A new contingent of 217 additional Kenya police Kenya arrived in Port-au-Prince on Saturday aboard a chartered airplane escorted by the U.S. military.
This came after months of uncertainty about whether President William Ruto would continue to field cops for the struggling mission in Haiti, where gang violence last year reached record levels.
After disembarking, the Kenyans, as customary, danced and chanted on the runway while carrying their rifles.
Others carried a Haitian flag.
The new group included female cops and is among 600 trained and U.S.-vetted cops from various units of Kenya’s National Police Service whom Ruto had promised in September to deploy to Haiti before the end of the year.
But the effort was stalled after Democrats lost the U.S. presidential election in November and Haiti’s ruling council days later replaced the prime minister after less than six months.
Both moves created uncertainty for Ruto, who had also expressed worries about the mission’s lack of resources, including funding and equipment, as it struggled to help Haitian police take down armed gangs.
Ruto’s uncertainties about the mission’s fate seems to have been put to rest, at last for now, following this week’s comments from President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio lauded Kenya for its leadership of the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti, and signaled continued U.S. support.
Rubio’s comments were immediately noticed and on Saturday at 2 a.m. Kenya time, officials from both the interior and foreign affairs ministries waved the new contingent off as they boarded a Kenya Airways aircraft from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.
The plane landed in Port-au-Prince shortly after 11 a.m in Haiti escorted by U.S. military.
In November, three U.S. jetliners flying over Port-au-Prince’s airspace were hit by gunfire, fueling concerns about the safety of the capital’s skies.
The 217 Kenyan cops will join 400 of their compatriots already in Port-au-Prince.
Their presence boosts the total number of foreign security personnel to just under 800. There are currently police and military officers from Jamaica, along with soldiers from The Bahamas, Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador.
The Biden administration, which had been pushing Kenya to deploy its remaining officers, had hoped to bring the mission’s strength up to 1,000 officers before it leaves office on Monday.
But even 1,000 security personnel or the mission’s targeted goal of 2,500 is insufficient, security experts say.
Last year, Haiti saw a record number of neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas fall to armed gangs, despite the presence of foreign forces and a new U.S.-backed transition government.
As the gangs took over neighborhoods and carried out some of the worst massacres in recent memory, they also deepened the country’s humanitarian crisis as tens of thousands more Haitians were forced to flee their homes.
The United Nations said more than 5,600 people were killed by gang violence last year, an increase over the previous two years, and over 1 million Haitians are now displaced.
In light of the widening crisis, security experts say there needs to be a shift both in both the national and international response.
Kenya promised 1,000 police officers as part of its offer to lead the mission.
After repeated delays, including a court battle in Nairobi and congressional Republican opposition in Washington, cops began deploying in June 2024.
But the under-resourced and underfunded effort has struggled to make inroads against armed groups.
As part of a shift in strategy, gangs have consolidated under an alliance known as Viv Ansanm, Living Together, overwhelming both the Kenyan-led force and Haitian police.
To address the money issue, the outgoing Biden administration has asked the U.N. Security Council to transform the mission into a formal U.N. peacekeeping operation, which would guarantee funding through members’ assessed contributions and allow the force to expand and get the needed equipment.
Whether this is something the Trump administration will support remains unclear. During Trump’s first term in office, a U.N. peacekeeping force was on its way out of Haiti, and despite concerns the country wasn’t ready to take control of its own security, the administration did not stop the move.
Last week, Haiti’s ruling transition made the country’s former police chief, Mario Andresol, secretary of state for national security.
A former infantry officer in the Haitian Armed Forces, Andresol was tapped in 2005 to lead the Haiti National Police as it became infiltrated by drug-trafficking cops and as gangs’ foothold endangered a government transition.
On Saturday, he was among the Haitian officials including Police Chief Rameau Normil and Presidential Council member Fritz Jean who welcomed the new contingent to Haiti.
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