Haiti’s armed gangs are once more on the attack, this time turning their focus to piracy and taking the violence to the country’s high seas and main seaport.
On Thursday, a crane operator in Port-au-Prince was shot twice, reportedly by a sniper, with a round through his chest that barely missing vital organs, a source familiar with the incident confirmed to the Miami Herald. The worker, a foreign national who lives in Haiti, was sitting in the vehicle at the time. He was taken to a local hospital where he underwent surgery and is expected to recover.
The latest shooting is part of a string of attacks on cargo ships calling on the port. The incident occurred just as the crane was preparing to start unloading containers from a chartered cargo ship operated by Miami-based Antillean Marine Shipping Corporation, three sources said. The ship, docked at the government’s National Port Authority, was the first one to berth since Sept. 10, when gangs kidnapped two crew workers from the MV Progreso, a chartered container ship operated by Crowley Maritime. The abduction occurred in the early morning while the ship, which had arrived from Miami, was anchored in the Gulf of Gonâve just off Port-au-Prince.
The crew members, Filipino nationals, are still being held for ransom. A representative for Crowley declined to comment, while a spokesman for the Haiti National Police did not return a call for comment.
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Soon after Thursday’s shooting, operator Caribbean Port Services announced that it was cutting off land access to the main seaport between Friday and Sunday so that the Haitian police and army could “restore security in the area and resume delivery operations under better conditions.” The company, which announced the decision in a note to its customers, said the decision was made “due to various incidents in the port area that have paralyzed ship activities.”
This is the second time that someone at the port, which is guarded by Haitian army soldiers, has gotten shot, agents say. In another incident earlier this month, a security guard was also hit with a bullet.
“It’s a real mess,” said a Haiti-based shipping agent who asked for anonymity to speak about candidly about the crisis, which is triggering worries from Port-au-Prince to Miami to Washington.
Shipping lines putting new Haiti bookings on hold
Following the attacks, maritime lines, including those in South Florida, have canceled or paused shipping into the capital. Some have opted for rerouting cargo, offloading containers in Kingston, Jamaica, until they can be shipped to Haiti or transporting them to the Dominican Republic.
This flow of cargo into the Dominican Republic, said the agent, has been visibly increasing and arriving in Haiti “unchecked” across the land border shared by both countries because of the lack of customs at some border checkpoints due to gangs’ control of key roads.
Haiti’s port operators warned the government of the possibility of gang attacks in a meeting on Aug. 28. Still, many are struggling to understand the objective of the shootings, which so far are only targeting the government port, not private ones.
The Port-au-Prince government port accounts for 80% of the commercial cargo flowing into Haiti, which is heavily dependent on imports. Its customs receipts have been increasing since Haiti began cracking down on tax dodgers two years ago and fired a controversial customs director, Romel Bell .
Gangs have blocked access in and out of the facilities from the main road, while charging hefty fees for trucks to pass with cargo. But now, after carriers have continued to do business with the country, the latest security breach could lead shipping lines to take their business elsewhere.
“What’s at stake is that the ships leave the Port-au-Prince port,” said the shipping line agent, “or they just leave Haiti, period.”
The agent noted that given the distance involved in Thursday’s incident, it would appear that the crane operator was hit by a sniper’s bullet. “Until this guy is apprehended, I don’t see yet how we have vessels in operation,” he said.
Haiti’s powerful gangs control more than 85% of Port-au-Prince and parts of the Artibonite region. Even in regions where they do not have a large presence, they control the roads in and out of the capital and are expanding territory each day.
In recent days, security forces had achieved a small victory: Merchants and traffic returned to once deserted streets in the capital. However, hours after the port shooting on Thursday, the headquarters of Haiti’s small army, located across the from the Champ de Mars, the sprawling public square facing the presidential palace, came under gang attack.
Millions of dollars in cargo
Prior to Thursday’s attack at the port, gangs had fired out into the Port-au-Prince bay as ships were approaching. Rather than risk the lives of crew members, operators turned around and left without unloading.
According to a report shared with the Miami Herald, following the Sept. 10 kidnapping at sea, at least five vessels were forced to depart Port-au-Prince without unloading cargo, resulting in an estimated loss of $3.4 million in missed customs duties. They were transporting $49 million in cargo, according to data from CargoFax.
The report does not include the latest incident, which occurred around 11 a.m. Thursday just as the head of the country’s nine-member Transitional Presidential Council, Edgard Leblanc Fils, was preparing to take the podium at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Antillean Marine Shipping Corporation, which is based at the Miami River , did not return a call from the Herald seeking comment. Another shipping company said it has taken a wait-and-see mode before making any decisions.
Haiti’s main seaports and two airports were closed for nearly three months earlier this year when a coalition of powerful gangs launched coordinated attacks across the capital, releasing thousands of prisoners from the country’s two largest prisons and forcing the resignation of the prime minister . Gangs also attacked police stations and raided the government port where thousands of containers filled with medicines, groceries and humanitarian aid were stuck.
“Everybody is on pause; nobody wants to take bookings for Haiti now,” said Jean-Bernard Dupoux, who represents several shipping lines in Haiti. “Nobody wants their containers to sit down with a full load not knowing when they are going to be delivered in Haiti.”
The impact is that some manufacturers, such as a local businessman who produces hot peppers, has been unable to get his raw materials now for two weeks. Another, a toy manufacturer, is looking at being late for the fourth time this year with shipping out his product to his U.S.-based client.
“This is a drop in the bucket of what’s going on in the economy,” said Dupoux. “Soon supermarkets and a lot of places are going to run out of products; what’s happening has a huge impact on the economy .”
In response to the attacks, Prime Minister Garry Conille deployed members of the police, Haitian army and the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission . The forces have been destroying buildings where gangs can hide.
“We have mobilized to provide a response in the bay of Port-au-Prince and on the periphery,” Jocelin Villier, the director of the National Port Authority, said on Thursday, about two hours before the shooting incident.
The Port-au-Prince port, the largest in the country, can’t be permitted to shut down for “even a second,” he said during an interview on Magik 9 radio station. Following the initial attacks, he said, all of the shipping lines have been asking for “a clear guarantee by the government that security in the bay has been increased.”
“If there are no measures taken for us to increase the security in the bay of Port-au-Prince it can result in the marine lines deciding not to send any boats to Haiti,” he said.
The underfunded and ill-equipped Kenya-led mission, which has been a large part of the focus during this week’s U.N. General Assembly meeting, doesn’t have any maritime capabilities. Foreign troops are supposed to be assisting with securing the port, but for now there are only 23 Jamaican soldiers and police and two members of Belize’s military in Haiti.
Brian Nichols, the assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, told the Herald on Thursday that the sporadic attacks around the seaport and the extortion gangs carry out on containers going in and out of the ports were raised by Haitian officials this week as issues of “deep concern.”
The Bahamas, one of the Caribbean nations that has pledged to send troops to Haiti, has offered to help with maritime operations, Nichols added, but said it remains unclear when that will happen.
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