Kenya claims it is prepared to lead a mission to Haiti with support from the UN, but there is increasing pressure at home to defend the dangerous involvement and the prudence of sending its police to the country wracked by violence.
The Caribbean island, where the economy has collapsed and armed gangs are in possession of territory that they have taken from a weak government, has received approval from the UN Security Council for a security operation headed by Kenya.
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The country’s struggling authorities pleaded for assistance from abroad for a year to bring about order, but volunteers stayed away due to memories of previous unsuccessful interventions in Haiti.
Then, in July, there was a sliver of hope when Kenya offered 1,000 of its police could take the lead. The United States and other countries who had previously decided against sending their own troops to the area welcomed this offer.
With the UN’s approval, Kenyans were aware that their police would soon be engaged in combat with heavily armed bandits in a foreign, remote country, and they began to raise questions.
Emiliano Kipkorir Tonui, a seasoned peacekeeper who managed Kenyan deployments to places like Liberia, East Timor, and the former Yugoslavia among others, questioned, “What is their mission in Haiti?”
The media was informed by the retired brigadier general, “Kenyans must be informed. The leadership is answerable to the people.”
A constitutional necessity when Kenyan troops are being sent overseas, the administration has been on a publicity blitz to support the intervention but has not yet presented its proposal to parliament.
The country’s police chief and interior minister, Japhet Koome and Kithure Kindiki, were called before lawmakers on Wednesday to explain the mission, which some legal experts believe to be unlawful.
In a country devastated by colonialism, President William Ruto referred to it as a “mission for humanity,” and Foreign Minister Alfred Mutua claimed that by assisting the offspring of African slaves in Haiti, Kenya was carrying out “God’s will.”
Both mentioned Kenya’s long history of supporting international peacekeeping efforts.
The International Crisis Group’s Murithi Mutiga, program director for Africa, described the Haiti operation as “unusually risky” despite the fact that Kenya’s security services, who are primarily military but include police, have deployed across the world.
He noted, “The security challenges in Haiti are quite different, where you have gangs operating in densely populated, low-income settlements, with very good knowledge of the terrain, and a commercial interest in maintaining that control.”
“It is an unusual intervention, it is one that Kenya has not done before, and I think they need to be very deliberate and careful.”
The Haitian contingent will be picked from specialized groups, according to Koome, who claims that his soldiers are highly trained.
In the deployment, which was initially authorized for a year, Kenyan police would go on the attack alongside their Haitian colleagues, who are outnumbered and outgunned by gang members.
Tonui, however, said that Kenya’s police suffered losses at home to poorly equipped bandits and livestock rustlers since they were primarily trained in the use of light weapons and had no fighting experience.
According to Tonui of Kenya Veterans for Peace, a group based in Nairobi, “the fighters in Haiti have 0.50 caliber, which is a real heavy machine gun.”
He added, “Our policemen are not trained like the military in map reading. They are not trained in communication. They are not trained in handling weapons like machine guns.”
More simply stated was Ekuru Aukot, an opposition politician and attorney who contributed to the revision of Kenya’s constitution.
He said on Twitter now known as X, “That deployment is a suicide mission for our 1000 police officers.”
