By Tom Phillips in Port-au-Prince.
November 7, 2007
"It is about poverty, misery and illiteracy," Montenald said. "After so many years of war and violence we need to re-educate people."
Others fear that if the UN troops withdraw, the bloodletting is likely to return. While several gang leaders have been imprisoned or eliminated, many others are believed to have gone into hiding.
"There are still crooks out there that the UN can't get Our country has no army, just a police force that has no chance of fighting against the bandits. If the UN decide to send the Brazilian force away, the country will not do well," said Sailt Wilgels, 31, a community leader in the Cite Militaire slum.
In Port-au-Prince's slums - where pigs and naked children mingle in smouldering heaps of rubbish - the reminders of violence are everywhere; in the cinder-block houses pock-marked with bullets or in the sound of automatic rifles clicking to life as UN convoys approach a slum's entrance.
Marines such as Carlos Alberto Farage, a 25-year-old evangelical from Rio de Janeiro, say they remain constantly wary of the so-called "cones da morte" or "death points" in the city's shantytowns.
"They are the places they can shoot at us from and run away: windows, alleyways, rooftops," he explained.
Colonel Carlos Jorge admitted that Port-au-Prince's gangs still possessed a vast array of guns, among them Israeli assault rifles and AK-47s.
At Camp Charlie, the largest Brazilian military base in Haiti's capital, the only certainty most soldiers have is the number of days until they return home. Few are optimistic about the long-term future of the country they will leave behind.
"Those people who shot at us are still out there," said Colonel Julio Cesar de Sales, who commands the seventh contingent of Brazilian troops. "They don't shoot because there is no need. But if the reconstruction does not come, I really don't know what might happen."
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