Kenscoff in Blood: Paraison and Andrésol’s Security Theater Collapses Under Its Own Shaky Strategies

Port-au-Prince, August 25, 2026 — On the night of August 23-24, armed men swept through Kenscoff, spreading death across this commune in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Dozens of victims, families wiped out, residents fleeing: the toll is heavy, and it revives a question many in Kenscoff have been asking for months — what did the Haitian National Police (PNH) do to prevent this?

Announcements of “control” that didn’t hold

This isn’t the first time Kenscoff has paid the price of gang violence. Nor is it the first time PNH Director-General Vladimir Paraison has promised to bring the area back under control.

After a joint operation with the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission in 2025, the strategic TÉLÉCO site in Kenscoff was presented as recaptured and permanently secured. In January 2026, during a public progress report, Kenscoff still figured among the zones Paraison described as recovered by security forces, alongside Solino and Bel-Air.

The night of August 23-24 delivered a brutal reality check: 47 officially confirmed dead, a church burned down with people who had sought refuge inside, and several private properties attacked and set ablaze.

Seven months on, those claims collide with an undeniable fact: a new attack, attributed to armed groups operating in the area, has once again plunged Kenscoff into mourning. The SPNH-17 police union had itself called on the new director-general to prove himself, pointing to the institution’s persistent difficulty not just in retaking but in durably holding onto control of certain sectors of the commune.

The same words, again

Faced with this new massacre, the official response followed a now-familiar script. Vladimir Paraison traveled to the Kenscoff police station to assess the situation and announced that police intended to respond to the armed groups responsible. The Prime Minister, for his part, spoke of a general mobilization of security forces. PNH headquarters also asked the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) to investigate the attack: “Direksyon Jeneral PNH la mande DCPJ pou ankete sou atak bandi yo fè nan Kenskòf” (“PNH General Headquarters has asked the DCPJ to investigate the attack carried out by bandits in Kenscoff”).

But as of August 25, the silence of certain institutions raises questions. Neither the Ministry of Defense nor Mario Andrésol had yet publicly commented on the massacre, even as Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé and the international community issued a wave of condemnations.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the recent Kenscoff attack, said to have killed at least 47 people, and called on Haitian authorities to ensure those responsible are held accountable.

The United States also forcefully denounced the attack on the farming community of Kenscoff. In a message posted on X, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti offered condolences to the victims and their families while reaffirming its support for Haitian-led security efforts to end gang terror.

The Organization of American States voiced the same condemnation. Its Secretary-General, Albert Ramdin, denounced “in the strongest terms” the brutal attack carried out by criminal gangs in Kenscoff and expressed solidarity with the affected communities and local authorities.

The European Union, for its part, said its delegation, along with the Spanish and French embassies in Haiti, condemned “in the strongest terms” the attack carried out on the night of August 23-24.

Canada likewise condemned the August 23-24 attacks “in the strongest terms,” saying it was deeply saddened by the violence targeting innocent civilians and the suffering it continues to inflict on the population.

Yet this wave of international reactions stands in sharp contrast to the scale of what is now expected from Haitian institutions. Diplomatic condemnations pile up, statements are issued, investigations are announced. But in Kenscoff, families are burying their dead.

After every massacre, the same words come back: Investigate. Condemn. Respond. Secure.

For families burying their loved ones, these pledges sound like the ones made after every previous attack — with no lasting change in the security situation to show for them. On the ground, the gap between rhetoric and reality is plain to see. The PNH says it confronted the attackers, but residents believe a stronger, permanent police presence could have prevented the massacre. Kenscoff, long seen as a peaceful commune, has become one of the new frontlines in the gangs’ territorial expansion across the greater Port-au-Prince region.

A commander in the field — but to what end?

Since his appointment in August 2025, Paraison has built much of his image on physical presence: surprise visits to the capital’s hot spots, street inspections, appearances on the front line. That image of a field “warrior,” praised by some observers at the time of his appointment, ran into more concrete public criticism a few months later — even if it’s equally true that some ambassadors have enjoyed working with him, as French Ambassador to Haiti Antoine Michon pointed out to us last month.

In February 2026, several voices — including figures from civil society — spoke up to denounce what they saw as excessive institutional communication: a flood of photos and appearances that some observers called overly staged, at a time when insecurity continued to weigh heavily on citizens’ daily lives. Those same voices called on the director-general to refocus his efforts on fighting armed gangs rather than on his public image, noting that communication, however necessary, should not substitute for action on the ground.

The contrast is all the sharper given that the Ministry of Defense is now headed by a man who himself ran the PNH for seven years (2005-2012): Mario Andrésol. Appointed in March 2026 and presented as a disciplined manager trained in the United States and France, Andrésol was, on paper, supposed to bring the institutional experience that was missing. But for a segment of public opinion, his presence at the top of the security apparatus remains more ceremonial than strategic — that of a senior official rarely heard from on crisis management and rarely seen engaging with the substance of ongoing operations, at a time when the country is facing one of the worst waves of violence in its recent history.

Between the PNH’s director-general and the defense minister, critics say, the entire security chain of command seems more preoccupied with keeping up appearances than with delivering results. Once again, Kenscoff is paying the price.

Institutional communication that raises questions

The statement issued by the police communications directorate (DIKOP) announced the opening of an investigation entrusted to the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police, tasked with establishing responsibility — complicity or negligence — in the circumstances that allowed the attackers to enter the commune. It’s a step that comes after a string of announcements about regaining control that have not, in practice, kept violence from returning.

For Kenscoff’s families, the question is no longer simply who let this happen that night, but why the repeated assurances that the area had been secured have, every time, failed to survive contact with reality on the ground.

And today, it’s worth asking another question too: why Kenscoff? Why these modest farmers, these smallholders already marginalized in Haitian society, often poorly housed, poorly fed, poorly cared for, denied a quality education? Why the people of Kenscoff? Why must this rural population, which helps feed part of the country, pay such a heavy price for insecurity? Why!

Brigitte Benshow