The last two interventions before the arrivals of the Kenyans were both traditional U.N. peacekeeping missions, and didn’t produce the results many had hoped. The missions occurred within 10 years after separate coups —one by the military in 1994 and the other by armed rebels in 2004— ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as he served out two separate presidential terms. The last was marred by a deadly cholera outbreak and the U.N.’s refusal to acknowledge its role and allegations of sexual misconduct by soldiers.

This time around, the catalyst, like at the turn of the century, was a presidential assassination.

The brazen slaying of President Jovene Moïse three years ago next month on July 7, allegedly at the hands of Colombian mercenaries, local police and politically ambitious Haitians and Haitian Americans, left the country in total disarray. Already mushrooming under Moïse’s unpopular rule and Haiti’s weak governance, criminal armed groups stepped into the power vacuum and grew in strength and firepower.

Now, seven years after the last U.N. blue-helmet troops left after a 13-year presence, Haiti once more finds itself reeling and forced to invite foreign boots on its soil. It’s a reality that has many Haitians torn, yet at the same time, wondering if this time, the results will be different.

Monica Juma, Kenya’s national security adviser, who accompanied the police officers to Port-au-Prince, has said she hopes that the security mission doesn’t become a permanent one. Conille, who left Haiti on Friday for meetings in Washington and New York this week, wants it to be Haiti’s last.

In order for both to happen, Haiti will need to find a way out of its endless cycle of instability, Haitians say, and put in place a plan that goes beyond just arresting and even killing gang members.

“When you look at what’s happening, it’s not just because people want” to create chaos, said Emmanuel Paul, a Port-au-Prince-based security expert. “It’s the result of years of bad decisions, bad politics.”

“Yes, we need an international force; yes we need weapons for the police and we need to reinforce the police so that it can combat the bandits. At the same time we have to reflect on the causes that brought us here,” he said. “If you have someone who is hemorrhaging, instead of you keep looking for blood to give him, it’s better to investigate why he is bleeding in order to block the hemorrhage.”

Haitian authorities, under then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry, first appealed for international assistance with their gang problem in October 2022. Since then, armed groups have forced more than 100,000 Haitians from their homes, bringing the displaced population to nearly 580,000 in three years, and driven millions to hunger. Today, over a million Haitians are facing starvation, according to the U.N.

“This violence has a name,” said Paul. “It’s the name of all the gang chiefs that we all know. But even if they were to arrest them, even if they were to eliminate them, we still need to look at what produced them. How did they get here? If we don’t do this, we risk taking decisions that could give us a little relief in the short term, but then we will return to the same problem. Every time we don’t resolve the problem, the situation gets worse.”

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