Kenya ramping up numbers in Haiti

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After recent visits by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Kenyan President William Ruto, it appears that the multinational force deployed to Haiti to help fight heavily armed gangs terrorizing citizens will significantly increase in size and strength with the planned arrival of 600 more Kenyan police officers in the coming weeks.

At the weekend, the Kenyan head of state made a diversion to Haiti on his way to the United Nations General Assembly to meet with Haitian government officials, Kenyan police officers, and other para- and military personnel on the ground, declaring that “our next batch, another 600, is undergoing redeployment training. We will be ready for the mission in a few weeks and look forward to the necessary support to enable their deployment. There are many people who thought Haiti was an impossible mission, but today they have changed their minds because of the progress you have made.”

Once deployed to parts of Port Au Prince (the Haitian capital), the Kenyan contingent would be at full strength in keeping with a promise by the cabinet to send 1,000 police officers. As for the other dozen or so nations that have promised to send personnel, Jamaica has landed 20 soldiers and four police officers, the Bahamas five soldiers, and Belize two senior officers, to work with the command structure. Suriname is the other Caribbean Community (Caricom) member that has firmly pledged to do likewise, but nothing much has been communicated about this in recent weeks.

However, even as friends of Haiti are continuing efforts to ramp up numbers on the ground, the foreign minister of Benin, who has promised to send 2,000 soldiers when the time is right, said he foresees huge problems with the command structure, because he knows of no situation involving combat where highly trained soldiers are led and commanded by police officers, as is the case with Kenya as the lead force on the ground.

“You cannot ask the military to be led by police officers,” Minister Shegun Adjadi Bakari told the Miami Herald , which is known for its exceptional reporting on Haiti. “This has never happened anywhere in the world. You need military personnel to lead military personnel. That’s where we are today — we said we cannot send our military to Haiti to be led by police. There is a diplomatic meeting planned with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken later this month, and Benin plans to raise its concerns again. Our position is simple. We are ready. Our people are trained, they have all the authorizations, but at the same time, the United States, Canada, France, and other countries must commit in terms of funding.”

Ruto also complained about insufficiency of funding, noting that the numbers on the ground are way below what is required to fight off the gangs. He also said that “we do not have enough equipment.”

The Kenyan contingent arrived in June and July, while those from Caricom were deployed to Haiti mostly in September.

One way of improving funding for the mission, according to Brian A. Nichols, assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere, might be to convert the multinational security support system to a full-fledged peacekeeping mission, which would make it easier to attract funding. “A peacekeeping operation is one of the ways we could accomplish that. But we are looking at multiple ways,” Nichols recently told reporters.

The wider 15-member bloc of Caricom, of which Haiti is a full-fledged member and the last nation to join, is continuing its assistance to the interim government to prepare for general elections by early 2026. Officials said that if accomplished, that would result in the first elected government in several years, because the mandate for most elected officials has long expired. The gangs have emerged in numbers since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.

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