French Minister wants US role in Haiti clarified: "This is about helping Haiti, not occupying it"

[Better Believe It]

UN: Aid flights get top priority at Haiti airport
By NICOLE WINFIELD and RAF CASERT
Associated Press Writer
January 18, 2010

ROME -- The U.N. food agency reached an agreement Monday with the U.S.-run airport in the Haitian capital to give aid flights priority in landing - a deal that came after the U.S. military was criticized for giving top billing to military and rescue aircraft.

Over the weekend, the aid group Doctors Without Borders complained of skewed priorities and a supply bottleneck at the airport amid reports that U.S. military flights were getting priority. French, Brazilian and other officials complained about the airport's refusal to let their aid planes land, forcing many flights to end up in the neighboring Dominican Republic, a day's drive away.

On Monday, French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet urged the United Nations to investigate the dominant U.S. role in the relief operation, claiming that international aid efforts were supposed to be about helping Haiti, not "occupying" it.

Haitians have complained that food, medicine and water have been woefully slow in reaching them. Sheeran, however, said the WFP aid pipeline is on track compared to previous natural disasters in terms of aid distribution and insisted aid distribution was improving "hour by hour."

The U.N. has estimated that 3 million Haitians - one-third of the country's population - were affected by the Jan. 12 quake and 2 million require food assistance. WFP reported that 67,000 people in Haiti received food Sunday and 97,000 were expected to get ready-to-eat meals on Monday.

Still, Italian civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso said there was little coordination in the relief effort and the international community needs "strong leadership" to channel aid where it is most needed.

"We are still lacking someone who will give orders and tell each country what it must do," he said in Brussels while attending an emergency EU meeting on Haiti.

Read the full article at:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/AP/story/1431882.html

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More troops, aid go to Haiti, but hunger persists
By MICHELLE FAUL
The Associated Press
January 18, 2010

Water began to reach more people around the capital and while fights broke out elsewhere, people formed lines to get supplies handed out by soldiers at a golf course. Still, with a blocked city port and relief groups claiming the U.S.-run airport is being poorly managed, food and medicine are scarce. Anger mounted hourly over the slow pace of the assistance.

"White guys, get the hell out!" some survivors shouted in the city's Bel-Air slum, apparently frustrated at the sight of foreigners who were not delivering help.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, responded to criticism that they have given priority to military and rescue flights at the single-runway airport, which has room to park only a few planes at a time.

The U.N. World Food Program announced that American officials have agreed to a system giving humanitarian flights priority in landings.

French and Brazilian officials have complained that critical aid flights were not given permission to land and the Haiti operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, Benoit Leduc, said the diversion of three cargo planes to the neighboring Dominican Republic had slowed urgent medical aid.

"It's a fact. We are two days behind on the operations because of this access," he said. "Of course it's a small airport ... But it's clearly a matter of defining priorities."

With U.S. forces taking a major part in the relief effort, French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet said he wants the American role clarified.

"This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti," Joyandet said.

Read the full article at:

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/more-troops-aid-go-277415.html

-------------------------------------------



Press Release
Doctors Without Borders Cargo Plane With Full Hospital and Staff Blocked From Landing in Port-au-Prince
Demands Deployment of Lifesaving Medical Equipment Given Priority

UPDATE: January 18, 2010

The Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) plane filled with supplies needed to establish an inflatable tent field hospital landed at approximately 11 am local time, Sunday, January 17, in Port-au-Prince.

However, another MSF cargo plane carrying vital medical supplies to replenish stocks for Choscal hospital, where an MSF team is working on a backlog of patients needing surgery, was not allowed to land in Port-au-Prince on Sunday, January 17, and was forced to re-route to the Dominican Republic, where it landed. Choscal hospital will run out of medical supplies in less than 24 hours and its cold chain system for preserving medicines and vaccines at the proper temperatures could be compromised if this cargo plane is not able to fly into Port-au-Prince immediately.

More than 500 patients in need of surgery have been transferred from Martissant to Choscal hospital in Cite Soleil. MSF teams are focusing on lifesaving surgery (open wounds, fractures, burns, amputations, and emergency obstetrics). They’ve been working around the clock and have done more than 90 surgeries since the operating theater became functional. Priority is given to lifesaving interventions, such as amputations carried out on patients with gangrene triggered by infected wounds.

