1,000 Kenyan police, plus 2,000 soldiers from Benin, a smaller force from Chad and police continents from the Bahamas, Bangladesh, and Barbados are unlikely to restore desperate Haiti to some semblance of order. A series of tough, marauding gangs, with murderous violence, unlimited rape assaults, and widespread pillaging in their DNA, control of the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince, its airport, and just about anything that dares move throughout the country.
Hospitals are being burned and looted. So are police stations. More than 800 civilians were murdered in January alone; another 200 died in February. Last year 5,000 lost their lives and 2,500 were kidnapped for ransom. A curfew and a month-long official emergency are now in place. More than 315,000 Haitians have been displaced from their homes. Port-au-Prince is a war zone, say locals desperate for safety and food.
Haiti's criminalized gang members, high on Colombian crack and Mexican fentanyl, number 10,000 or more. They have vanquished what was left of Haiti's government, cowed the 9,000 Haitian police who report to duty, use abundant repeating rifles and machine guns from Miami and machetes made locally, compelled the U.S. embassy to send any remaining Americans home, and prevented Ariel Henry, Haiti's interim prime minister, from returning back home from Kenya.
The Kenyans and their fellow peace enforcers are too few and too ill-equipped to thrash the gangs. Jimmy Chérizier, a former Haitian police officer who goes by the name "Barbecue" and leads one of the biggest, most brazen, and deadliest of the Haitian gangs, promised a full-scale civil war if Henry failed to resign and pull back the Kenyans.
Last week, Chérizier's gang and two other outlaw groups sprung nearly 4,000 criminals from Haiti's two prisons in Port-au-Prince. They also attacked bank offices and government buildings. People fear leaving their houses.
Kenya's police are known for their human rights abuses at home, but they may nevertheless not be tough enough for a place totally out of control, like Haiti, where there has been almost no rule of law or much security for more than a year. Moreover, the Kenyans speak no local languages like French or Kreyol; swearing and commanding in KiSwahili will not accomplish much in the slums of Port-au-Prince.
The soldiers promised from Benin and Chad indeed speak French, and that could help in giving orders. The Chadians have had serious field experiences of combat in the deserts of middle Africa. But neither they nor the Kenyans will know the warrens and canyons of the congested living areas of central Port-au-Prince. Nor will the police from, and accustomed to much more gentle actions on, peaceful islands like Barbados and the Bahamas, or from Bangladesh. Jamaica is also considering sending police.
The proposed peace enforcers' command structure, polyglot and from varied backgrounds, is liable to be confused by the challenges of anomic gangs who have increasingly consumed Haiti without much opposition, especially since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021.
Nor are the peace enforcers equipped for or ready to relieve the immense hunger that now perpetrates Haiti. The World Food Program says that 40 percent of Haitians are malnourished, with many children already starving. The gangs have disrupted normal imports and the movement of produce from the rural areas to the capital, where about 10 percent of Haiti's 11.7 million people reside. Any makeover force will have its hands full securing Haiti, or trying to, and will at first be unable to relieve hunger.
The United States, contributing $200 million, and Canada $60 million will be paying for the incoming peace enforcers from overseas. In effect, neither wanting to take on the task themselves, each has outsourced the saving of Haiti to what appears to be a motley and little prepared force cobbled together by diplomats. President William Ruto offered his police last summer, the Kenyan Supreme Court said that they could not go, and most Kenyan public sentiment is against sending their police so far away -- to an unrelated country. But Ruto is determined, exactly why is not clear.
Washington wants to avoid involving itself directly, and President Biden has said that no American boots will be on the ground. After all, President Woodrow Wilson's military occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 is widely regarded as a failure, entrenching a mulatto overclass and discriminating against most Haitians. Likewise, President Clinton's intervention in Haiti to re-install Jesuit priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president in 1994 ended badly, with corruption and narcotics smuggling.
Yet, Haiti lies 682 miles from Miami, and has long been considered within the American sphere of influence. Haiti has descended deeply into lawlessness. It is a collapsed state. Millions of Haitians want to return to a normal life, without gangs. If the Kenyans et al fail, or never arrive, Washington and Ottawa could be forced themselves to act directly, employing heavy firepower. They need to start planning together for a serious and forceful intervention. Or do they want to turn the Haitian problem over to President Nayib Bukele, who successfully annihilated gang power in El Salvador by using draconian, civil liberty destroying emergency methods?
Haiti and Haitians cannot simply be left to sink hungry and beset by violence into the Caribbean sea.
An emergency Caricom meeting later today in Jamaica may poise Washington and Ottawa to act urgently.