Dai­ly life in Haiti be­gan to spin out of con­trol last month just hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Ariel Hen­ry said fu­el sub­si­dies would be elim­i­nat­ed, caus­ing prices to dou­ble.

Gun­shots rang out as pro­test­ers blocked roads with iron gates and man­go trees. Then Haiti’s most pow­er­ful gang took a dras­tic step: It dug trench­es to block ac­cess to the Caribbean coun­try’s largest fu­el ter­mi­nal, vow­ing not to budge un­til Hen­ry re­signs and prices for fu­el and ba­sic goods go down.

The poor­est coun­try in the West­ern hemi­sphere is in the grips of an in­fla­tion­ary vise that is squeez­ing its cit­i­zen­ry and ex­ac­er­bat­ing protests that have brought so­ci­ety to the break­ing point. Vi­o­lence is rag­ing and mak­ing par­ents afraid to send their kids to school; fu­el and clean wa­ter are scarce; hos­pi­tals, banks and gro­cery stores are strug­gling to stay open.

The pres­i­dent of neigh­bor­ing Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a “low-in­ten­si­ty civ­il war.”

Life in Haiti is al­ways ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult, if not down­right dys­func­tion­al. But the mag­ni­tude of the cur­rent paral­y­sis and de­spair is un­prece­dent­ed. Po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty has sim­mered ever since last year’s still-un­solved as­sas­si­na­tion of Haiti’s pres­i­dent; in­fla­tion soar­ing around 30% has on­ly ag­gra­vat­ed the sit­u­a­tion.

“If they don’t un­der­stand us, we’re go­ing to make them un­der­stand,” said Pierre Kil­lick Cemelus, who sweat­ed as he strug­gled to keep pace with thou­sands of oth­er pro­test­ers march­ing dur­ing a re­cent demon­stra­tion.

The fu­el de­pot blocked by gangs has been in­op­er­a­ble since Sept. 12, cut­ting off about 10 mil­lion gal­lons of diesel and gaso­line and more than 800,000 gal­lons of kerosene stored on site. Many gas sta­tions are closed, and oth­ers are quick­ly run­ning out of sup­plies.

The lack of fu­el re­cent­ly forced hos­pi­tals to cut back crit­i­cal ser­vices and prompt­ed wa­ter de­liv­ery com­pa­nies to shut down. Banks and gro­cery stores al­so are strug­gling to stay open be­cause of dwin­dling fu­el sup­plies — and ex­or­bi­tant prices — that make it near­ly im­pos­si­ble for many work­ers to com­mute.

A gal­lon of gaso­line costs $30 on the black mar­ket in Port-au-Prince and more than $40 in rur­al ar­eas, Des­per­ate peo­ple are walk­ing for miles to get food and wa­ter be­cause pub­lic trans­porta­tion is ex­treme­ly lim­it­ed.

“Haiti is now in com­plete chaos,” said Alex Dupuy, a Haiti-born so­ci­ol­o­gist at Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty. “You have gangs ba­si­cal­ly do­ing what­ev­er they want, wher­ev­er they want, when­ev­er they want with com­plete im­puni­ty be­cause the po­lice force is not ca­pa­ble of bring­ing them un­der con­trol.”

Hen­ry’s de-fac­to gov­ern­ment “doesn’t seem to be fazed at all by the chaos and is prob­a­bly ben­e­fit­ing from it be­cause it al­lows him to hold on to pow­er and pro­long as long as pos­si­ble the or­ga­ni­za­tion of new elec­tions,” Dupuy said.

Gangs have long wield­ed con­sid­er­able pow­er in Haiti, and their in­flu­ence has on­ly grown since the Ju­ly 2021 as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moïse.

Gangs con­trol rough­ly 40% of Port-au-Prince, the U.N. has es­ti­mat­ed. They are fight­ing to con­trol even more ter­ri­to­ry, killing hun­dreds of Haitians in re­cent months — in­clud­ing women and chil­dren — and dri­ving away some 20,000 peo­ple from their homes. Kid­nap­pings have spiked.

Hen­ry has pledged to hold elec­tions as soon as it’s safe to do so, writ­ing in a speech read at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly on Sept. 24 that he has “no de­sire to stay in pow­er longer than nec­es­sary.”

