Kenya executed a major troop rotation on Monday, flying 230 battle-ready police officers into Haiti’s chaos-ravaged capital while simultaneously extracting 100 exhausted veterans, demonstrating unwavering commitment to the United Nations-mandated mission despite relentless gang warfare that has transformed Port-au-Prince into a near-no-go zone.

Heavily armed criminal coalitions now control approximately 90 percent of Port-au-Prince, imposing a reign of terror through daily massacres, systematic rape campaigns, mass kidnappings for ransom and indiscriminate looting that accelerated dramatically in early 2024, forcing then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign and flee the country under gang pressure.

The Multinational Security Support mission, authorised by the UN Security Council in 2023 and commanded by Kenya, continues to operate at less than half strength with barely 1,000 personnel against the approved ceiling of 2,500, severely hampering its capacity to reclaim territory from thousands of gang fighters equipped with military-grade weaponry smuggled across porous borders.

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Monday’s infusion of fresh Kenyan contingents follows a September UN Security Council resolution that green-lit the evolution of the current police-led mission into a more muscular peacekeeping operation with expanded mandate, heavier armament and sustainable funding mechanisms to confront Haiti’s spiralling security collapse.

With no elections held in nine years, hundreds of thousands internally displaced and a fragile transitional council struggling to assert authority, Haiti’s descent into anarchy shows no sign of abating, leaving the incoming Kenyan reinforcements to face one of the most dangerous urban battlefields on earth as the world watches whether international resolve can finally break the gangs’ stranglehold before scheduled 2026 polls in summer 2026.

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