From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernice and this is The Daily.

The small island nation of Haiti is unraveling.

Gains control much of the capital.

Thousands of Haitians have been displaced.

Hundreds more are dead.

In recent weeks, the government took the extraordinary step of asking for armed intervention from abroad.

My colleague Natalie Kittrowff went to Haiti to bear witness.

Today, I talked to her about what she saw there and what the government's request might mean for the people of Haiti.

It's Thursday, December 8.

Natalie, last time we talked about Haiti on the show, the president had been assassinated.

There was this question of who had done it and who would fill the power vacuum that had been left in the wake of that assassination.

Catch me up.

What's been happening in Haiti since then?

First of all, the crime of the assassination remains unsolved.

We really don't know who did it.

But there is this huge power vacuum that's left behind when the former president was killed and into it steps these increasingly dominant gangs that start taking over more and more territory.

They get more and more powerful and recently this gang activity, this violence has really plunged the country into the depths of a dire humanitarian crisis.

And that's what I went to Haiti to see.

A few weeks ago, I flew in to Haiti to the Capitol, Portoprint.

Where are we on the outer edge now?

And right next to the airport, there's this huge public park. It's called Hugo Chavez Plaza.

It's just an open air refugee camp.

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