Two hundred Kenyan police officers have arrived in Haiti for the second wave of law and order to stabilise the troubled nation.
There are now four hundred Kenyan police officers deployed in Haiti, offering their expertise and experience to its nine thousand law and order officers, who are thinly spread throughout a nation of more than eleven million people.
Like those who have come before them, they are being deployed around the Capital Port Au Prince, eighty per cent of which is still dominated by street gangs.
Authorities remain tight-lipped and haven’t confirmed their role or duties, but they are guarding government buildings and other key installations including the international airport, which only re-opened in May, after a three-month onslaught by organized crime.
The port was constantly attacked and blockaded, and police stations were overrun. Haiti`s two main prisons were stormed, setting loose three thousand inmates, who are still on the run.
Further Keyan reinforcements will soon be coming, bolstered by more police and soldiers from Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Benin, Chad and Bangladesh.
The United States, Canada and France have pledged 600 million dollars of annual aid, but have declined to commit any of their forces.
The overall aim and strategy is to regain at least partial stability, to enable free and fair elections – most crucially a Presidential one – in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation.
Peace-keeping missions are welcome, but past ones have proved a double-edged sword.