After decades of political upheaval and climate disasters, Haiti has once again fallen into chaos.

What's happening in Haiti? 
Years of political and economic instability recently reached a tipping point, as criminal gangs ousted another government. On Feb. 29, the heavily armed gangs staged a coordinated attack on Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince, demanding Prime Minister Ariel Henry's removal. The rebels shut down the Caribbean nation's main airport, burned police stations, and stormed two large prisons. About 4,700 inmates escaped. More than 1,500 people have been killed this year in gang violence, and with bodies left lying in the streets, many Haitians are afraid to leave their homes. Armed groups surround the capital, trapping over 160,000 displaced people amid severe food, water, and medicine shortages. The U.S. has airlifted embassy personnel out of the country. When the attack occurred, Henry, 74, was abroad in Guyana. Blocked from returning, he announced his resignation on March 11 from Puerto Rico. Caribbean leaders created a transitional presidential council to appoint an interim prime minister, but the gangs demand a voice and vow to fight any leader imposed from abroad. "It is a battle that will change the whole system," said Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier, a ruthless former policeman who's become Haiti's most powerful gang leader. "The divide between the rich and poor is too vast." 

How did it get to this point? 
Chaos has defined Haiti's history. The country of 11 million people has been struggling since it gained independence from France in 1804 through a slave revolt and 13-year-long war. In exchange for peace, the French imposed ruinous reparations on Haiti for the loss of their "property," and the loans Haiti took out to make payments consumed much of its economic output. The U.S. occupied the failing state from 1915 to 1934, but left behind an impoverished, violence-ridden nation while continuing to prop up a series of corrupt dictators. Today, Haiti remains the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, with a gross national income of $1,610 per person. The country didn't have a democratically elected president until Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990 — but he was twice ousted by coups. Haiti's last democratic election was in 2016, when Jovenel Moïse became president. He was assassinated in 2021, and Henry assumed power with support from the U.S. He's delayed an election ever since, and most Haitians viewed him as corrupt, ineffective, and illegitimate. "Henry has to go," said a protester at a recent demonstration. "We are living in total precarity. We're living on trash, on sewage. I have nothing." 

Why are gangs so powerful? 
They filled the void created by the absence of a functioning state. Haiti currently has no elected officials, and its judiciary is dysfunctional. Gang violence rose 122 percent from 2022 to 2023, aided by an estimated 500,000 AK-47s, machine guns, sniper rifles, and pistols — most of which came from the U.S. That firepower far outpaces the police's. Armed groups control about 80 percent of Port-au-Prince and parts of the countryside. The country's wealthy elite allied with certain gangs to maintain power — six families control most of Haiti's major industries. Several rival gangs recently banded together, strengthening their dominance. Most of their recruits are teens desperate for money and survival. "I see people dying in front of me every day," said a 14-year-old recruit. "The thing I hate the most is when [gang members] kill someone and they make me burn the body. I don't want that to happen to me." 

What role have natural disasters played? 
Haiti lies in the middle of a hurricane track and along an earthquake fault, creating a never-ending cycle of destruction and reconstruction. The constant upheaval caused by nature compounds the man-made instability. Haiti witnessed 15 natural disasters from 2000 to 2010. The greatest was the magnitude-7.0 quake that battered the country in 2010, killing almost 250,000 people and leaving at least 1.5 million homeless. Just 2.3 percent of the almost $8 billion sent to Haiti since the earthquake went directly to local organizations. Much was stolen or misused by corrupt officials or paid out to international aid workers. U.N. workers brought cholera with them, killing about 10,000 people, and the disease roared back to life with another outbreak in 2022. 

How has the world responded? 
Security concerns make aid and intervention challenging. The U.N. Security Council authorized an international security mission led by Kenya to help reduce violence in October, and the U.S. pledged $200 million. But Kenya's highest court blocked the mission. The U.S.'s history of propping up Haitian leaders has created widespread fear in Haiti that foreign intervention could install Henry or some other autocrat back in power. Thousands of Haitians have been fleeing the violence in Port-au-Prince for the nation's south, and police — who haven't been paid for weeks — are having firefights with the gangs. National police union leader Lionel Lazarre is pleading for international intervention. "The police are on their knees," Lazarre said. 

