Haitians on alert as Kenyan police face new US-backed challenge haiti

A large number of Kenyan law enforcement officers have arrived in Haiti as part of a U.S.-backed security intervention aimed at protecting the Caribbean nation from a criminal insurgency that ousted the prime minister and sparked loss of life and chaos on the streets .

About 400 contributors to the Kenya-led multinational police operation disembarked from a Kenyan Airlines plane at Port-au-Prince’s World Airport on Tuesday. The US President, Joe Biden, hailed his arrival as “the beginning of an effort that will bring much-needed relief to Haitians”.

“Large-scale gang violence has killed or harmed thousands of children, women and men. More than half a million people have been displaced…The people of Haiti deserve to feel safe in their homes, build better lives for their families, and enjoy democratic freedoms,” Biden said in remarks.

It is unclear what the officials’ first task will be, but they aim to lead Haiti out of a security crisis that has been intensifying since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021. Kenyan news reports suggest they will be responsible for protecting key infrastructure, including the airport, port, presidential palace and gang-controlled highways linking Haiti’s besieged capital.

Biden said the ultimately 2,500-strong force will rely on workforce numbers and financial backup from Benin, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Belize, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Algeria, Canada, France, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, and the United States. United Kingdom and Spain.

In recent months, Haiti’s disaster has reached unprecedented heights, even for a country that has faced terrible natural disasters like the 2010 earthquake and centuries of foreign exploitation and dictatorial rule. The United Nations says more than 2,500 people were killed or injured that day as increasingly militant gangs launched a coordinated insurgency that paralyzed the capital and forced Prime Minister Ariel Henry to step down.

Henry’s replacement, Gary Conley, a former UNICEF professional, was appointed in June and has been tasked with overseeing the country for its first elections since 2016.

The global challenge will be led by Nur Gabo, a senior Kenyan officer who studied criminology at Bramshill Police School in the United Kingdom and has experienced peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone and Rwanda.

There were mixed emotions in Port-au-Prince as Kenyans carrying rifles in combat equipment touched down on the sick in a passenger jet emblazoned with the slogan The Pleasure of Africa.

Many Haitians are angry at continued foreign interference in their affairs, especially closest to the 2004-2017 UN stabilization mission, MINUSTAH, which was once accused of human rights violations, sexual abuse and a horrific cholera outbreak.

“The last UN mission ended disastrously,” said Isai Delson, 33, a barber pressured to abandon his business in the city of Port-au-Prince because of the bloodshed on this date. “Will (Kenyan forces) create more injustice?”

Delson believed that the mere announcement of the deployment had some effect, reducing the number of shootings in contemporary times. “Here too some schools have reopened,” he said.

However, he felt conflicted about keeping an eye on the foreign shoes in the garden, despite the fact that they had come to fight the gangsters who had destroyed his business. “(The gangsters) are Haitians like me. I’m devastated,” he said.

Evelyn Jean, 56, a vendor also displaced during the rebellion and who now sleeps in a makeshift camp, was more positive. “O Jesus Lord! They’re here!” he said, looking up at the sky as Kenyan forces landed. “For me, they should have been here a long time ago.”

The 2024 challenge would be the fourth large-scale foreign intervention in Haiti since US President Woodrow Wilson sent marines there in 1915 after the assassination of President Jean Wilbrun Guillaume Sam. The next major intervention, Operation Preserve Sovereignty, occurred in 1994, when US President Bill Clinton ordered the military to return Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the presidency at the close of a coup.

Clinton claimed it marked “the beginning of a new era of hope for the people of Haiti.” Over the coming three decades, politicians in Nairobi and Washington have been using more cautious words.

Kenyan President William Ruto informed the officials that they would “bring hope and relief to communities torn apart by violence and devastated by chaos”.

Biden said Haitians “deserve what people everywhere deserve: security, opportunity and freedom”. “These goals cannot be accomplished overnight,” he said, although he added that the Stream US-backed challenge offers “the best chance to achieve them.”