I can work, can circulate, can live.’

No one should assume that Cherizier, possibly the most visible of the gang leaders hoping to supersede Henry, is the only player here. There are a variety of political actors who would like to gain power. Some are legitimate figures in the democratic opposition, but others are criminals, among them Guy Philippe, another former Haitian police officer. Philippe, who participated in the 2004 ousting of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was later convicted in Miami of drug-cartel related money laundering and sentenced to nine years in a US prison. In November, he was deported to Haiti. Since then he has been posturing as Haiti’s future, supported by armed troops from the Haitian environmental protection ministry, which has apparently gone rogue.

Meanwhile, the government of Haiti, which consists of little more than Ariel Henry and a coterie of his hand-picked officials, has announced a 72-hour state of emergency for the capital and its environs, as well as a curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. Henry had been in Kenya to sign a security deal which may eventually provide 1,000 Kenyan police officers deployed to Haiti to take on the gangs there. His current whereabouts are now unknown. For comparison, a 2023 estimate assumes Haiti’s 200 or so gangs can claim between 20,000 to 30,000 members.

The Biden administration and the State Department, meanwhile, are watching all this unfold. The Americans supported Henry’s installation after the Moise assassination, but had been unwilling to send in their own troops to face the heavily armed gangs. Instead they were pushing for the proposed Kenya solution, with troops also being sent to Haiti from several smaller nations.

But now noises are being made in Washington that perhaps it’s time to send in a small, temporary tactical force to help out. With war in the Middle East and Ukraine, and enormous pressure from refugees at the US border, Biden would dearly love to see the Haitian problem just go away. That was the State Department’s hope as it stubbornly supported Henry.

Now that strategy has clearly failed, and for the moment, Henry is presumably still stuck in Kenya. Dan Foote, the former US Special Envoy to Haiti who quit in protest over Henry’s continuing rule, said yesterday that the prison breakouts ‘change the dynamic and hopefully send the message that Henry is finished.’ Given the weakness of Haiti’s police force, it looks like the gangs might actually take over.