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Kenya and the US signed a defense agreement recently that will ensure the East African country, support for security deployments in its mission to lead a multi-national peacekeeping mission to Haiti to combat gang violence
Kenya and the US signed a defense agreement recently that will ensure the East African country, support for security deployments in its mission to lead a multi-national peacekeeping mission to Haiti to combat gang violence.
Kenya’s Defense Minister Aden Duale and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signed the accord at a meeting in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi recently. The agreement strengthens Kenya’s defense relations for the next five years. It is also meant to help East Africa against the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab extremist group as the group’s activities are getting intensified in the region.
Austin thanked Kenya for volunteering to take the leadership of the Haiti multi-national force. He also reiterated that the U.S. government would work with Congress to secure the US$100 million in funding that it pledged on the sidelines of the U.N General Assembly. Praising Kenya’s commitment to global security, Austin said that the US would take steps to provide more personnel, equipment, support, training, and funding to the East African country. It may be recalled that Kenya in August pledged to send 1,000 security officers to Haiti to combat gang violence in a mission that is pending the U.N Security Council’s formal approval. However, the mission has received support from the U.N. and U.S.
Kenya has a very long history of global peacekeeping in Kosovo, neighboring Somalia and Congo. Meanwhile, human rights activists have expressed concerns over the deployment, citing a history of human rights abuses during security operations in the country. Some security analysts have expressed concerns that there will be a language barrier between the deployment from Kenya, an English- and Swahili-speaking country, and the people of Haiti, where the official languages are French and Creole.
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Austin said he had met with Somalia’s president and that both agreed that the country (Somalia) had made significant progress in the last year against al-Shabab. But Austin reiterated that such progress might not always be a straight line; one may see things improve significantly on one day; but change the next day. Somalia last week asked the U.N. to pause for three months the withdrawal of 3,000 troops in the second phase of drawdown to allow the country’s forces to regroup. Somalia is expected to take up its full security responsibilities by the end of 2024.
