Sri Lanka has sent a further 498 military and security personnel to join the Gang Suppression Force in Haiti, with two contingents leaving the country within three days of each other.
A contingent of 280 Sri Lanka Army personnel — 21 officers and 259 other ranks — departed on October 14, the Daily Mirror reported. A second group of 218 personnel, made up of 173 Army soldiers and 45 Special Task Force officers, left on October 16. The two groups account for the full 498.
They join Sri Lankan personnel already serving in Haiti, where the report says troops are engaged in security operations including armoured vehicle patrols and the protection of key supply routes — the first description this desk has seen of what the Sri Lankan contingent is actually doing on the ground.
A much larger commitment than previously reported
The scale here is a significant step up from what had been announced. On October 8 this desk reported that Sri Lanka was preparing to send 185 police officers — 174 of them from the Special Task Force — in three groups, with the first two leaving in October and the last in November.
That was a police deployment. The 498 now reported are overwhelmingly military: 453 of them are Army. The movement follows the Army’s pre-deployment training at IPSOTSL in April and Defence Secretary Sampath Thuyacontha’s talks at UN Headquarters in New York on the proposed deployment.
The 45 STF officers in the October 16 group would be consistent with the police deployment being carried out in stages, but the Daily Mirror does not say whether they are drawn from the 174 previously announced or are additional to them.
Sri Lanka as a staging point
The report adds a detail with no direct bearing on Sri Lanka’s own contribution: the Army hosted a 50-member Bangladesh contingent travelling through Sri Lanka to the same mission. The Bangladeshis arrived on October 15 and were given food, accommodation and transport, described as a gesture of goodwill and international cooperation.
Not reported
The filing gives no total for how many Sri Lankan personnel are now serving in Haiti, no tour length, and no cost. It does not say whether the human rights vetting arrangements discussed with the UN — and the record of abuse by Sri Lankan troops in Haiti between 2004 and 2007 that made the earlier police deployment contested — were applied to these contingents.
No other verified newsroom this desk tracks had filed on the two departures at the time of writing.
