Haitians – wary after a string of abuse-ridden foreign interventions – remain doubtful of the ability of the Kenyan-led mission to effectively take on the gangs.

“There is a [new] governance, but at the same time the impression is that gangs have reinforced their capacity,” said Johnny Etienne, a Haitian who works as director of communications for Save the Children in Haiti.

“What will be the reaction of the armed groups and how will they be using the children and the civilians to protect themselves? No one is capable of predicting that,” worried Etienne says.

The same fears were raised by Emmanuel Paul, a security consultant and adviser to humanitarian organisations who used to work in Haiti’s Defence Ministry.  Paul observed said that all stakeholders have so far adopted a “state of observation”, and that despite the doubts there are high expectations. Things are still at an early stage, he added, but to make sure the force is perceived as positive the government may try to strike secret deals with gangs.

“I think there could be clandestine negotiations with armed groups to make elections possible. This is what the assessment of the force will be based on,” he said. 

But Pierre Espérance, executive director of the RNDDH, said that although he doesn’t trust the new government, negotiations are unlikely to happen because the population opposes them.

“Haitians don’t want to hear about negotiations with gangs. What they demand is that they put their weapons down or go to jail,” he said. “They want gangs to be dismantled to get the poor neighbourhoods back.”

On July 3, the RNDDH and other civil organisations sent an open letter to Conille asking him to fight corruption and not to give the gang members any amnesty.

Doubts over the MSS are not new. Since it was approved by the UN Security Council last October, Haitians and Kenyans have expressed mixed feelings about the mission.

However, the escalation of the violence and its impacts led some who originally opposed the deployment to change their mind, while others still fear it will repeat the mistakes of the past, especially as the US is its main financial backer.

“As long as the force comes to take care of the bandits, even if it turns the earth upside down taking all the mines beneath, personally I won’t have a problem.”

Frantz Dolma, a 43-year-old business owner currently living in the capital’s Delmas neighbourhood. Giving gangs a way out through negotiations could be perceived as a repetition of past cycles. The United States has a long history of occupation in Haiti.

In 1915, it took control of the country’s political and financial interests and occupied the Caribbean nation until 1934. Rebellions against its presence led to the killing of thousands of Haitians and two decades of occupation and foreign exploitation of the country’s resources contributed to its descent into poverty.

Later US involvement in foreign interventions further undermined Haiti’s stability, especially the 13-year UN “stabilisation” mission (MINUSTAH) that left a legacy of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation, and a cholera epidemic that claimed more than 10,000 lives.

“This is a US intervention under the cover of Kenya. And when it involves the US, everything is arbitrary.”

Fears of a new occupation are still strong among Haitians, many of whom hold the US responsible for the current chaos. The US supported Henry and is often perceived as having propped up a corrupt elite with links to gangs they sometimes trained, and to have done little to stop the massive smuggling of weapons and munitions into Haiti.

“All that is happening is due to a drift initiated by Americans,” a Haitian policeman who requested to speak anonymously said a few weeks before the deployment of the MSS. “I would like for the force to take the leaders who have supplied weapons to the gangs, the guys in suits who have led the country to this point… But it is the innocents who will pay for the guilty ones.”

“This is a US intervention under the cover of Kenya,” said Mario Joseph, managing attorney of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in Port-au-Prince. “And when it involves the US, everything is arbitrary.”

Not everyone feels this way, however. Among the population, desperation is such that some are willing to risk giving up part of their sovereignty if it brings more security.

“As long as [the force] comes to take care of the bandits, even if it turns the earth upside down taking all the mines beneath, personally I won’t have a problem,” said Frantz Dolma, a 43-year-old business owner currently living in the capital’s Delmas neighbourhood. “I need security to live and have a better life.”

Dolma and his family have been displaced twice: once from their home in Carrefour-Feuilles, one of the most violence-stricken areas, and then from the downtown neighbourhood where his business was.

“We ended up having no home and no business. All I had invested in my life was lost,” he said. “If there are possibilities for the force to take care of something that will be good for the future of my children, it will be good for us.”

Among the long outgunned and demoralised Haitian police force, there is also hope that the new mission, which is eventually expected to involve 2,500 police officers from at least seven nations  will give them some much-needed support.

“Truthfully, [with] the multinational force […] we will have a break,” one police officer from a specialist crowd control unit said weeks before the deployment, asking to speak anonymously. “It will help us because we lack the means, the ammunition to work.”

To Auguste Ducéna, it’s crucial that lessons from past interventions are learned. The international community, she said, must urge Haiti’s justice system to pronounce harsh sentences on gang leaders and their financial backers and must establish both a reparation fund and health programmes for victims of gang violence. “For once, the international community and the mission must focus on the victims”, she said.

• The New Humanitarian report