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THE US PLAN TO OUTSOURCE ITS IMPERIALISM IN HAITI TO KENYA  
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Samar Al-Bulushi
May 14, 2024
Jacobin [[link removed]]

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_ The US has long outsourced meddling in Haiti to Global South
countries. Recently Kenya has agreed to take over leading a US-backed
multinational police intervention there — justifying its own
“stabilization” mission with Pan-Africanist rhetoric. _

President of Kenya William Ruto speaks at the United Nations
headquarters on September 21, 2023 in New York City. , Kena Betancur /
Getty Images

 

On May 23, President Joe Biden will host Kenyan president William Ruto
at the White House for a state visit that marks the sixtieth
anniversary of US-Kenyan diplomatic relations. This gathering (the
first such visit by an African head of state since 2008
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is expected to coincide with the formal launch of the US-backed,
Kenyan-led multinational police intervention in Haiti, signaling —
in the words of White House press secretary Karine Jeanne-Pierre —
that “African leadership is essential to addressing global
priorities
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As far as the plan to “stabilize” Haiti is concerned, the US-Kenya
alliance represents a convergence of strategic interests between the
United States as an imperial power and Kenya as an increasingly
assertive player in the Global South. Given the widely criticized
history of imperial meddling in Haiti, the Biden administration has
sought to avoid being seen to play a direct role in the most recent
plan to intervene in the country (a plan that is dominated by US
concerns about migration rather than the well-being of Haiti’s
people).

By outsourcing the mission to Kenya, the Biden administration hopes to
convince the American public that the United States is not committing
itself in yet another foreign military occupation, and to persuade
Haitian citizens — much as it did in 2004 when Brazil agreed to lead
the UN stabilization mission known as MINUSTAH — that the
interveners are comrades rather than colonizers. Strategically
downplayed is the fact that (along with at least $300 million in
financial backing
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the United States will be providing logistical support to the mission
in Haiti, including intelligence sharing, communications, and air
power — meaning that this is as much a US-led mission as it is a
Kenyan-led one.

The Biden administration has already rewarded Kenya with a five-year
defense cooperation agreement
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designed to bolster the country’s security capabilities in East
Africa, including its ongoing military campaign against the Somali
militant group al-Shabaab. But Kenya’s calculations extend beyond
crass materialism and a desire to please its more powerful ally. Like
other Global South leaders, including his own predecessor Uhuru
Kenyatta, President Ruto has recognized that security is a terrain on
which to showcase Kenyan leadership more broadly.

In 2021, for example, the Kenyan military established an office of
strategic communications with the explicit goal of shaping public
opinion of the Kenya Defence Forces, whose collusion with al-Shabaab
in the illicit trade of charcoal and sugar had garnered critical
scrutiny
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That same year, Kenyan visual production company Foxton Media released
its first full-length feature film, a military action thriller called
Mission to Rescue [[link removed]]. In line
with the company’s objective of highlighting the successes of the
country’s security bodies, the film extols the bravery and sacrifice
of Kenyan special operations forces in this fictionalized account of a
mission to rescue a group of hostages from the hands of al-Shabaab.
Garnering millions of online viewers in Kenya and beyond, the film won
the ZIFF (Zanzibar International Film Festival) award as the best
feature film in East Africa and was Kenya’s submission to the
Academy Awards in 2022.

Kenya’s rise as the nominal leader of the Haitian mission therefore
constitutes part of a wider effort to brand itself as an exceptional
black nation that stands poised to help others rather than the more
stereotypical “failed” state that exists at the mercy of (white)
liberal interventionism. It is also symbolically suggestive of a less
hierarchical, racially stratified world order wherein the image of the
Euro-American “savior” is replaced with that of the black African
“comrade.” Noteworthy here is that Kenyan leaders frame their
decision to become involved in Haiti in the language of Pan-African
solidarity
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rather than as a charitable offer of support — a reminder that
invocations of Pan-Africanism, particularly when wielded by state
officials, often work to obfuscate rather than center questions of
power.

