Exclusive: Inside the foreign mission sent to battle Haiti’s gangs

A war is just beginning as gangs test the still-forming US-backed mission. Haitians and the mission’s funders in Washington are watching for signs of weakness.

Parts of Port-au-Prince are showing signs of life again: On the once-desolate Boulevard Toussaint Louverture, a young couple could be seen hugging one recent afternoon. Down the street, a group of men danced as Bob Marley’s “One Love” came on the radio. A few months ago, walking down this main artery in Haiti’s capital was inconceivable; a loose alliance of gangs was rampaging, kidnapping civilians, blocking shipments of food and water, and battling the Haitian National Police block by block. Since the arrival in late June of a foreign police force known as the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, criminal attacks here have slowed. But in “red zones” across the city and beyond, a new war is just beginning, as gangs test the still-forming MSS. Haitians and the mission’s backers in Washington are watching closely for signs of weakness. CNN gained access to the mission last week, the first media in the world to do so. A night patrol with troops from Kenya, which is leading the MSS, highlighted their fraught assignment, tens of thousands of miles away from home. Rolling through downtown Port-au-Prince, the armored convoy came under intense fire in the dark. Inside one vehicle, the stifling metal cabin was quiet, except for the bullets rattling angrily at reinforced windows and doors. A Kenyan officer brushed it off as mere “rain” typical of a patrol in Port-au-Prince, but later took careful note of the close-range pocks and thick cracks left behind. None of the troops returned fire; they could not – their vehicles had been delivered to Haiti without turrets from which to shoot. Making painfully slow three – and four, and five – point turns on the narrow street, the hulking fighting vehicles retreated under an echoing onslaught.