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Residents of the Carrefour Feuilles neighborhood gather outside a military base demanding help after they had to flee their homes when gangs took over, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in August 2023.
The country that wants to take on Haiti’s gangs
Who on earth would want to fight the gangs of Haiti?
Kenya, for one.
In early August, the East African nation offered to lead a UN-backed policing mission to corral the gangs that have wreaked havoc on Haiti ever since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021 plunged the Caribbean nation into fresh political and economic chaos.
Several weeks later, a Kenyan security team spent several days in Port-au-Prince, meeting with local officials, UN representatives, and US diplomats to craft a peacekeeping proposal.
The situation there continues to deteriorate by the day. Gangs now control 80% of the Haitian capital. Gang-related violence and kidnappings have displaced at least 165,000 Haitians. In late 2022, a gang takeover of fuel depots put nearly half of the country’s 11 million people at risk of starvation.
The chaos has paralyzed the government of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who took over after Moise’s death but has no electoral mandate. Elections would be nearly impossible to hold under the current conditions.
Both Henry and the UN have called for outside help. The US too, which this week called on all of its own citizens to leave Haiti, has backed the idea.
If it happens, it would be the first time any African Union country has led a major peacekeeping operation beyond the continent.
But why, exactly, is Kenya signing up for this? After all, warring with Haitian gangs sounds like a distinctly thankless and possibly fruitless task.
Nairobi framed its proposal as a mission of brotherly assistance to people of African descent. But analysts say it’s part of a broader agenda to raise Kenya’s international profile.
Kenya has a long history of participating in international forces within Africa – Sierra Leone in the late 1990s, Somalia since 2011, and the Democratic Republic of Congo since late last year. But since President William Ruto came to power last year in a bitterly contested election, Nairobi’s foreign policy has become “significantly more adventurous,” says Connor Vasey, an East Africa specialist at Eurasia Group.
In addition to the DRC intervention, Ruto hosted the peace talks that ended the war between Ethiopia’s government and Tigray rebels, and he leads a multilateral group mediating Sudan’s current civil war as well. Next week, he is hosting the United Nations’ African Climate Week in Nairobi.
By looking toward Haiti, Ruto is signaling that he wants to take Kenya’s role on the international stage to the next level, says Mercy Kaburu, an assistant professor at United States International University in Nairobi.
“Under this new government,” she says, “Kenya is asserting itself as an African country that is willing to go out of its comfort zone, a country that can undertake more complicated global roles.”
Is there a US angle here? Yes. Washington is keen to see the situation in Haiti stabilize. The humanitarian crisis has driven a surge in irregular immigration from Haiti to the US, and the country’s descent into a gang-wracked failed state is an open invitation to drug cartels and other transnational criminal organizations to take root there.
But at the same time, the US – which has its own checkered history of interventions in Haiti – has ruled out intervening directly. If Kenya wants in, Washington seems glad to back Nairobi. And Ruto has, in fact, been keen to deepen ties with Washington again after his predecessor forged stronger relations with China.
Vasey at Eurasia Group says there’s reason to believe the US may offer some “financial incentives” to Kenya in exchange for taking on the Haiti mission. Last year, the US sent close to a billion dollars of aid to Kenya.
Not everyone loves the idea of Kenyan intervention. Rights groups point out that Kenya’s police have a history of using excessive force and carrying out extrajudicial killings at home.
Language barriers could also be an issue, as Kenyan policemen generally don’t speak French, much less Haitian Creole.
And among ordinary Haitians, there has long been a deep skepticism of foreign interventions of any kind. They have never brought lasting peace but they have, on occasion, brought epidemics of cholera, as the UN peacekeepers from Nepal did a decade ago. The sight of a government with no popular mandate inviting yet another foreign intervention may not go over well with ordinary Haitians.
The stakes are high. Thousands of ordinary Haitians have braved the streets in recent weeks to protest against the gangs. And many Haitians, desperate for order, have formed vigilante groups of their own, killing hundreds of suspected gang members. Last weekend, a church group armed with sticks and machetes clashed with a local gang outside of Port-au-Prince, leaving at least 7 people dead.
With that kind of violence, even Kenya seems worried. The Kenyan mission to Haiti resulted in a more limited proposal than what Haitian officials had hoped for. Rather than a broad strategy for tackling the gangs, Kenya suggested a narrower focus on securing critical infrastructure. And, according to one report, Kenyan officials were so spooked by the escalating violence that they barely left the Port-au-Prince airport.
What’s next: Kenya will need to finalize its proposal and take it to the UN for a vote. That could happen in the coming weeks. In the meantime, Haitians continue to live a daily hell with no end in sight.
Hell in Haiti
The Caribbean state of Haiti has been in a persistent state of pandemonium for decades. Yet, what’s happening now on the island nation of 11 million reflects a profound new wave of instability that’s threatening to spill over into neighboring countries.
Thousands of Haitians have recently taken to the streets calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, while large swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince, are being ruled by rival gangs vying for power. Forget democracy or autocracy – lawlessness is rampant in Haiti.
Backstory. Dictatorships have long ruled over Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. For almost 30 years until 1986, François and Jean-Claude Duvalier, the autocratic father-son duo known as Papa Doc and Baby Doc, led the country with an iron fist. Since then, the country has seen several military coups and a rotating door of leaders, many of whom have mismanaged the economy and lined their own pockets. As a result, poverty and crime plague Haiti, and there’s little hope for economic growth in a country whose top export in 2020 was … knitted T-shirts.
