PILES of rotting garbage, rocks and the carcasses of burnt-out cars litter the semi-deserted streets of Bel-Air, a poor but once relatively peaceful neighbourhood near the centre of Haiti’s capital.

“The country is completely destroyed,” Léonce Duval, 75, a retired metalworker and resident of Bel-Air, said. “Things were better with ‘Titid’,” he added, referring to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former President who was ousted in February after months of street protests and a brief armed rebellion.

Mr Aristide’s departure was supposed to usher in a period of political reconciliation and economic reconstruction. So far, Haitians have little to show for the change of government, beyond promises of $1.3 billion (£0.7 billion) in foreign aid.

Despite the presence of 5,000 United Nations soldiers and police, armed gangs still roam the streets. Government control is shaky at best in many other parts of the country.

Haitians have become so familiar with the sound of gunfire — day and night — that they jokingly refer to it as “exploding popcorn”.

Killings are so frequent that each weekend municipal workers ferry the unclaimed bodies to a mass grave outside the city. When the refrigeration unit at the city mortuary broke down for two weeks, the stench became so overpowering that offices in surrounding buildings had to close, including the US consulate.

The Bush Administration, which helped to engineer Mr Aristide’s departure aboard a US government-chartered jet, is increasingly concerned and frustrated by the failure of the UN to contain the violence. US Marines who led a 90-day “stabilisation” force left in June, turning over peacekeeping duties to a Brazilian-led UN force.

US officials complain that the Brazilians have been too timid in going after rival forces of gunmen, including the former Haitian soldiers who led the uprising against Mr Aristide and partisans of the former President.

Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, the Brazilian general who heads the UN military force in Haiti, complained last week that he was “under extreme pressure from the international community to use violence”.

He said that he commanded a “peacekeeping force, not an occupation force”.

His comments came a day after Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, demanded that UN troops deal with the street gangs after gunfire broke out near Haiti’s presidential palace while he was inside holding talks with the Government.

Brazil volunteered to lead the UN force in Haiti, its largest peacekeeping mission, as part of a diplomatic push to win a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

It may, however, have underestimated the challenge. Combined, the rival armed groups have succeeded in strangling economic activity under the new interim Government. The rag-tag band of former soldiers control several ports outside Port-au-Prince, while the proAristide gang leaders in the capital say that they are fighting a “resistance struggle” against foreign occupation.

“It’s a question of regaining sovereignty,” one US official said. “Real estate is not changing hands. The same bad people are still in control and they are becoming entrenched.”

It looks that way in Bel-Air, where barricades block the roads leading in and out of the neighbourhood. Gangs with names such as Army of Hell and Hack Saw control the streets carrying Uzi sub-machineguns and AK47 assault rifles. Many of the gang members are former public employees dismissed in recent months from municipal jobs in the capital. They complain that they are targets of assassination by rival gangs financed by wealthy Haitian businessmen.

“Without Aristide there can be no reconciliation,” said Samba Boukman, a spokesman for the Popular Base Resistance Movement, which claims to have armed supporters in all the city’s major slum districts. “We prefer to fight and die for Aristide’s return,” he added.

Mr Aristide, who said that he was illegally ousted in a US- engineered “kidnapping,” now lives in exile in South Africa.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Avatar takings hit $600m in ten days
• Orwell birthplace saved from being animal farm
• Bomb disposal squad is Times’s Team of the Year