How much did the U.S. promise Kenya to organize an international force to go into Haiti and attempt to restore order?
It’s not exactly a suicide mission. It’s just that Haiti has been incompetently governed for so long that any kind of civil society will have to be imposed at the point of a bayonet. Bringing law and order to a nation without either laws or order is a challenge far beyond the capabilities of the Kenyan police.
Kenya agreed to drink the hemlock and send Haiti 1,000 police to train the local police force, and it promised to form a coalition of nations to bring in additional security assistance.
Not surprisingly, the United Nations has washed its hands of the entire affair.
“They are not asking for a peacekeeping operation” in Haiti, said Stephanie Tremblay, a spokeswoman for António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general. “They are asking for non-U.N., but still international, assistance to help out with security.”
So a non-UN but still international force? What could go wrong?
When something does go wrong — a strong possibility given Haiti’s current situation — who do you think will have to ride to the rescue and pull that international force’s chestnuts out of the fire? Haiti is a former French colony, so perhaps we could get France to go in and save the day. But you can get that President Emmanuel Macron won’t make a move toward Haiti without his good friend Joe Biden leading the way.
“Once they have conducted that assessment mission, they, as the lead of this multinational force, will talk with other partners about what additional type of assistance they need, what other countries might participate,” said Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department.
But the UN has a checkered history in Haiti.
The world body has a complicated history in Haiti. From 2005 to 2017, it deployed thousands of soldiers after periods of political turbulence and natural disasters. But the soldiers brought cholera to Haiti, which killed at least 10,000 people, and the United Nations was slow to take responsibility. Human rights organizations also accused troops of sexual abuse and impregnating and abandoning hundreds of local women.
António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, is a scold. He’s been berating the world community (rich nations) for not sending international assistance to Haiti and for refusing to send troops into the meat grinder.
But not just any troops will do. And not just any black troops.
“I don’t think 1,000 soldiers can solve the problem in Haiti, especially coming from Kenya, because they don’t speak French, don’t speak Haitian Creole, and cannot communicate directly to the population,” said Jean Jonassaint, a Syracuse University professor and expert on Haiti. “And I don’t think they have the training to deal with gangs.”
This is like sitting on a hill and watching two trains on the same track running at top speed toward each other with the engineers blindfolded and the passengers asleep. You know there’s going to be a collision, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
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