“My coun­try is go­ing through a mul­ti­di­men­sion­al cri­sis whose con­se­quences threat­en democ­ra­cy and the very foun­da­tions of the rule of law,” Hen­ry said. He con­demned wide­spread loot­ing and vi­o­lence, and said those re­spon­si­ble “will have to an­swer for their crimes be­fore his­to­ry and be­fore the courts.”

U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, al­so speak­ing at the U.N., said Haiti faces “po­lit­i­cal-fu­eled gang vi­o­lence and an enor­mous hu­man cri­sis.”

From 2004 un­til 2017, U.N. peace­keep­ers bol­stered the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty and helped re­build po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions af­ter a vi­o­lent re­bel­lion oust­ed for­mer Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide. But for now, any for­eign in­ter­ven­tion in Haiti is off the ta­ble.

Lo­cal po­lit­i­cal lead­ers have re­pu­di­at­ed the sug­ges­tion of out­side help, not­ing that U.N. peace­keep­ers in Haiti sex­u­al­ly abused chil­dren and sparked a cholera epi­dem­ic more than a decade ago that killed near­ly 10,000 peo­ple.

The first round of protests in mid-Sep­tem­ber prompt­ed France and Spain to close their em­bassies and banks to shut down in the cap­i­tal of Port-au-Prince. Pro­test­ers at­tacked busi­ness­es, the homes of well-known politi­cians and even ware­hous­es of the Unit­ed Na­tions’ World Food Pro­gram, steal­ing mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of food and wa­ter.

Protests have since grown big­ger. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple re­cent­ly marched in Port-au-Prince and be­yond, in­clud­ing the cities of Go­naives and Cap-Hai­tien in the north. They waved leafy green branch­es and chant­ed, “Ariel has to go!”

Pri­ma­ry school teacher Jean-Wil­son Fab­re joined a re­cent protest as he ducked in­to a side street to avoid a cloud of tear gas thrown by po­lice try­ing to con­trol the crowd.

“He’s not do­ing any­thing,” he said of the prime min­is­ter.

The 40-year-old fa­ther of two sons lament­ed the lack of food and wa­ter, the rise of kid­nap­pings and the grow­ing pow­er of gangs: “No one is crazy enough to send their kids to school in this sit­u­a­tion. They will not be safe.”

Fab­re is one of mil­lions of par­ents who re­fused to send their chil­dren to school even though the gov­ern­ment an­nounced an Oct. 3 re­turn to class as sched­uled in an at­tempt to re­store some nor­mal­cy amid an in­creas­ing­ly un­sta­ble sit­u­a­tion.

Haiti’s courts al­so were slat­ed to re­open on Oct. 3, but the coun­try’s Bar Fed­er­a­tion re­ject­ed an in­vi­ta­tion from the prime min­is­ter to talk about the is­sue days be­fore, not­ing that gangs still oc­cu­py a main cour­t­house in Port-au-Prince, among oth­er prob­lems.

“Un­der Ariel, things have got­ten worse and worse,” said Mer­lay Saint-Pierre, a 28-year-old un­em­ployed moth­er of two boys who joined a re­cent protest wear­ing a T-shirt em­bla­zoned with a mid­dle fin­ger.

Hun­dreds of peo­ple have spent hours in line each day just to buy buck­ets of wa­ter. De­liv­ery trucks can­not go in­to neigh­bor­hoods be­cause of road­blocks.

“I’m scared of this wa­ter,” said 22-year-old Li­onel Si­mon, not­ing he would use it to wash clothes and add chlo­rine be­fore drink­ing it.

At least eight peo­ple have died of cholera in re­cent days and dozens more have been treat­ed, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal health of­fi­cials who urged pro­test­ers and gang lead­ers to al­low fu­el and wa­ter to flow in­to neigh­bor­hoods.

But Si­mon was not wor­ried about cholera. His biggest con­cerns are gangs and an in­crease in young chil­dren car­ry­ing guns.

“We don’t know if life will go back to nor­mal,” he said. “If you die to­day, you don’t even know if you’re go­ing to make it to a morgue. You could be left in the street for dogs and an­i­mals to eat you. This is how crazy the city has be­come.”

Dupuy, the Hait­ian ex­pert, said it’s un­like­ly Hen­ry would step down since there is no in­ter­na­tion­al pres­sure for him to do so. He wor­ried there is no clear so­lu­tion as the sit­u­a­tion spi­rals: “How much more boil­ing point can there be?”

By EVENS SANON and DÁNI­CA CO­TO-As­so­ci­at­ed Press