Deaths, kidnappings, rapes: Delay in Kenya mission to Haiti leads to fearful toll

One Haitian killed every two hours. Seventeen wounded a day. Forty kidnapped a month.

And incidents of sexual violence in gang-controlled areas of Haiti are so frequent that the United Nations office in Port-au-Prince can’t keep track.

In the four months since the U.N. Security Council agreed in October to send an armed multinational force led by Kenya to help Haiti combat widespread lawlessness, armed gangs have killed, kidnapped or injured at least 3,425 people, including children. They’ve also looted and seized control of a women’s prison and set fires to homes, aggravating an already worsening humanitarian crisis.

The grim statistics highlight the deadly cost of delay in deploying a force to the troubled Caribbean country. The country, says the U.N.’s top human rights advocate, just recorded its most violent month in two years after logging more than 1,100 deaths, killings, kidnappings and injuries in January.

And the violence continues. Two kidnapping gangs notorious for abducting motorists and bus passengers for ransom are now blocking aid deliveries by hijacking food and supply trucks. The latest blockade is happening along a national road straddling two cities, Carrefour and Gressier, south of the capital.

In a country where 44 percent of the population is already going hungry, the U.N.’s World Food Program says the brutal violence is pushing up food prices in the south, still recovering from a 2021 earthquake, by almost 25 percent. Store shelves are increasingly bare and even oxygen for hospitals is hard to find. Gang clashes near the seaport are once more making it impossible to get any supplies through customs.

On Sunday there was more bad news: After confirming that nearly 20 acres of sugarcane in one of its fields had been set ablaze by unknown assailants, rum company Barbancourt announced its foundation was suspending all services to the surrounding community north of the capital. No more free water delivery or healthcare services.

Haitians, including school children, are being killed by stray bullets when they are not being deliberately shot or burned to death. The violence is occurring amid armed clashes between rival gangs, and during anti-government protests sweeping through Port-au-Prince and the rural Artibonite, Grand ‘Anse, South, Central Plateau and Northeast regional departments. In the last week, the protests have forced the shutdown of businesses, schools and government agencies and led to the deaths at the hands of police of five armed agents with a security brigade attached to the environmental ministry.

“The already dire human rights situation has deteriorated even further, amid unrelenting and expanding gang violence, with disastrous consequences for Haitians,” Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for Human Rights, said. “Every day that passes, more casualties are being recorded.”

On Friday, Türk issued an urgent warning about the catastrophe that has already forced an estimated 313,000 Haitians from their homes. More than ever, he said, Haiti needs the rapid deployment of the armed multinational security force. His appeal comes amid uncertainty over the fate of a Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission that’s supposed to help stabilize the country.

As Türk made his appeal, the death toll and deadly assaults continued to mount as an alliance between two previously warring gangs set its sights on controlling the Cul-de-Sac community north of the capital. The gangs, 400 Mawozo and Chen Mechan, began their deadly assault Thursday on residents and businesses, continuing well into the weekend.

“They killed a lot of people,” Robenson Ycaly, 25, said Sunday.

Ycaly was at home in Sarthe, he said, when the automatic gunfire started around 2 p.m. Jumping out of bed, he was only able to grab a backpack. In the scramble, he was separated from his mother. “Yesterday, I went back to the house and when I got close they shot someone right in front of me. They killed my neighbor, they burned several cars. They are at my house right now.”

Ycaly said he spent the night sleeping on the street, with his passport hidden in his socks. He hadn’t eaten in days. In addition to taking his home, the gangs now occupy a nearby hotel and other parts of the community where the country’s Rhum Barbancourt factory and other industries are located.

“I would welcome any force that comes,” he said. “We can’t take it anymore.”

Kenya mission setback

On Monday, top brass from the Haiti National Police will join officials from Kenya, the United States and representatives from other countries at Fort McNair in Washington for two-days of discussions around the deployment of the Kenya-led security mission. It’s the first such gathering since a judge in Nairobi put the mission’s deployment in doubt, leaving Haiti’s only official security force for now on its own. With the outgunned force shrinking by the day— the Haiti National Police lost over 1,600 officers last year, according to the U.N. — there are now less than 9,000 officer in a population of nearly 12 million.

“We think there’s certainly a significant need for a multinational security force of some kind down there to help protect the people of Haiti,” White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said as the meeting commenced. “We’re glad to host them. Look forward to seeing where we can get. But the idea, really, is to start to set out the general parameters of what that multinational security force could look like, and how it would operate. It’s an entry-level discussion. I have no doubt there will be follow-on discussions as appropriate.”

Much uncertainty remains. Last month, the High Court in Nairobi said it was unconstitutional for the East African nation to send 1,000 of its police to help Haiti’s police combat gangs. Among the reasons, a judge ruled, was the lack of a police-sharing reciprocal agreement with Haiti.

