In a letter published in AsheNews, our friend and colleague, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, UCI Distinguished Professor of comparative literature and English, addresses Kenyan President William Ruto, excoriating him for his recent agreement to deploy Kenyan troops in Haiti as part of a Multinational Security Support Mission. This decision has ignited significant controversy and debate in Kenya and in the humanitarian world. Given that Haiti’s history has been shaped by international interventions and manufactured debt, as explored by CIHA co-editor Cilas Kemedjio in 2016, and given NATO’s problematic intervention in Libya, Ngũgĩ’s commentary challenges President Ruto’s NATO alignment and draws compelling parallels between Kenya’s post-colonial trajectory and Haiti’s ongoing struggle for sovereignty amidst such foreign interventions.
