Chad plans to send 800 police officers and gendarmes to Haiti this year to support local police in combating powerful armed gangs, a senior Chadian official told Reuters.
The forces are expected to arrive by June after completing training provided by “European and American partners,” according to the official, who requested anonymity.
Roberto Alvarez said this week that the U.N.-backed Gang Suppression Force aims to reach its full strength of 5,500 personnel by October. Alvarez also noted that Kenyan police, deployed under an earlier model, would gradually withdraw.
Although Alvarez indicated that Chadian forces were being trained in the United States, a U.S. State Department spokesperson denied this, clarifying, “Chadian troops are not training in the United States.”
The Gang Suppression Force was established as a successor to the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission. Despite its approval last September, only a small number of deployments have taken place. Currently, the force is composed mostly of Kenyan police along with smaller contingents from countries in Central America and the Caribbean.
In October 2023, Chad pledged to contribute personnel to the MSS, alongside similar commitments from Benin and Bangladesh. None of these pledges had materialized until now.
The deployment underscores international efforts to bolster Haiti’s struggling security forces as gang violence continues to destabilize the country.