Kenya’s government said it is appealing the decision and President William Ruto said the two countries are working on securing the legal paperwork to address the court’s concerns. Still, the lack of a definitive timeline and guarantee of deployment means the deaths keep mounting.

“Every day of delay means more Haitians are killed, raped and kidnapped,” said William O’Neill, the U.N.’s independent human rights expert on Haiti. “Untold numbers of people including children will die because they could not get food or medical care.”

‘They want to make history’

In addition to the legal hurdles, the mission faces questions about its funding and composition. The mission is expected to be made up of about 2,500 security officers from Kenya, Jamaica, The Bahamas and other Caribbean and African countries. Some experts have said that size isn’t enough to deal with the problem. And some Haitians fear the gangs are getting ready.

“Every time it’s announced that Kenya is coming, the gangs, if they are fighting, calm down. You get the sense that they want to save all of their ammunition for Kenya, to take them on,” a community leader in the Cité Soleil shantytown who asked to remain anonymous said. “It’s like they want to make history by fighting against foreign troops.”

The gangs’ brazenness raises an important question: Can the international forces make a difference?

“These are not countries that can help us resolve this,” the Cité Soleil leader said. “Only the Americans can bring a solution. The politicians, the population, the gangs fear Americans.”

The U.S has no plans to join the Kenyan-led mission, despite co-authoring the U.N.-backed resolution approving the force’s deployment. Instead, the Biden administration has pledged $200 million to help pay for the mission. But the administration is facing objections from some Republican lawmakers in Congress, who are skeptical about the mission’s goal, timeline and ultimate cost. Of an initial $50 million requested from Congress, only $10 million has been released.

A senior Biden administration official said that the latest estimate from the Office of Management and Budget has put the mission’s price tag at between $515 million and $600 million for two years. But “until the operational plans are finalized, we can’t really know the precise answer,” the official conceded.

Other funding questions remain. Even though several countries have said they will help pay for the mission, a United Nations Trust Fund set up to pay for the force is struggling to attract donors after France made an initial contribution. The French provided $3.23 million and also announced an additional $1 million to provide the Kenyans with French-language training ahead of their deployment.

During a U.N. Security Council meeting on Haiti last month, the Russian Federation’s representative, Dmitry A. Polyanskiy, lamented that the council had not received information members had requested on key questions for the operation, including the rules governing the use of force.

The Biden administration official said the key question is how long the international community will stand by and continue letting Haitians suffer.

“I know it is hard to do something completely new and this type of mission is a new thing. It’s not a traditional peacekeeping operation. It’s not funded or managed by the U.N. Department of Political and Peacekeeping Affairs the way another mission would be,” the official said. “So bringing something completely new together is hard. But every day that passes, there’s tremendous pain and suffering and I feel that every day we’ve got to get this moving faster.“

Compounding the problem, Haiti’s political crisis has intensified, culminating last week in three days of protests aimed at forcing the ouster of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Protesters, who accuse the increasingly unpopular prime minister of failing to get the violence under control, have barricaded streets, set government property ablaze and clashed with police.

Henry had set a goal of Feb. 7, 2024, to hand over power to a newly elected government. However, in the 14 months since signing the agreement that led to that timeline, he and his supporters have been unable to reach a political consensus that the international community has said is necessary for a vote.

Henry, who came to power on the heels of the still unsolved assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, has managed to hold on. But he still faces a menacing adversary: former rebel leader Guy Philippe. A former police officer, Philippe was repatriated to Haiti by the U.S. in November after serving six years in federal prison for a money-laundering conspiracy related to drug-trafficking. Since his return, he’s been traveling the country rallying Haitians in an effort to oust Henry.

Philippe has teamed up with a Haitian government environmental security brigade and its former leader and called for it to seize control of their regions. And criticizing the international community’s support of Henry, he has called on Kenya not to deploy the security mission.

Philippe has support among Haiti’s political and economic elite as well as ordinary Haitians. Twenty-year ago this month, he led a bloody rebellion against then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide that forced the leader into exile.

“Maybe the return of Guy Philippe can paradoxically boost the political process and encourage political leaders to find a political agreement,” said a western official who is keeping an eye on Philippe’s role in the ongoing political instability and gang violence.

The international community continues to stress the need for Haitians to come together and forge a political agreement that would allow for elections. The deployment of a multinational mission, they stress, is not designed to keep Henry in power, but to create the security necessary to hold a vote.

“The United States remains firmly committed to working with the global community to support Haitian political and civil society actors working to put their country back on a path toward long-term peace and stability through democratic governance and free and fair elections,” a U.S. government official said.

But the deployment of the international force is crucial, U.S. officials stress.

“This is vital to address a human rights crisis, a security crisis, a democracy crisis in our region,” said a Biden official. “If the international community does not meet the commitment that the Security Council laid out in October, you’re condemning the Haitian people to tremendous suffering.”

McClatchy Chief Washington Correspondent Michael Wilner contributed to this report.