Kenya suspends police deployment in Haiti

A deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti to help quell gang-fueled lawlessness will be suspended until a new government is formed in the Caribbean country, officials in Kenya said Tuesday.

Kenya had agreed to send a security force to Haiti, but that deal was reached with Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who on Monday evening agreed to step down once a new transitional government is formed.

“The deal they signed with the president still stands, although the deployment will not take place now because we certainly need a sitting government to work with,” said Salim Swaleh, a top spokesman for Kenya’s foreign ministry Affairs. “Because you don’t just deploy the police to go through the streets of Port-au-Prince without a sitting government.”

Haiti’s embattled prime minister announced his resignation after being stranded in Puerto Rico for days following a gang takeover of much of the Haitian capital, making it impossible for him to return. His decision followed several days of violent attacks on police stations, prisons, the main airport, seaport and other state institutions.

Mr Henry’s resignation added further uncertainty to an already chaotic situation on the Caribbean island, which has been hit by an extraordinary wave of gang violence in recent months.

Mr Henry, 74, had traveled to Kenya to make final arrangements for the East African country to send 1,000 police officers to Haiti to help quell the violence. The mission was approved by the United Nations and largely funded by the United States, which pledged Monday to provide more aid.

The mission had already been postponed by Kenyan court rulings, but the agreement Mr Henry and Kenya signed was intended to remove the last remaining legal hurdle so the deployment could go ahead.

Gang leaders took advantage of Mr Henry’s absence to take to the streets and sow more chaos. Orchestrated attacks on two prisons freed thousands of prisoners. Gunfire at the main airport in Port-au-Prince, the capital, forced the suspension of flights; Houses were ransacked and looted throughout the city.

Every day there were reports from the United Nations of civilians being killed by gang fire.

The gangs threatened civil war if Mr Henry did not resign. Mr. Henry, who was appointed prime minister, had become deeply unpopular among many Haitians because of his failure to protect people from gangs and his apparent unwillingness to hold elections.

Leaders from Caribbean countries, who have taken the initiative to create a transitional council to lead Haiti after Mr. Henry’s departure, met for talks in Jamaica on Monday but said no plan had yet been finalized. Guyana’s President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, who heads Caricom, a union of 15 Caribbean countries, said “we still have a long way to go.”

It was far from clear when Mr. Henry, under mounting pressure to resign both in Haiti and abroad, would actually do so.

Mr. Henry’s tenure has been problematic from the start.

A neurosurgeon who lived in France for almost two decades, Mr. Henry led the country’s public health response to a 2010 earthquake and a cholera outbreak that followed. He also worked at the Ministry of the Interior. A veteran of two previous presidential administrations, he was a member of the opposition party when President Jovenel Moïse tapped him to become prime minister in 2021.

But Mr. Moïse was assassinated just days after that appointment, and Mr. Henry was never formally elected by the legislature.

Haiti’s electoral system is so disorganized that no elections have been held in eight years. With no parliament in power to elect a new Prime Minister, many Haitians viewed Henry’s time in power as illegitimate.

But the Biden administration and other countries backed him, helping Mr. Henry stay in office. Now that he is leaving, Kenyan officials say they will wait until a new governing body is in power.

“We will certainly have to work with some kind of administration to fulfill that mandate,” Mr Swaleh said. “And if there isn’t one, we obviously can’t just send the police there.”

A spokesman for Mr. Henry, Jean-Junior Joseph, said Mr. Henry will resign once the transition council is appointed.

“We’re waiting for that to happen,” he said.

David C Adams And André Paultre reporting contributed.