How many cargo flights has MSF successfully flown into Port-au-Prince? 4

What is their total tonnage? 135

How many cargo flights has MSF successfully flown into the Dominican Republic? 2

What is their total tonnage? 65

How many cargo flights are planned for the rest of this week? 6

What is their total tonnage? 195

Port-au-Prince/Paris /New York, 17 January 2009—Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges that its cargo planes carrying essential medical and surgical material be allowed to land in Port-au-Prince in order to treat thousands of wounded waiting for vital surgical operations. Priority must be given immediately to planes carrying lifesaving equipment and medical personnel.

Despite guarantees, given by the United Nations and the US Defense Department, an MSF cargo plane carrying an inflatable surgical hospital was blocked from landing in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, and was re-routed to Samana, in Dominican Republic. All material from the cargo is now being sent by truck from Samana, but this has added a 24-hour delay for the arrival of the hospital.

A second MSF plane is currently on its way and scheduled to land today in Port- au-Prince at around 10 am local time with additional lifesaving medical material and the rest of the equipment for the hospital. If this plane is also rerouted then the installation of the hospital will be further delayed, in a situation where thousands of wounded are still in need of life saving treatment.

The inflatable hospital includes 2 operating theaters, an intensive care unit, 100-bed hospitalization capacity, an emergency room and all the necessary equipment needed for sterilizing material.

MSF teams are currently working around the clock in 5 different hospitals in Port-au-Prince, but only 2 operating theaters are fully functional, while a third operating theater has been improvised for minor surgery due to the massive influx of wounded and lack of functional referral structures.

http://doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=4165&cat=press-release

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. They clearly must still have their feelings hurt from being forced out some years back

As for the airport, this post clarifies a lot of what is going on there... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7494389#7495680

[NYC_SKP]

2. More planes with aid than there are landing slots to accomodate them, maybe?

That's a good kind of problem.

[Better Believe It]

4. Why and how was the U.S. gov't pressured to change their landing priorities?

Do you think that Doctors Without Borders and governments are just making stuff up because of some irrational extreme right-wing hatred for President Obama?

[earth mom]

13. You need to make that second question an OP. nt

[NYC_SKP]

17. I have no idea, that's above my pay grade. But pretty sure about the limited landing slots.

Somebody's going to be delayed, rerouted, not allowed to land when and where they'd like to.

:shrug:

[Better Believe It]

28. You have no idea because you failed to read the articles posted

[NYC_SKP]

29. Feel free to explain why the US government was pressured to change landing priorities.

You created the OP with links to articles, I'm guessing you could easily add a summary of your POV.

:shrug:

[Better Believe It]

36. Here's why.

"Over the weekend, the aid group Doctors Without Borders complained of skewed priorities and a supply bottleneck at the airport amid reports that U.S. military flights were getting priority. French, Brazilian and other officials complained about the airport's refusal to let their aid planes land, forcing many flights to end up in the neighboring Dominican Republic, a day's drive away."

[ProgressiveProfessor]

25. Who said they were pressured?

As for French concerns, its not like the US is sending in an armored division. They did send the ready battalion, since it was ready for instant deployment (duh). Follow up units are logistics, ATC, MP, Engineers etc. Any heavy equipment that shows up will be bulldozers, not tanks.

The next pressing concern is fuel. They have been no distributions since the earthquake and cell phone towers etc will go dead soon without it.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

26. Self Delete

[PacerLJ35]

34. Slot times are being issued with a +/- 20 minute window...miss it and you're out

There are other aircraft arriving, many with aid just as important as the DWB aircraft (ie, food, water, medical teams, etc). DWB isn't the only source of help so if their crew screwed up, bingo'd on their fuel or whatever, that's not the US's fault. The NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen) clearly state to expect lengthy holding delays and to make your slot time.

[TornadoTN]

3. The French want clarification in Haiti? That's rich....

Maybe they need to start giving back some of the "reparations" that they forced the Haitians to pay to them after their independence.

But at any rate, I don't think it's a bad thing for everyone to be brought on board and get things straightened out with regards to landing clearances and priority. The situation at the airport is getting better, hopefully it will be cleared up soon enough.

[Better Believe It]

5. Don't you think the U.S. should set an example by paying reparations?

"Maybe they need to start giving back some of the "reparations" that they forced the Haitians to pay"

And they could respond "After you! Pay raparations to Native Americans, victims of genocide, and Black people for slavery."

