Looking for Political Leadership in Haiti

A few stories to read from overnight to give a sense of the situation on the ground.

Haiti earthquake: confusion at airport hampers aid effort - UK Telegraph
Security fears mount in lawless post-earthquake Haiti - Washington Post
U.S. Troops to Help Haiti's Security; Aid Flows In - New York Times
Aid frustration: 'We're racing against the clock' - USA Today
Haiti quake severely strains telecom services - USA Today
Haiti PM fears 200,000 dead in quake - CCTV

This story from USA Today, Body count, lawlessness rise in quake-ravaged Haiti, gives the general tone of the breakdown of order.

Conditions in earthquake-ravaged Haiti grew worse Sunday as thousands of survivors begged for food and water, bulldozers dumped bodies into mass graves, and lawlessness increased.

Bulldozer after bulldozer dumped buckets full of corpses mixed with debris into a mass grave at a cemetery in downtown Port-au-Prince, the capital. Arms and legs of victims dangled from the side of one bulldozer's bucket as it prepared to dump bodies into a trench full of rotting, bloated bodies.

Just outside the cemetery gates, a young man who had been shot three times lay in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. Residents said police had suspected the man and three others of stealing.

"They lined up all four and shot them," said Clifford Cadet, 15, who explained that he'd seen the developments from the opposite sidewalk. "This one took three shots," Cadet said of the man lying on the ground.

Keep in mind these are the people who are in charge in Haiti. Great starting place, eh? Rajiv Shah is leading the US effort from Washington, but can you name the American in charge on the ground in Haiti?

As SOUTHCOM tells the press, U.S. military forces are mobilizing to support international disaster relief efforts underway in Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake that ravaged the Caribbean nation. The focus of the mission, named Unified Response, is search and rescue and disaster relief. All military efforts are in support of USAID, which is orchestrating U.S. government contributions to the relief mission.

Lt. Gen. P. K. Keen is leading Joint Task Force - Haiti from Port-au-Prince, but who is in charge of the entire US humanitarian effort in Haiti? USAID, not the DoD, is the lead agency. The humanitarian effort isn't even a primary DoD role in Haiti, and security was expected to be the role of the UN although I believe the US has been factoring into planning the DoD would play some role there. Will the DoD also find mission creep with the humanitarian relief aspect as well? The US government has not answered US media questions why NGOs and DoD are so uncoordinated in Haiti, and on the ground in Haiti, who would even be the person responsible for answering that question?

Leadership matters a lot right now, specifically political leadership in a country that has absolutely no political leadership at all that can be counted on. President René Préval has not even addressed his own people yet regarding the earthquake. It is still my impression the Obama administration appears to be completely unaware of how much trouble Haiti can bring upon his Presidency. Where is the Michael Brown of Haiti so we can get some answers? At least that fool was in Louisiana. We should be managing the coordination problems better than has been done to date, suggesting there is something within the system that is not working as expected.

My best guess is that Lt. Gen. Keen is the American in charge in Haiti, but if true, that raises several questions regarding the leadership arrangement. Are we really expecting an Army General to represent the US political leadership inside Haiti? That doesn't sound right. Should we really be surprised that the rest of the world is starting to criticize the US government over Haiti, when the political leadership situation in Haiti is so murky? The population in Haiti is completely disconnected from their own political leadership. 6 days later not a single American can name who the American political leader in Haiti is, and the UN continues to tell the world how beat up they are in Haiti.

Things will continue to get much worse inside Haiti before they get better. Lots of pictures of Marines by media may slow down or distract from global criticism of the US, but we'll have to wait and see. Even as hundreds, potentially thousands, will die again tomorrow throughout the hospitals in Port-au-Prince; we have not reached the tipping point.

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The Navy has established a Haiti Earthquake Relief website. This article lists several new ships heading to Haiti, and notes USNS Grasp (T-ARS 51) has arrived. I think all of us are curious what USNS 1st LT Jack Lummus (T-AK 3011) is bringing to Haiti.