The chaos engulfing Haiti reached a new nadir today as armed men, believed to be members of the feared '400 Mawozo' gang, kidnapped the director of the National Police’s anti-gang unit, Inspector General Jean-Robert Lafortune. The brazen abduction occurred in broad daylight in the capital Port-au-Prince, a city now largely under the control of criminal syndicates. For working Haitians, already battered by hunger, violence, and a collapsed economy, this is the final straw.
The inspector general, tasked with dismantling the very gangs that now hold him, was taken from his home in the Petion-Ville district. Witnesses report a dozen masked gunmen storming the property, firing shots to scatter neighbours before dragging Lafortune into a waiting pickup truck. No group has claimed responsibility, but the message is clear: the Haitian state has lost its monopoly on force.
This is not a sudden crisis but a slow-motion collapse. Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, the country has lurched from one disaster to the next. Fuel prices have soared by 30% in the past year. A sack of rice now costs the equivalent of two weeks’ wages for a garment worker. The port is blockaded by gangs, stranding essential goods. Hospitals run on generator power, if they run at all. Kidnapping has become a cottage industry, with ransoms funding the purchase of weapons from Florida and the Caribbean.
The international response has been a study in paralysis. A Kenyan-led security force, promised by the United Nations, remains stuck in the planning stages. The United States has evacuated its embassy staff. Neighbouring Dominican Republic has sealed its border. For the millions of Haitians who cannot leave, daily life is a grim calculation: risk the gang checkpoint to buy water or stay home and hope for the best.
Union leaders in the capital’s industrial park say worker morale has plummeted. “We cannot focus on sewing shirts when we do not know if our children will be taken,” one organiser told me. The few factories still operating report absenteeism rates of over 40%. Employers speak of a ‘ghost economy’ where people simply stop showing up.
This kidnapping is not just a crime. It is a symptom of a state that has hollowed out from within. The police, underpaid and ill-equipped, are themselves victims. Many officers have not been paid their full wages in months. Corruption is rife. The gangs offer a perverse alternative welfare system: they control the water trucks, the market stalls, the generators. They are the government now.
The coming days will bring demands, negotiations, very likely a ransom. But for the ordinary Haitian, there is no ransom that can buy back a broken state. The price of bread goes up. The price of safety goes up. And the people, as always, pay the heaviest price.
