Aristide Supporters Keep Grip on Cap Haitien

Cap Haitien remains firmly in the grip of "popular organizations" loyal to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas Family party -- street kids armed and deployed by those in power to menace the government's critics.

The tension is heightened by the armed rebellion of another gang, in Gonaives, the next significant city on the road south. Roadblocks manned by members of the gang, which was once loyal to Aristide, have prevented fuel tankers from reaching Cap Haitien for a week and led pro-Aristide factions to take the offensive.

Repression of government critics has long been the norm in Cap Haitien, but the clashes in Gonaives have empowered the loyalists here to attack with impunity.

"They broke into our home at 4 in the morning, screaming that they would cut off our heads. They smashed the windows and stole everything they could carry off," Julienne Dorsin, an outspoken critic of local Lavalas leaders, said of a predawn raid Tuesday by a dozen chimeres -- Creole for "monsters" -- who looted her restaurant and upstairs apartment.

Now in hiding and using her cellphone to try to arrange with friends for her escape from Haiti, Dorsin says she's fleeing for safety but not giving up on her homeland.

Across this steamy jumble of potholed roads, two-story wooden houses, cinder-block shops and tropical gardens, opposition leader Elusca Charles has taken refuge in a seaside hovel.

"We are in a civil war. We are in hiding but we are not capitulating," said Charles, a leader of the Democratic Convergence movement, which is seeking Aristide's ouster and the formation of a transitional government.

Barefoot in ripped shorts and a polo shirt, Charles said he believed the pro-Lavalas gangs would kill him if they could find him -- even though he has publicly condemned the violence committed by opponents of Aristide in Gonaives.

Even in the light of day, thugs roam the streets looking for opposition figures or those who would like to meet with them. Along a central street littered with singed debris from the latest riot, a shoeshine boy's eyes flicked between the scuffed loafer he was holding and a foreign journalist asking where to find Charles or other opposition leaders.