Dear Editor,
Thank you for keeping the situation in Haiti in the public eye with your February 25 Guyana Review article, ‘When will Haiti’s travails end?’ Only by keeping the disaster at the forefront of the news can we, all the international partners working for Haiti’s recovery, hope to continue to draw in the private and public contributions essential to this long-term, monumental effort.
In the first chaotic and confusing days after the earthquake, as in any major disaster, misleading and inaccurate information was sometimes taken as fact – some of those inaccuracies were repeated in the aforementioned article. While I in no way wish to diminish the intent of the article in keeping Haiti’s plight at the forefront of discussion, I do want to clarify the US role and assistance.
The US objective in Haiti has always been humanitarian in nature – saving lives and rescuing people, Haitian and non-Haitian alike. The article stated that US forces put an emphasis on security rather than relief efforts, turned away flights with humanitarian assistance from other nations and focused on rescuing Americans and not Haitians. To begin with the latter: more than 50 highly trained and experienced US Search and Rescue teams converged on Haiti as soon as humanly possible. Almost all of those teams worked wherever they were needed regardless of the potential nationality of trapped persons. A small number of teams did focus, as our taxpayers expect and demand, on sites where Americans were known to have been trapped, but in all cases many other nationalities were present in the same location. The rescue teams did not discriminate amongst these victims and aided whomever they could.
In regard to air traffic in the first days – it must be understood that the airport control tower was damaged – air traffic control for hundreds of flights was managed by a small US Air Force team working from portable equipment off of a folding table. There was a brief period when flights were turned away for safety or logistical reasons – either the runway was blocked, the plane requesting landing permission would have required refuelling (which was not available) or there were simply too many aircraft trying to land/take off at the same time. But the number of flights diverted was minimal compared to the number landing. Managing so many flights off a single runway amidst major aftershocks and world pressure without a single accident will some day be recognized as an amazing feat in disaster assistance – but at the moment that accomplishment is lost in the global frustration at the inabaility to have done even more at a time of great anguish.
There is also a misconception that the employment of US military forces means that they are there primarily for security and not for humanitarian assistance. Security is critical in a disaster in order to ensure that assistance is not slowed or blocked entirely by desperate crowds or destroyed infrastructure, but the primary security responsibility in Haiti fell to MINUSTAH and the government of Haiti with the US playing a supporting role when asked. Our forces were involved, along with many other nations’ civilian and military forces, in medical support, evacuations, search and rescue, shelter support and food and water distribution. US forces and other nations still provide many of these same services today while diligently removing tons of debris.
Could the initial emergency response have been better? Things can always be done better and unfortunately there is always an event – whether hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami – that affords the tragic opportunity to improve. Govern-ments, international organizations, militaries, and charities around the world will engage themselves in the question of “what can we do better?” as time passes. For now, we cannot forget – even if another tragedy arises elsewhere – that Haiti needs us all. We must not let Haiti become ‘old news’ or let the focus on that nation shift away from assistance and recovery needs while so much help is still needed.
Yours faithfully,
Karen L. Williams
Charge d’Affaires
US Embassy
Georgetown, Guyana
