WikiLeaks Haiti: The Earthquake Cables | The Nation

WikiLeaks Haiti: The Earthquake Cables | The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/article/161459/wikileaks-haiti-earthquake-cables

• Washington deployed 22,000 troops to Haiti after the January 12, 2010, earthquake despite reports from the Haitian leadership, the US Embassy and the UN that no serious security threat existed, according to secret US diplomatic cables.
  

• Washington’s decision to send thousands of troops in response to the 7.0 earthquake that rocked the Haitian capital and surrounding areas drew sharp criticism from aid workers and government officials around the world at the time. They criticized the militarized response to Haiti’s humanitarian crisis as inappropriate and counterproductive. French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet famously said that international aid efforts should be “about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti.”
• cables also show that Washington was very sensitive to international criticism of its response and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mobilized her diplomatic corps to ferret out “irresponsible journalism” worldwide and “take action” to “get the narrative right.”
• On January 17, Haitian President René Préval issued a “joint communiqué” with Clinton, in which Haiti requested that the United States “assist as needed in augmenting security,” helping to diminish the appearance of a unilateral US action and providing the rationale for what was to be the third US military intervention of Haiti in the past twenty years.
• Meanwhile, the UN claimed that its 9,000 occupation troops and police officers had the situation under control.
  
  
• President Préval laid out priorities: “Re-establish telephone communications; Clear the streets of debris and bodies; Provide food and water to the population; Bury cadavers; Treat the injured; Coordination” among groups amid the destruction, a January 16 cable explains. Préval did not mention insecurity as a major concern. He did not ask for military troops.
  
  
• The US government had already initiated the deployment of considerable military assets to Haiti, according to the secret State Department cables--before the Haitian government, it appears, formally requested assistance. At its peak, the US military response included 22,000 soldiers--7,000 based on land and the remainder operating aboard fifty-eight aircraft and fifteen nearby vessels, according to the Pentagon. The Coast Guard was also flying spotter aircraft along Haiti’s coast to intercept any refugees from the disaster.
• A January 14 cable from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to US Embassies and Pentagon commands worldwide said that the US Embassy in Haiti “anticipates significant food shortages and looting in the affected areas.” But subsequent dispatches from Ambassador Merten in Haiti repeatedly describe "only sporadic” incidents of violence and looting.
• One January 19 cable said that the “security situation in Haiti remains calm overall with no indications of mass migration towards North America.” Another cable that day said, “Residents were residing in made-shift [sic] camps in available open areas, and they had not yet received any humanitarian supplies from relief organization. Nonetheless, the residents were civil, calm, polite, solemn and seemed to be well-organized while they were searching for belongings in the ruins of their homes.”
• On January 19, Democracy Now!’s crew along with Haïti Liberté’s Kim Ives arrived at the General Hospital around 1 pm, shortly after troops from the 82nd Airborne Division. They found the soldiers, guns in hand, standing behind the hospital’s closed main gate. The troops had orders to provide “security” by denying entrance to a crowd of hundreds, including injured earthquake victims and family members of patients bringing them food or medicine.
• “Here were people who were going in and out of the hospital bringing food to their loved ones in there or needing to go to the hospital, and there were a bunch of...US 82nd Airborne soldiers in front yelling in English at this crowd. They didn’t know what they were doing. They were creating more chaos rather than diminishing it. It was a comedy, if it weren’t so tragic.... They had no business being there.”
• The enormous influx of US military personnel, weapons and equipment into the airport prompted a chorus of protest from mid-level French, Italian and Brazilian officials, as well as the aid group Doctors Without Borders. They were outraged that planes carrying vital humanitarian supplies were being prevented from landing, or delayed, sometimes for days.
• “We had a whole freaking plane full of the friggin’ medicine!” Douglas Copp, an American rescue worker, said outside a UN base not long after the quake. The US military, which had taken over the Port-au-Prince airport, would not give clearance for the Peruvian military plane to land. It had to divert to the Dominican capital, 150 miles away. “In Santo Domingo, we got a bus, and we came into Haiti with just the things we could fit in the bus,” Copp exclaimed.
• Haitian business owners were the most worried about security, especially for their factories, according to the cables. Five days after the quake, Ambassador Merten met with representatives of Haiti’s business sector, who said “their major concern is security at all levels, to include security of goods, at marketplaces, and for ports of entry.” Later, they asked the UN occupation troops “to provide security for reopened factories, and pledged to re-open in weeks.” Embassy officers met again with Haitian business leaders one week later.