Kenya has been keen to “help” since at least September 2021, when
Kenya’s former president Uhuru Kenyatta chaired the first ever
Africa–Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Summit. Soon thereafter, during
Kenya’s tenure as a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council,
it hosted an Arria Formula meeting
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on the situation in Haiti. At that gathering, Kenya offered to train
up to two thousand Haitian security personnel, health workers,
teachers, and any other professions deemed vital to efforts to rebuild
the country’s institutions.

Hidden behind the Kenyan government’s Pan-Africanist rhetoric is
what will soon be the direct subjugation of the Haitian population at
the hands of the Kenyan state, aided and abetted by the United States.
Meanwhile, President Ruto is hoping to sideline growing frustrations
among his own citizenry about spiraling debt
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and the skyrocketing costs of fuel and food, which in 2023 triggered
mass protests where police arrested hundreds of protestors and killed
thirty. Going forward, outside observers who might otherwise draw
critical attention to the Kenyan state’s excessively violent
attempts to manage the country’s troubling economic situation are
likely to be more preoccupied with its new role in Haiti.

It is precisely the embrace of militarized solutions at home in Kenya
that should inform our understanding of what to expect in Haiti. In
the past two decades, the Kenyan state has capitalized on its role as
a key US partner in the “war on terror” to train and equip —
with US support — elite paramilitary units
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that are both ideologically oriented and materially equipped for war.
The mainstream media’s generalized references to “the Kenyan
police” when discussing the planned Haiti deployment entirely
obscures Kenya’s ties to US empire.
[[link removed]] More concretely, it
glosses over the turn to counterinsurgency strategy in places where
the United States has not officially declared war. Analysts who have
questioned whether the Kenyan police are capable of defeating
Haiti’s “fearsome gangs” must also ask what constitutes success,
given the large number of Kenyan Muslim families who have lost
relatives to the deadly practices of Kenya’s combat-trained “rapid
response” units in Somalia and within Kenya itself.

Indeed, in the context of ongoing efforts to quell al-Shabaab in East
Africa, US military strategists conceive of Kenya — much like Haiti
itself — as a “gray zone,” or a complex, volatile political
environment that is in need of “stabilization.” It is precisely
because the US military command for Africa (AFRICOM) has invested
years of time and money to cultivate trusted partners within the
Kenyan security establishment that the US Institute of Peace
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proclaimed that the country “has extensive experience in these kinds
of gray-area operations and their personnel will be a quick study on
what is required to succeed.” Put simply, Kenya’s brutal policing
at home and in its own backyard has served as an apprenticeship for
its interventions abroad.

Let us be clear: the seemingly innocuous language of
“stabilization” is designed to distract our attention from the
fact that Kenyan police (likely in direct communication with US
military and intelligence operatives) will soon launch mass
pacification efforts with potentially deadly consequences for the
people of Haiti. Strategic analysts following the situation on the
ground speak openly
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about the need for a militarized response to combat what they
characterize as a full-blown insurgency.

Much like the ongoing — undeclared — war against al-Shabaab in
East Africa, the human impact of this intervention will undoubtedly
extend beyond the geography of Haiti itself. Indeed, given the very
real economic challenges that Ruto faces back home in Kenya along with
his continued thirst for international support and acclaim, there is a
very real possibility that the Kenyan state — like Brazil before it
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— intends to use Haiti as a laboratory for its own future
pacification efforts at home and abroad.

Global South states like Haiti have historically served as
laboratories [[link removed]] for
Euro-American imperial powers to test new techniques of control. But
the United States’ cynical embrace of Kenya as the purported
Pan-African “face” of intervention is a sign of the changing
nature of imperialism. To understand these transformations, we must be
attentive to both the domestic politics of countries in the Global
South, and the transactional relationships they are able to form with
the United States in order to advance their own agendas.

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Samar Al-Bulushi is on the faculty at UC Irvine and author of
War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on
Terror, forthcoming from Stanford University Press.

* Haiti; Kenya; US Imperialism;
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