You having freedom fries with your burger today?

:)

[TornadoTN]

7. You've got a point.

It's a vicious cycle that the "first-world" has set into place.

[Retired AF Dem]

30. How about the Blacks that owned

slaves esp in Louisiana?

[HeresyLives]

6. Sigh, and again people will die needlessly

because there is no predetermined chain-of-command for these events. So there is no coordination, and a disaster turns into even an even worse mess.

'Still, Italian civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso said there was little coordination in the relief effort and the international community needs "strong leadership" to channel aid where it is most needed.

"We are still lacking someone who will give orders and tell each country what it must do," he said in Brussels while attending an emergency EU meeting on Haiti.'

[TornadoTN]

8. Sadly, the world would fight about who gets to give those orders

Such are the times, I suppose, but it does create a lot of needless suffering.

[HeresyLives]

12. Should be the UN.

It's the only world body we've got for such things, and that would immediately take all the 'hurt/angry nationalist feelings' out of it.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

27. Wrong, should be the Haitians, its their country and the government is in place

The reality is that without logistics, transportation, etc all the food, water, and doctors do no good if its just dumped on the airport.

[Spazito]

33. The UN is not a body unto itself, it is made up of members...

who ARE, by and large, the countries responding to the disaster. The UN doesn't have the capacity, in and of itself, to provide air traffic control, etc, so it relies on it's member countries who can to do so. Those countries ARE doing the work of the UN.

There are going to be glitches, etc, when you have a disaster of this magnitude where almost the entire infrastructure, governance and security components have been decimated as they have been in many parts of Haiti, imo.

[jpak]

9. US OUT OF HAITI NOW!!!111

Hey Hey Baracky O !!!11

US forces have got to go!!!

:sarcasm:

:thumbsdown:

[SammyWinstonJack]

21. Over the Top. Way over.

:eyes: :thumbsdown:

[Mari333]

10. who can blame them? we keep attacking and occupying countries

all over the world, illegally, and stealing their resources and murdering their civilians for profit. why trust us now?

[jpak]

11. You have got to be kidding

sheesh

[KittyWampus]

18. Yeah, France is blameless. Look up Rwanda and where France gets its uranium.

[Flaneur]

31. What does that have to do with the problems in Haiti?

Nothing. Lame attack.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

14. France's treatment of the Haitians is no more shameful than

the US's. This situation is about what's happening today not a couple hundred years ago.

I have no doubt France is frustrated with the situation at the airport not pushing some
political agenda. It's just unfortunate that many lives that could have been saved on day 5 or 6
will not survive much longer and this will become a recovery operation.

[malaise]

23. +1 but I recognize

that this is a frustrating situation for all parties.

[kwenu]

15. The French should have been there first. Have they even arrived on the island yet?

The U.S. had to get an agreement with Haitian authorities to allow the military to make the airport operational and orderly. You need reasonable order to direct aid. Bickering to score political points in a time of crisis is ridiculous.

[HeresyLives]

16. Yes, long ago.

[Loge23]

19. One runway, limited taxi area

Someone had to take charge of the airport before another calamity occurred.
Certainly only the people who are actually there really have any insight into what is going on.
One fact I read (on CNN.com) is troubling though: The Isrealis built a fully functioning inflatable hospital with OR's well before we could get any similar facility up and running. Then again, health care isn't our strong suit.

[madrchsod]

20. france wants their slaves back?

[spanone]

22. one fucking runway

there's your clarification

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

24. This is just one of those situations where we're going to be damned if we do and damned if we don't.

If we take the leadership role, we get blamed for everything that goes wrong. If we don't take the leadership role, we will be accused of doing nothing.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

32. Now that there are enough troops to secure the airport

then yes, it's time to start prioritizing relief supplies.

Until the airport was secure, it made sense to prioritize military, MP's and engineers and cooks.

Of course, none of that would be possible if we didn't first prioritize the arrival of housing, dining, and sanitation facilities for the massive influx of media. And extra protection for the occasional dignitary or celebrity.

Priorities shift, sometimes according to plan, sometimes not.

:hi:

[Better Believe It]

35. Secured? Was it under armed attack? It was quickly up and running. Just the wrong priorities