But things deteriorated further last summer after President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in a heist-like operation, giving rise to succession disputes and a leadership vacuum that left parliament mostly empty and paved the way for gangs to consolidate power.
Why now? The latest round of anti-government protests exploded after interim PM Henry announced he would slash $400 million in fuel subsidies. Many Haitians consider Henry’s tenure illegitimate because he was neither elected nor formally confirmed by the legislature. They are also fed up with his stalling tactics, having refused to set a date for new elections that have not been held since 2016.
So how bad is this situation? "It’s catastrophic," says Haiti’s former Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive (2009-2011). “I believe Haití has never experienced such chaos even during the 2010 earthquake,” he said. That cataclysmic event resulted in more than 200,000 deaths and decimated homes and infrastructure. (Bellerive was accused of corruption during his time in office.)
The king of Port-au-Prince. Haiti has just 12,800 active police officers, who are significantly outgunned and outnumbered by gang members. Arguably, the most powerful man in Port-au-Prince is a former cop turned gangster called Barbecue (his real name is Jimmy Chérizier). Some say Chérizier earned this nickname because he’s the son of a grilled chicken street vendor; others say it’s because he has a knack for burning alive those who cross him.
Barbecue heads one of Haiti’s most powerful gangs, G9, which rules large swaths of the capital, including coastal areas where shipments of food and fuel enter the country. As a result, wealthy business people who own warehouses and industrial parks have been forced to make deals with the devil to get goods flowing into the capital.
This dynamic, whereby the rich can afford to circumvent the chaos, has fed grievances over classism and inequality, deepening social fissures that gangs have exploited to accumulate more power. What’s more, many government officials have been accused of corruption and – along with elites – reportedly strike mutually beneficial deals with gang members.
The land of scarcity. Most recently, gangs have taken control of one of the country’s largest fuel terminals, exacerbating dire food and fuel shortages. (They already control the main arteries in and out of the capital, dictating what – and who – gets in and out.) Moreover, looting of food storage units is also widespread, leading last month to the loss of at least $6 million of relief assistance, including 2,000 tons of food, according to the World Food Programme.
The situation on the ground is dire, Bellerive says. “Most of the hospitals are closed, schools are yet to reopen, and supermarkets have very short opening times.” The international airport remains open, but “getting there or out of it could be risky.”
Moreover, lack of access to clean water – a scarcity in Haiti – has given rise to a cholera outbreak in a country already traumatized by a 2010 outbreak of the disease brought by UN peacekeepers that killed roughly 10,000. Meanwhile, neighboring countries like the Dominican Republic fear it could spread to their populations.
The timing of this explosion could barely be worse. “At the international level, Haití is clearly not a top priority,” Bellerive says, adding that the message received to date by Haitians has been “grow up and solve your problems.”
“Only because of the fear of massive emigration due to the collapse of the economy and the resurgence of cholera, some attention has recently been given” by the international community.
A plea for help. With the situation spiraling out of control and little hope for a domestic solution, PM Henry this week called for foreign troops to help quell the violence.
UN Secretary General António Guterres, for his part, supports sending in international armed forces, but Haitians on the street responded with a resolute … hell, no! Many Haitians despise the UN after its mission left the country in disgrace in 2017 with its peacekeepers having spread a deadly disease and reportedly raped and impregnated scores of Haitian women and girls.
Washington is unlikely to send in troops given that American voters – Democrats and Republicans – have little appetite for foreign interventions. Indeed, after Moise’s assassination last summer, Biden reiterated that “the idea of sending American forces to Haiti is not on the agenda.” Meanwhile, many Haitians also rallied this week against US boots on the ground, repudiating solutions that are imposed from outside.
There’s no sign that things will improve anytime soon – and Bellerive’s assessment is stark: Haiti has “gone beyond the fragile state characterization to become a chaotic state.”
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A demonstrator holds a sign reading "No more Core Group (a group of international diplomats), no more BINUH (the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti)" during a protest against the government in Port-au-Prince.
Hard Numbers: Haiti's looted aid, Cuba’s gay marriage breakthrough, Kazakhstan’s red carpet for Russians, India’s “anti-national” crackdown
6 million: Amid recent protests over Haiti’s soaring food and fuel costs, looters have swiped at least $6 million worth of UN humanitarian aid, including thousands of tons of food. The UN now says the Caribbean nation is on the brink of “humanitarian catastrophe.”
66.9: In Cuba, 66.9% of voters approved a new, government-backed “Family Code” that legalizes same-sex marriage and adoption. Reuters notes that the 33% “no” vote was uncharacteristically large by the standards of Cuba’s one-party state. The referendum was the first since the widespread legalization of mobile internet access.
100,000: Nearly 100,000 Russians have fled to Kazakhstan since Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization. Kazakhstan says it is ready to welcome them and “ensure their safety.” Ties between the two former-Soviet giants have been strained since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
57: Police in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, arrested 57 people linked to the Popular Front of India, an Islamic organization that the government accuses of violence and “anti-national activities.” In recent weeks, the Indian government has cracked down on the PFI in a number of states. Critics of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP say it discriminates against Muslims.
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