In the months leading up to Kenya’s deployment of police officers to Haiti, President William Ruto consulted political advisers, security officials and foreign leaders on the high-profile anti-gang mission.
He also turned to less conventional counselors: a circle of Christian evangelical pastors close to him and his wife.
The pastors made recommendations to Ruto and served as a conduit between Haitian communities and the president, according to interviews with two of the pastors and three Haitian and American evangelical leaders.
Spokespeople for President Ruto and his wife Rachel did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
The pastors’ efforts ahead of the deployment, which will begin later this month, include meetings with Haitians in the United States, as well as evangelical colleagues, U.S. government officials and even Haiti’s most notorious gang leader, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier.
“We believe that we are an instrument that God will use to help,” said Serge Musasilwa, an evangelical pastor in Kenya involved in the initiative. Musasilwa, a sociologist by training, said he has worked on conflict resolution in his native country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in several other African countries.
People involved in the initiative say the relationships built with Haitian communities will help the Kenyan-led multinational force avoid the mistakes of foreign interventions in Haiti in recent decades.
These missions not only failed to stabilize Haiti, but also left behind legacies of human rights abuses and disease, the most infamous of which would be a cholera outbreak allegedly introduced by Nepalese UN peacekeepers in 2010.
A UN-appointed panel concluded that a peacekeeping camp was the likely source of the cholera epidemic, which killed about 10,000 Haitians. The UN has not accepted legal responsibility.
“The more connected you are to the population, the better you can shape the kind of intervention you will lead,” said Daniel Jean-Louis, the president of the Baptist Mission in Haiti, who has worked with the Kenyan pastors.
“This is one of the reasons why all previous missions have failed.”
The UN has said it left the country relatively stable when a 13-year peacekeeping mission withdrew from Haiti in 2017. A UN peacekeeping spokesman said the mission had worked closely with civil society and community organizations to reduce violence and improve municipal governance. .
Not everyone is convinced of the strategy of the Kenyan preachers. Evangelicals themselves have a complex history in Haiti, where they have poured resources into humanitarian projects but also faced criticism for ethical scandals, including alleged child trafficking by some missionaries after a devastating earthquake in 2010, and for preaching intolerance toward of local spiritual practices.
Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti, said Kenya must stick to its security mandate, calling the aid to gang leaders an insult to their victims.
“It is not a matter of the gospel (or) praying with gangs that will solve problems,” he told Reuters.
‘Faith diplomacy’
Ruto and his wife express their faith very publicly. They have involved evangelical leaders in state affairs, including through the First Lady’s “faith diplomacy” program, which enlists religious leaders to support social initiatives.
During a March meeting with evangelical pastors at Nairobi’s Weston Hotel, Rachel Ruto attended a separate event in the same building and explained that the group was working on a “spiritual solution” for Haiti.
“We cannot allow our police to go to Haiti without a prayer,” she said, according to the video The star newspaper.
The pastors’ close involvement in Haiti policy provides some insight into President Ruto’s commitment to the mission, which has remained steadfast despite repeated delays and vocal opposition from many prominent Kenyans.
Evangelicals have long taken an interest in Haiti because of the scale of its humanitarian crisis and concerns about traditional Vodou beliefs that some consider satanic. Haiti is the least developed country in the Western Hemisphere, according to the UN, and is facing rising gang violence, with more than 1,500 people killed in the first three months of this year.
“I think it’s primarily an expression of their faith,” said Pete Inman, an American businessman and evangelical close to the Rutos. He added that there was also a strategic motivation for the mission as it strengthened ties with the US, the main funder of the mission.
In public remarks, the president has noted a moral responsibility to Haiti’s people of African descent.
Inman said he linked Musasilwa to Fred Eppright, who heads the US chapter of the Haiti Baptist Mission, after Ruto announced the mission.
Musasilwa visited Eppright in Austin, Texas, late last year and then invited him and several of his colleagues to Nairobi in March, the two men said.
There, for four days at the swanky Weston Hotel, Jean-Louis, Eppright and two other American evangelicals prayed and strategized with four Kenyan pastors before being joined on the final day by Rachel Ruto.
“It was a four-day deep dive into how they would approach engagement,” Eppright said.
The group drafted a white paper that Rachel Ruto presented to her husband a few days later, he said. Jean-Louis said the proposals covered four topics: law and order, the humanitarian situation, political leadership and a spiritual component.
The following month, Rachel Ruto and three of the pastors traveled to Austin and Miami, where they met with evangelicals, members of the Haitian diaspora and police leaders.
Members of the Haitian diaspora submitted proposals to be submitted to President Ruto, covering everything from the legal authority for the mission to its duration, Jean-Louis said. Reuters was unable to determine whether their recommendations had been delivered to the president.
Spiritual problems
While in the United States, the Kenyan pastors held a Zoom call with Haitian gang leaders, including Barbecue, a former police officer who says he heads an alliance of major gangs called Viv Ansanm.
Musasilwa led the conversation. He declined to go into details, but it did give him hope that the conflict could be resolved peacefully, he said.
“This man may be a devil, but there is something we can build on,” Musasilwa added.
Reuters could not reach Barbecue for comment.
Musasilwa said he also met with officials from the US State Department. The Foreign Ministry declined to comment.
For all their attention to the practical aspects of the deployment, Musasilwa and another pastor, Julius Suubi, said they were convinced that Haiti’s problems were primarily spiritual.
According to government figures, about 2% of Haitians identify as followers of Vodou, which combines belief in a single god and the worship of spirits.
Many more people practice Vodout traditions alongside other religions, says Kyrah Malika Daniels, assistant professor of African American studies at Emory University in Atlanta.
In March, Kenyan pastors launched a global prayer campaign for Haiti and created a 134-page, 40-day prayer guide. Several prayers of the day focus specifically on Vodou, which they referred to with an alternate spelling.
“We ask You, Father, to utterly destroy every Voodoo curse of death we have,” says one.
