Haiti persists as a constant challenge for Biden amid escalating global crises
President Joe Biden’s foreign policy is facing a critical test as he is confronted with two international crises at the same time.
The president has been huddling at Camp David with aides, receiving video briefings from his secretary of State and national security advisor on Afghanistan’s unraveling and a deepening crisis in Haiti. The Caribbean nation in a matter of weeks has been hit by an earthquake, the assassination of its president and a crushing coronavirus surge.
The most pressing challenge for his presidency was the top focus: the march of the Taliban across Afghanistan, their takeover of Kabul and the hurried evacuation of the U.S. embassy after 20 years of war.
But once again, Haiti was on the agenda, this time faced with a natural disaster that has left hundreds dead and hospitals overwhelmed.
A 7.2 magnitude earthquake, larger than the devastating event of 2010, leveled buildings across Southwestern Haiti. With a tropical storm coming, Haitian and U.S. disaster teams are working with precious time to mount a search-and-rescue mission.
A senior administration official told McClatchy that Biden’s immediate reaction to the tragedy — appointment of USAID Administrator Samantha Power to lead the response, statement expressing condolences and requests for updates and briefings — shows that Haiti remains a “top priority” for his administration.
USAID officials held back-to-back meetings throughout the weekend to coordinate the response, deploying a 65-person search-and-rescue team to the Caribbean nation to join its disaster response team already on the ground.
But the location of the earthquake, in the country’s southwest, will make it difficult for the U.S. government to deliver humanitarian aid. Airlifts within Haiti will be difficult and roads to the region are either damaged or pose security risks to U.S. personnel, officials told McClatchy on Sunday.
Delivering aid to the region might require the deployment of U.S. troops to Haiti — a step that Biden had rejected just weeks ago after President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination, when Haiti’s interim government asked for troops to help secure the country’s critical infrastructure.
“We are looking at any number of options to support the logistics for this response. It is quite complicated — there is limited airlift capability inside of Haiti to get supplies moving in and out of this region. And so we’re looking at all available options,” said Sarah Charles, assistant to the administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.
Charles described the affected area as “difficult to access by road” and said there were “security concerns, particularly as they relate to travel to this particular region.”
“We’re in close touch with any number of partners in the U.S. government, including very close touch with the Department of Defense, and Southcom in particular,” Charles said, referring to U.S. Southern Command.
Southern Command said it had established a joint task force to “conduct U.S. military operations” in support of the disaster assistance mission, sending a 14-person team to Port-au-Prince on Sunday to assess the situation.
“The team’s assessments will be used by SOUTHCOM mission planners to identify U.S. military capabilities needed and available to support U.S. foreign disaster assistance,” Southern Command said in a statement.
The Navy deployed drones and Poseidon aircraft to collect aerial images of the earthquake damage, and military helicopters including two CH-47 Chinooks are also on their way to Haiti to “provide critical airlift support to ongoing relief efforts.”
“The U.S. military relief mission will join ongoing U.S. Coast Guard support operations in the Caribbean country,” the statement said.
The last time the United States sent troops to Haiti was in 2010, after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake left tens of thousands dead.
At that time, President Barack Obama decided on a broad government approach to aid Haiti that drew on State Department and Pentagon resources. He sent in 3,500 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to take part in a massive international relief effort.
The 82nd Airborne Division was recently deployed to evacuate Americans and their allies from Afghanistan.
“We’ll know more when more comprehensive damage reports come in, but it can pose a challenge,” said Brian Concannon Jr., a board member and former executive director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. “It’s almost certainly not the same level of challenge the Obama administration was faced with in 2010.,” he said.
“The real challenge — and this is the challenge that Haitians are asking — is how this is going to be different than last time,” Concannon said. “There were successes in 2010. But there’s a fairly strong consensus that the sustained results were not adequate to build Haiti back better.”
Charles said that USAID’s disaster response team has only conducted an aerial survey of the damage in Haiti so far and fears that the death toll could climb significantly higher than the estimated 724 casualties reported by the Haitian government.
“It’s still very early days,” Charles said. “I think we do anticipate that these are, again, just very early estimates of potential casualties, and we can see that number climb higher.”
MOUNTING CHALLENGES
Delegating the Haitian crisis to Power also allowed Biden to turn his attention to the mounting pressure he faces over the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and his assessment just weeks ago that the Taliban was “highly unlikely” to take over the country.
The earthquake is just the latest in a series of challenges in Haiti that have challenged Biden as he has tried to turn his focus toward greater strategic crises.
“It seems to me, looking over the course of the past seven months, that much of what Biden has wanted to do is not have Haiti in the headlines. He’s often been taking the path of least resistance,” Concannon said.
“I expect that’s because he’s got other fish to fry, and doesn’t see Haiti as one of the most important priorities for his administration,” he said. “But I think that’s caused some problems for the political situation there.”
The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere faced one of its worst outbreaks of COVID-19 and was the last in the region to receive vaccines. Haitians fear that storms and earthquakes will further exacerbate the pandemic there.
And the July 7 assassination of Moïse still has the country reeling.
National security officials say the security dynamic in Haiti is a persistent concern within the administration and fear that Haiti’s gangs remain stronger than its national police, who before Saturday’s earthquake were already overwhelmed by the sprawling investigation around Moïse’s murder.
The U.S. Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security have increased preparations in the event that mounting pressures on Haiti lead to an exodus of refugees across the Florida Strait.
Charles said that the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak in Haiti and the security vacuum created in the wake of Moïse’s assassination were part of USAID’s planning as it prepares a federal response.
“In what is already a challenging time for the people of Haiti, I am saddened by the devastating earthquake that occurred in Saint-Louis du Sud,” Biden said on Saturday. “We send our deepest condolences to all those who lost a loved one or saw their homes and businesses destroyed.”
“The United States remains a close and enduring friend to the people of Haiti,” Biden added, “and we will be there in the aftermath of this tragedy.”
Updated with Southern Command statement on Haiti operations.
This story was originally published August 15, 2021 at 12:56 PM.
