By AZAM AHMED

Like much of the country’s southern peninsula, Mr. Philippe’s hometown is writhing beneath the weight of disaster. Hardly a home is free of damage on the hourslong ride into town, nor a tree unflayed by the wind. The hurricane raked nearly every farm folded in the curtained mountains under his control, robbing 80 percent of the population of its main food source.

Villagers walk for hours to the nearest town in search of basic staples. Prices have risen sharply, emptying the pockets of those who can least afford it, forcing some into banditry to tend to their needs.

“How can we live like this?” said Mr. Philippe, who looks at least a decade younger than his 48 years. “We cannot have a country like this, where 80 percent of the people are living in poverty.”

In a nation as small as Haiti, the circle of power is intimate. Mr. Philippe, who was once a top police official, has been enemies or allies with most in power. “Most of them fought like they wanted to live a thousand years,” he said.

Given his reputation, and his scores of armed supporters, Mr. Philippe could easily take the aid that is passing through Grand Anse. But he knows this will only further isolate him from the legitimacy he craves.

“They would call the local radio 10 minutes later to denounce Guy Philippe as a bandit,” he said. “And in the end, it would be worse for my people.”

And besides, he has a political campaign to consider. Mr. Philippe is running for a national Senate seat, an election that has been delayed for more than a year now as the country’s political discord sows unrest.

He said he was confident of victory, given his popularity in the department. “Even if I die, I will win,” he said with a hearty laugh.

Mr. Philippe was born in Pestel to a family with political connections that ran all the way to the president at the time, Jean-Claude Duvalier. He attended the best schools in Haiti before heading abroad, to Mexico and Ecuador, to study.

His education placed him in the upper ranks of the nation’s police, before he was forced to flee the country by fighters loyal to Mr. Aristide, who claimed he was plotting a coup. He came back to the country in 2003 to lead his rebellion.

But after helping depose Mr. Aristide, he found no peace. Dogged by accusations of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings while a police commander, he settled with his family in Les Cayes. Then, in 2007, the authorities tried to arrest him; he narrowly escaped.

Afterward, he returned home to Pestel for safety. Entry and exit from the town is impossible without detection by forces loyal to him.

Today, he is the indisputable power in the town, and more broadly Grand Anse, where residents race from their homes to greet him and call him “senator” or “commander.”

Mr. Philippe, whose face is almost always angled in a smile, has a tendency to turn most things into a joke. He laughs at the totality of the disaster in Pestel because, he reasons, there is already too much sadness.

He pointed across a basin in the center of town, a wasteland of leveled homes and trees freakishly shorn of their limbs. On the opposite end was the church, its walls crumbled and roof peeled back like the lid of a can.

“Where was God when this happened?” he asked. “Maybe he was sleeping.”

Homes and trees and the contents of lives upended all vie for space on the street. With nowhere to throw things away, much is burned, and the air is filled with a dense and acrid smoke. The town is rinsed in red from the rich clay soil kicked up by the storm.

Up the mountain, it is worse, he said, his frustration building into a campaign talking point. “How is it possible that 5 percent of the population holds 95 percent of the wealth?” he asked.

Such statements tend to raise fears of a potential comeback for the warlord, one grounded in a populist message of equality. For now, though, he says he is more focused on the hunger.

Through a connection, he managed to get one shipment of aid from Food for the Poor, an aid group. On Sunday, he set up a team to distribute the goods: a few hundred bags of rice and beans, milk, water and cornflakes.

More than a thousand people were already lined up by 6 a.m. Sunday, jockeying for position as dozens of young men dressed in nurses’ scrubs orchestrated the distribution.

“I hire the tough guys in the community to do this,” said Mr. Philippe, watching from the crowd. “They do a good job, and no one messes with them.”

And how does he manage to make the toughest youngsters in the city volunteer for him? Mr. Philippe smiled and brought a fist down on his hand with a smack.

“They know,” he laughed.

Still, it was not long before the crowd grew unruly, their hunger gnawing at even the most established order. People began to approach Mr. Philippe, begging for help.

Back at his hotel, a line of seven bedraggled villagers turned up seeking food. They had left by sailboat at midnight, paddling for 10 hours on a windless sea, from the village of Corail.

Mr. Philippe asked them how much bags of rice cost, then fished 500 Haitian dollars from his pocket — enough for three large bags.

“Tell the people I am doing my best to help,” he told them.