(Port-Au-Prince) Anticipation mixes with fear in Haiti, as the country welcomes the fourth major foreign intervention in its history to combat the gang violence that is choking the Caribbean country.
A few hundred Kenyan police officers, who are preparing to deploy in the coming days, met Prime Minister Garry Conille on Wednesday morning. No one except senior officials knows exactly what their mission will be, which officials say is motivated by security reasons.
The first contingent of foreign police supported by the UN arrived on Monday. These officers will then be joined by police and soldiers from the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin, Chad and Jamaica, for a total of 2,500 people.
“The Haitian strategy is to restore security house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city,” Mr. Conille said Wednesday during his meeting with Kenyan police.
Whether this will happen remains to be seen. The gangs control 80 percent of Port-au-Prince and are better equipped than the Haitian National Police, brandishing assault rifles and showing off ammunition on social media, including 50-caliber bullets.
Expectations are high. Haitians are afraid and tired of gangs that have pillaged the capital Port-au-Prince and its surrounding areas, killing, raping and kidnapping thousands of people, in recent years, and leaving hundreds of thousands more homeless and unemployed.
On February 29, gangs launched coordinated attacks that ultimately led Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign. They attacked more than two dozen police stations, opened fire on the main international airport, forcing it to remain closed for nearly three months, and stormed Haiti’s two largest prisons, freeing more than 4,000 detainees.
The Kenyan-led mission in Haiti will have to prove its effectiveness, says Sabrina Karim, assistant professor at Cornell University in New York, specialist in conflicts and peace processes.
“This is a very delicate mandate that requires experience and strong local knowledge,” she said, stressing that Kenyans must gain the trust of Haitians already wary of a long-tied government. corruption and gangs. “The question of accountability is really important. This ultimately determines whether or not the Haitian public will accept the mission. »
Previous interventions have gone wrong. The U.N. peacekeeping mission from 2004 to 2017 was marred by allegations of sexual assault and the introduction of cholera, which killed nearly 10,000 people.
“The results are not excellent for the Kenyan police either,” underlines Ms. Karim in a telephone interview. All eyes are on the Kenyan police to demonstrate that they can do better. »
Kenyan police have for years faced allegations of abuses, including extrajudicial killings. Most recently, they were accused of opening fire on protesters who stormed parliament in the Kenyan capital on Tuesday.
Nonprofits working in Haiti have expressed concern about the Kenyan-led mission, especially since the U.N. recently announced that between 30% and 50% of members of armed groups are now children.
“The risk of child casualties is significant,” US nonprofit Save the Children said in a statement. “A growing number of children in Haiti have been driven to join armed groups due to hunger and desperation. These children are victims of violations of their rights and must be treated as children and not as militias. »
The NPO noted that humanitarian agencies have received “alarming reports” of armed groups using children and adolescents in clashes with Haitian police.
For now, Haitians are watching the Kenyans closely with mixed feelings.
“I ask the prime minister and Kenyans to free Haiti from these gangs,” said Mathurin Jean François, a 30-year-old mathematics teacher who has been unemployed for two years because gang violence forced the closure of his school . “A lot of people are suffering. »
“There is a wind of hope in the air,” testified Frantz Pradieu, a 39-year-old carpenter who was making a table, his first job in several months.
“If Kenyans work hard, maybe in a few months the economy will recover,” he hopes. Many people want to work. Many people lost their jobs. The situation has been catastrophic for three years. Everyone lives in fear. People are being kidnapped. People are being raped. This must stop. »
