After Kenyan police help is blocked, Haitians are wondering: what now?

Gangs have taken over entire neighborhoods in Haiti's capital and the number of murders has more than doubled in the past year, but for the organizers of the Port-au-Prince Jazz Festival, the show had to go on.

So while judges an ocean away debated whether to send a contingent of officers to calm Haiti's violence-ridden streets, festival organizers did it by shortening the event's duration from eight days to four, with the acts were moved from a public stage to a restricted hotel. venue and replacing the handful of artists who canceled.

While 11.5 million Haitians struggle to feed their families and ride the bus or go to work because they fear falling victim to gunmen or kidnappers, they too are forging ahead and struggling to make a living. regain a safe sense of routine – whether or not this involves the help of international soldiers.

“We need something normal,” said Miléna Sandler, executive director of the Haiti Jazz Foundation, whose festival takes place this weekend in the capital Port-au-Prince. “We need elections.”

A Kenyan court on Friday blocked a plan to deploy a thousand Kenyan police officers to Haiti, the key element of a multinational force intended to help stabilize a country besieged by killings, kidnappings and gang violence.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has plunged deeper into unrest in the nearly three years since the president's assassination. The terms of all mayors in the country ended almost four years ago, and the prime minister is deeply unpopular, largely because he was appointed, not elected, and has failed to restore order.

Now that the deployment plan, backed by the United Nations and largely funded by the United States, has been suspended, Haitians are left with the question: What now?

The Kenyan government said it would appeal the court ruling, but it was unclear if and when the mission would go ahead. And because no other country, including the United States and Canada, shows any willingness to lead an international military force, there is no clear Plan B.

So for many Haitians, the Kenyan court's decision has left it up to the Caribbean country to come up with its own solutions. If the court ruling suggested anything, experts say, it is that if there is any hope of preventing Haiti from a complete state collapse, the government, police, parliament and other institutions must be rebuilt.

“We no longer want to be a colony of the United States,” said Monique Clesca, a women and democracy activist who served on the Commission to Search for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis, a group that tried to come up with a solution. plans to tackle the country's problems. “That doesn't mean we don't want help. It means negotiating with people who are legitimate and have Haiti's best interests at heart.”

Ms. Clesca, a former United Nations official, said she hoped the Kenyan court's decision would prompt the United States, Canada and France — countries long deeply entwined with Haiti — to reconsider their policies.

She criticized the Biden administration and leaders of other countries for supporting Haiti's current Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who took office after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

The committee she worked on came up with sweeping proposals for an interim government that would pave the way for elections, but its work was rejected in favor of backing Henry, who has pushed for international intervention, she said.

In a personal act of defiance and a sign that Haiti must march forward, Ms. Clesca braced herself against the unsafe streets and attended the jazz festival on Thursday.

“It was packed,” she said.

Jean-Junior Joseph, a spokesman for Haiti's prime minister, declined to comment on the Kenyan court's decision other than to say Mr. Henry was “pursuing a diplomatic approach.”

A United Nations spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, emphasized that Secretary-General António Guterres had not selected Kenya to provide police assistance; Kenya, on the other hand, had taken a step forward.

“We thank them for that, while so many countries are not taking a step forward,” Mr Dujarric said. “The need for this Security Council-approved multinational force remains extremely high. We need urgent action, we need urgent funding, and we hope that Member States will continue to do their part, and even more.”

In Washington, John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, reminded reporters that the Kenyan government was appealing the court's ruling.

“We remain very grateful for the Kenyan government's willingness to participate,” he said. “We still think this is very important because the gangs, the thugs and the criminals are still causing a lot of mayhem, mayhem, killings and violence, and the people of Haiti deserve much better than that.”

Although Washington was a strong supporter of the mission in Kenya, it did not offer American personnel.

The U.S. government has pledged as much as $200 million for the multinational mission, money that many Haitians say could instead strengthen Haitian institutions, including the police, which has seen at least 3,000 of its 15,000 officers leave their jobs in the past two years.

The U.S. State Department has already provided about $185 million to the Haitian National Police, which has helped fund equipment, but the force remains ill-prepared to battle the heavily armed gangs.

“Do we have to wait forever for a force to arrive?” said Lionel Lazarre, who heads one of Haiti's two police unions. “No! We already have a police force.”

Eduardo Gamarra, a professor at Florida International University who follows Haiti closely, said that without international intervention, a more strategic policy from the United States and a long-awaited and seemingly impossible strengthening of the Haitian state, a less favorable option was probably the most likely . : the rise of someone like Guy Philippe, a former police commander who led a coup in Haiti in 2004 and has recently tried to mobilize people against the government.

Mr. Philippe arrived in Haiti in November after serving a prison sentence in the United States and being deported. He has known ties to drug traffickers and has joined a paramilitary group in northern Haiti, but it is unclear whether he has the popular support and financial backing to lead the “revolution” he has publicly called for.

“Someone has to take some leadership,” Mr Gamarra said, adding that it would preferably not be Mr Philippe.

Ashley Laraque, leader of the Haitian Military Association, a veterans group, said he believed Kenya would eventually get through it, but that the Kenyan government would likely need more financial incentives.

“I am sure the Kenyan government will send the troops,” Mr Laraque said. “I don't know when, but I'm sure it will happen as soon as this money issue is resolved.”

Joseph Lambert, the former president of the Haitian Senate, said the need was critical.

“Now more than ever, it is time to understand that at all costs we must strengthen our capacity, both at the level of the police and at the level of the Armed Forces of Haiti,” he said, “so that as a sovereign state we can meeting our security needs from our own security forces.”

Although Haiti has a history of disastrous outside interventions, Judes Jonathas, a consultant who works on development projects in the country, said many Haitians were disappointed by the court ruling because their main concern is the safety of such a contingent of police officers . could deliver.

“If you ask the people of Haiti what they need, it is security,” he said. “They don't think about food or school. We don't have any food, for safety reasons. People don't go to school because of safety.”

There are even neighborhoods without cooking gas, because gangs have blocked the main roads. Farmers in rural areas often find it too dangerous to sell their goods in urban markets. Even the national electric company had to move its employees out of its headquarters due to gang activity in the area.

Gangs have such a grip on Port-au-Prince that they sometimes kidnap busloads of passengers and demand ransoms.

The gangs, Mr. Jonathas said, had become emboldened in the face of the government's inability to confront them in any significant way, and the legal roadblock to international engagement had left Haitians to fend for themselves.

“I don't really think international actors really understand what's happening in Haiti,” he said. “We just don't see a future.”

Farnaz Fassihi And André Paultre reporting contributed.