Kenyan police personnel arrived in Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital. The main international airport was forced to close for almost three months due to gang violence, but it reopened in late May.
The Kenyans’ initial assignment was not immediately disclosed, but they will be up against aggressive gangs that dominate 80% of Haiti’s capital and have displaced over 580,000 people nationwide as they loot communities in an effort to seize more land. Additionally, gangs have claimed thousands of lives throughout it.
Kenyan military involvement in Haiti is the fourth major foreign military involvement. A fraction of Haitians welcome the force, but others are suspicious of it due to the U.N.’s peacekeeping mission there from 2004 to 2017, which was marred by allegations of sexual assault and the arrival of cholera that killed nearly 10,000 people.
