Kenyan police taunted as they square up to Haiti's gangs

By Harold Isaac, PORT-AU-PRINCE  Haiti

Pressure is mounting on Kenyan police officers to deliver on their promise to help bring Haiti's rampant gangs under control, six weeks after setting foot in the Caribbean nation.

When the first contingent of 200 elite Kenyan police officers flew into Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince on 25 June, they filed confidently off their Kenyan Airways flight clad in helmets and combat gear, carrying their weapons and holding high the Kenyan national flag.

They chanted in Swahili while they psyched themselves up on the airport tarmac, as did a second batch of 200 Kenyan officers who landed three weeks later.

"Let's go!" and "We're moving!" came the cries.

Hopes were high that the Kenyan police would bring much-needed muscle to Haiti's beleaguered National Police (PNH), as they struggled to hold back a deadly offensive by Haitian criminal gangs that have terrorised the capital and large swathes of the country for more than three years.

The Kenyans are the advance guard core of a UN-mandated, multinational force that will seek to restore peace to Haiti.

They were initially welcomed and feted by Haitian government leaders, and by many in Haiti's media too.

Radio Independante FM posted on X a welcome greeting in the country's Creole language for the Kenyans, saying:

"Haiti is the country of all Africans. Since you are black Haiti is your home... You Kenyan soldiers are at home and must be welcomed to help fight these wasters [the gangs] that prevent us from living in our country".

However, weeks after the much anticipated deployment, which had already been delayed by legal challenges in Kenya and logistical hitches, many Haitians seem frustrated and disillusioned that the force, along with their Haitian police colleagues, have not moved more quickly and decisively against the gangs, their bosses and their known hideouts.

Frustrated commentary, expressing impatience and disappointment, is on the rise in Haitian media and social media circles.

There has been chorus of calls for "actions not words" and "concrete results".

Some of the sharpest criticism accuses the Kenyans of "theatrics" and being mere "tourists".

Critics point out that - despite high-profile joint patrols by Kenyan and Haitian police in Port-au-Prince where they have exchanged fire with suspected gangmen - the gangs only seem to have tightened their grip on the capital's south-western and north-eastern suburbs since the Kenyan mission began.

Gang members have attacked and burned or partially destroyed police stations and continue to prey on major highways out of the capital and inland.

There is a feeling among some that the Kenyan force has been too slow to make its presence felt.

"What are the Kenyans waiting for to act against the bandits?," asked local news outlet AyiboPost in an article posted to X on 11 July, a fortnight after the East Africans landed.

Some two weeks later, online news website Le Filet Info was commenting pointedly: "The presence of the Kenyan police in the country does not manage to frighten the bandits.

"They continue to massacre members of the civilian population."

The Kenyan contingent has already experienced its first casualty since arriving in Haiti.

On 30 July, a Kenyan policeman received a gunshot injury in the shoulder in Port-au-Prince when a Kenyan patrol engaged gang members.

That same day, the Haitian police chief Rameau Normil, accompanied by the Kenyan force commander Godfrey Otunge, appeared to try to counter unfavourable local media commentary by announcing that more than 100 "bandits" had been killed by the Haitian and Kenyan police in operations conducted under a state of emergency declared in the most gang-plagued zones since mid-July.

Such statements however have not succeeded in placating public scepticism.

Confidence was not improved by the publication online of videos showing top Haitian government officials, as well as Kenyan and Haitian police escorting them, making a hasty retreat on 29 July, amid a barrage of gunfire, from the abandoned General Hospital in downtown Port-au-Prince they had just visited.