Gwynne Dyer

It's a sure sign that things are not going well in a country when foreign airlines get shot at on their way into or out of the main national airport.

That is what started happening in Haiti on Tuesday: three different American airliners were hit by bullets in rapid succession, and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration halted all U.S. flights to Haiti for at least the next month.

It's not the first time that Port-au-Prince's airport has been forced to close due to criminal gangs. That's how the same gangs forced Ariel Henry, former interim prime minister, to quit early this year. Henry had been serving in that role since the assassination of the last elected president, Jovenel Moïse, in 2021, but Jimmy Chérizier wanted him out.

Chérizier, an ex-police officer who now leads the "G9" coalition of gangster groups, is known as "Barbecue" because he likes to set his victims alight — a fearsome reputation is an asset in Haitian gangsterdom — but he is more than an ordinary thug. He and his backers are after political power, and their first step was to get rid of Henry.

The opportunity arose when Henry traveled to Guyana for a "summit" of Caribbean countries........

© The Korea Times