The fear of a migrant crisis 
The unfolding emergency has raised concerns that thousands of Haitians will risk death by trying to flee to the U.S. by boat. So far, there hasn't been a surge in the perilous maritime crossings; the Coast Guard says it's intercepted and returned about 130 Haitians since October. But in 2023, the rise in gang violence caused over 160,000 Haitians to migrate to the U.S., mostly by land through Mexico — an increase of 189 percent over 2022. The U.S. has a decades-old contingency plan to house migrants at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base — separate from the detention center — in the event of mass migration in the Caribbean. But long-standing U.S. policy calls for turning away most migrants who are intercepted at sea. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently ordered more than 250 police and National Guard soldiers to the Florida Keys "to defend the state" from the "possibility of invasion." Tessa Petit of the Florida Immigrant Coalition said it's wrong to view desperate refugees as invaders. "To think that people would rather risk dying in high seas than staying home is just a confirmation of how dangerous Haiti is," she said.

It was "an anniversary that I hoped would never come," said Linda Kinstler in Politico. One year ago, Russian security agents seized my friend Evan Gershkovich as he sat in a restaurant in Yekaterinburg, arresting The Wall Street Journal reporter "on baseless espionage charges." A Moscow court last week extended his pretrial detention at the infamous Lefortovo prison for a fifth time, so his trial won't start until June 30 at the earliest. The U.S. has proposed several prisoner swaps to bring Gershkovich home, but "each one has been rejected" by the Kremlin. Russian President Vladimir Putin has signaled that he'd be open to swapping the reporter for Vadim Krasikov — "one of his favorite hitmen," serving life in Germany for the murder of a Chechen dissident — but no progress has been made. Gershkovich, 32, still sounds "upbeat and warm" in letters to family and friends, but any hope for a swift release "has now vanished." 

Putin has been methodically stocking his prisons with Americans, said Brian Michael Jenkins in The Hill. Businessman Paul Whelan was detained on bogus spying charges in 2018; Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was arrested six months ago for failing to register as a foreign agent; ballerina Ksenia Khavana was seized in February for the high crime of donating $50 to a Ukrainian charity. Moscow accumulates these hostages as "a kind of bank account" that can be drawn on in negotiations with Washington. Locking up Western journalists also serves a useful domestic purpose for Putin, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. Throwing the likes of Gershkovich into "the darkness of Lefortovo" fires "a shot over the heads of any Russians" who might be tempted to speak to reporters about the president's "mafia boss" rule. 

American negotiators are hamstrung, said Aruna Viswanatha in The Wall Street Journal, because "the U.S. doesn't have any Russians in its prison system" that the Kremlin wants back. But we're not powerless, said the Washington Examiner in an editorial. At minimum, the Biden administration should "be expelling Russian journalists" and prioritizing investigations of suspected Russian spies. To punish the Kremlin for its hostage taking, its murder of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and its invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. could also confiscate the millions of dollars in Russian reserve funds held in Western banks. It's not clear if Putin would respond by freeing Gershkovich and other Americans. But "kick a bully in his midriff, and he may just loosen his clawlike grip." 

Anne Hathaway has learned to shut out the Hathahaters, said Julie Miller in Vanity Fair. After winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2013 for her turn in Les Misérables, she was subjected to a deluge of bitingly personal criticism, with social media commenters and professional pundits labeling her artificial, affected, and — most of all — annoying. What should have been a high point in her career instead turned into a professional and personal low. "A lot of people wouldn't give me roles because they were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online," says Hathaway, 41.

What made those attacks hurt even more was that they echoed the vitriol she had long aimed at herself. "When your self-inflicted pain is suddenly somehow amplified back at you at, say, the full volume of the internet... it's a thing." In recent years, she has learned to be kinder to herself — a process that required her to give up alcohol. "It was wallowing fuel. And I don't like to wallow." Hathaway has made other lifestyle changes to protect her mental health. "I stopped participating in things that I know to be draining or can cause spirals." That includes checking in on what other people are saying about her. These days, she says, "I actually don't have a relationship with myself online."