In an interview with CNN, Daniel Lewis Foote, who was the US special envoy to Haiti from July to September, said that the Kenyan president was after the money the UN is expected to inject into the mission.
“You see the reticence on the part of the Kenyan public to send these guys and that makes me nervous. I believe that this is more of a cash grab by President Ruto, whose country is going to receive a lot of money in doing this,” Mr Foote said.
Foote added that sending Kenyan police to Haiti wouldn’t be easy and that the well-organised gangs that overthrew the government would fight the Kenyan police to the death.
Mr. Foote argues that despite the support from countries like the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin, Chad, and Kenya, the Haiti mission requires a larger deployment of troops to ensure its success.
Kenya had promised to send 1,000 troops to the Caribbean nation in a deal struck between the Kenyan president and former Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry.
“A thousand isn’t going to cut it and while they have commitments for double or triple that, that’s still not going to cut it. Every time there has been a military intervention in Haiti in the past 20 years, it’s had a minimum of 20,000 troops or police going in there,” Foote said.
The US government initially pledged $100 million (Ksh.13 billion) to support the Kenyan-led multinational force to restore security to Haiti, further urging other nations to make similar contributions.
Recently, Kenya announced that the plan to send police to Haiti under a UN-backed multinational mission had been put on hold.
Source: Business Insider (Africa)
