THE FIRST contingent of United Nations-backed foreign police have arrived in Haiti, nearly two years after the troubled Caribbean country urgently requested help to quell a surge in gang violence.
Some 200 police officers from Kenya landed on Tuesday in the capital Port-au-Prince, whose main international airport reopened in late May after the violence forced its closure for nearly three months.
It wasn’t immediately known what the Kenyans’ first assignment would be, but they will face violent criminal organisations that control 80 per cent of Haiti’s capital and have left more than 580,000 people homeless across the country as they pillage neighbourhoods in a quest to control more territory. Gangs have also killed several thousand people in recent years.
The Kenyans’ arrival marks the fourth major foreign military intervention in Haiti since the early 20th century.
While some Haitians welcome them, others view the force with caution, given that the previous intervention, the 2004-17 UN “peacekeeping” mission, led to allegations of sexual assault and the introduction of cholera, which killed nearly 10,000 people.
Hours after the Kenyans landed, Prime Minister Garry Conille thanked the east African country for its solidarity, noting that gangs have vandalised homes and hospitals and set libraries on fire, making Haiti “unliveable.”
At a news conference, he said: “The country is going through very difficult times. Enough is enough … We’re going to start working little by little to retake the country.”
Mr Conille said the Kenyan police would be deployed in the next couple of days but did not provide details.
He was accompanied by Monica Juma, Kenya’s former minister of foreign affairs who now serves as national security adviser to Haitian President William Ruto. She said the Kenyans would “serve as agents of peace, of stability, of hope.”
“We stand united in our commitment to support Haiti’s National Police to restore public order and security,” she said. “It is our hope that this will not become a permanent mission.”
The deployment comes nearly four months after gangs launched co-ordinated attacks, targeting key government infrastructure in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere.
They seized control of more than two dozen police stations, opened fire on the main international airport and stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.
