​US-backed, Kenya-manned police mission in Haiti is struggling

Kenyan President William Ruto has confirmed that Haiti will receive 600 more Kenyan police officers next month, doubling the size of the strained international anti-gang force known as the Multinational Security Support (MSS).

The announcement came less than two weeks after the U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed to extend the U.S.-coordinated mission for another year, and just days after members of Haiti’s Gran Grif gang launched an unencumbered massacre on a farming village that killed at least 115 people.

“Haiti’s future depends on the return to democratic governance,” President Biden said in a statement supporting the mission’s initial deployment in June. “While these goals may not be accomplished overnight, this mission provides the best chance of achieving them.”

Gang violence and influence in Haiti have escalated this year in the power vacuum left by its unelected prime minister, Ariel Henry — who resigned in March amid growing international and domestic pressure — further upending a nation already shaken by the assassination of his predecessor and a recent history of natural disasters.

“Gang violence is not new in Haiti — it is something that has always existed,” said Robert Fatton, a professor in the University of Virginia’s Politics Department. “What is new now is that the gangs have gained a very serious degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the people who used to nurture them financially and politically.”

The MSS is the most recent gambit in a long history of U.S.-led strategies in Haiti with the stated intentions of pulling the nation out of despair and into a future of stability and democracy. So far, it has not found much success.

The MSS mission has liberated the capital’s main airport and main public hospital from the gangs, but the force is vastly outnumbered; the nearly 200 gangs in Port-au-Prince, estimated to have around 15,000 total members, still control over 80% of the city and its main roads in and out, as well as other parts of the country.

The humanitarian situation remains dire as well: as of September 27, the UN says at least 3,661 people have been killed in 2024 as a direct result of gang violence. At least 700,000 people across the country have fled their homes, and about half of the population — at least 5.4 million people — are experiencing food insecurity.

Past American attempts at intervention in Haiti put the current mission into a bleak context, as some scholars have pointed out.

“25,000 U.S. troops in the mid-90s couldn’t put Haiti back together,” said Christopher Fettweis, who teaches political science at Tulane University. “I don’t know how anybody can think, ‘Oh, 600 more Kenyan [officers] — they’ll get it done.’”

While the additional numbers will provide much-needed support for the mission, Executive Director for Justice and Democracy in Haiti Brian Concannon emphasized their limited capacity to engage with and aid the Haitian population.

“It’ll make some difference, but that doesn’t replace the amount of Haitian police that have left in the last two years,” Concannon said. “You’re replacing them with people who don’t speak French or Creole, don’t know the neighborhoods, can’t interact with people or do intelligence work — all these things that make a Haitian police officer much more effective than a Kenyan one.”

The force was initially planned to have 2,500 officers from Kenya and a smattering of other nations, but it remains undermanned and underfunded. This new deployment will bring the force’s numbers to just over 1,000, consisting mostly of Kenyans, as well as two dozen Jamaicans and two officers from Belize. On top of $369 million in funding from the U.S., UN officials have reported around $85 million in other donations to the mission, primarily from Canada.

Despite optimism from Biden, Ruto, and other international leaders, the MSS clearly lacks adequate funding and personnel for addressing the country’s current crisis and setting Haiti on a path towards stable governance. But, as Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research Jake Johnston described, even a fully supplied MSS would not be the proper solution.

“The last two years have been sort of consumed by finding a force, authorizing the force, funding the force, and I think it's sort of missing the forest for the trees here. Even with a perfectly well- funded, well-armed force, there is no actual strategy to restore peace and security in Haiti, and we've seen sort of shockingly little engagement on any of the other pieces that would be critically important to actually doing so,” Johnston said.

It was Henry who initially requested the mission’s deployment in 2022 — which many saw as an attempt to protect himself and his grip on power.

“Another armed foreign intervention in Haiti will not result in the necessary Haitian-led transition to a democratic government, rather it risks further destabilizing the country, endangering more innocent people, and entrenching the current, illegitimate regime,” several members of Congress wrote in a December open letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Manpower and lack of planning are not the only challenges. A long history of American meddling and propping up corrupt regimes in Haiti’s politics also casts an ominous shadow of doubt over the Biden administration’s claims that its strategy even aligns with Haitian interests.

Haiti’s 2010-2011 presidential election looms particularly large. After interfering in the election on his behalf in November 2010, the U.S. imposed sanctions on former president Michel Martelly this August for charges related to drug-trafficking, with one American official citing the role he and other figures have played in “perpetuating the ongoing crisis in Haiti.”

Fatton underscored the legacy of Martelly’s regime and its significant influence on the current situation, particularly in relation to the trade and import of small weapons used by the gangs. A U.N. report from last year also alleged that the former president financed, negotiated and established relationships with gangs — using them to expand his influence over certain neighborhoods and “contributing to a legacy of insecurity, the impacts of which are still being felt today.”

In this sense, the U.S.-backed interim Haitian government, the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) — designed to carry out presidential duties until elections can be held — seems to be a step in the right direction. However, the Council’s infancy has been racked by backroom coalition-building and corruption, controversial appointments, and unanimous support for the MSS despite widespread opposition among Haitian civil society groups.

“I think the Presidential Council was welcome, because Henry had been such a disaster, and there was hope that you have very different groups and personalities in there that usually never collaborate. … But now you have divisions and a scandal in the Presidential Council, and people feel disaffected,” Fatton said.

To Johnston, it is the broad and enduring external influences on Haitian politics that has prevented the continent’s poorest country from reaching a smoother path toward stability.

“The political class has become oriented towards external actors, as opposed to the internal population, and that has significant repercussions,” Johnston said. “That is what exacerbates and breaks down this relationship between the state and the population, and ultimately leads to state failure.”