In the middle of that first night we learned that the United Nations mission in Haiti could not locate many of its people. By the morning we learned that the head of the UN mission, his principal Deputy, and 101 other UN workers had been killed, tragic losses for all of us that dramatically reduced the ability of the international community to muster and coordinate a response to the disaster.
Almost nobody was able to get into Haiti in the first forty-eight hours. The world was lining up to send aid, and there was no system for getting it in or distributing it once it arrived. The destruction of Port-au-Prince’s port forced shipping cargo to land more than a hundred miles from the capital. The road connecting the Dominican Republic to Haiti was unnavigable, and other roads across the country were impassable. Only a small number of air traffic controllers were left at the damaged airport to manage the stream of planes trying to deliver aid. It was a mess.
When I got the news of the earthquake, I was in Hawaii on my way to Asia for a four-nation tour. As soon as I realized the extent of the damage in Haiti, I canceled the trip and headed back to Washington to oversee relief efforts. A number of Asian leaders were disappointed, but they all understood the urgency of the crisis, and many offered to help in any way they could.
My head was full of memories dating back to the first time I visited Haiti in 1975 as part of my honeymoon with Bill. We experienced the tension between the beauty of the place—the people, the colors, the food, the art—and the poverty and weakness of its institutions. One of the most memorable experiences of our trip was meeting a local voodoo priest named Max Beauvoir. Surprisingly he had studied at the City College of New York and the Sorbonne and had degrees in chemistry and biochemistry. He invited us to attend one of his ceremonies. We saw Haitians “seized with spirits” walk on hot coals, bite the heads off live chickens, and chew glass, spit out the shards, and not bleed. At the end of the ceremony, the people claimed the dark spirits had departed.
We also saw the infamous security forces of dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier strut around town with their mirror sunglasses and automatic weapons. At one point we saw Baby Doc himself drive by, headed for his palace—the same Presidential Palace that would fall in the earthquake thirty-five years later.
When I got back to Washington after the earthquake, I did not think it made sense for me to go to Port-au-Prince right away. After watching and participating in emergency responses to disasters over the years, I had learned that one of the most important responsibilities for public officials is to avoid getting in the way of first responders and rescue workers. We did not want to tax Haiti’s already overwhelmed systems or divert any of its limited resources to support a high-level visit when the priority was saving as many lives as possible.
But two days after the earthquake Cheryl spoke with Haiti’s President René Préval, and he told her that the only outsider that he trusted was me. “I need Hillary,” he said. “I need her. And no one else.” It was a reminder of how important personal relationships can be, even at the highest levels of diplomacy and government.
On Saturday, January 16, I flew to Puerto Rico, where a Coast Guard cargo plane was waiting. It would have an easier time than my 757 negotiating the tricky landing at the damaged airport. When we arrived in Port-au-Prince Ambassador Ken Merten was waiting on the tarmac.
His team at the embassy was doing incredible work. One embassy nurse, whose own home was destroyed, worked nonstop for almost forty-eight hours in a makeshift surgical trauma unit to tend to seriously injured Americans who showed up at the embassy seeking help. A security officer, who, along with members of the local guard force, went searching for missing U.S. staff, found two injured colleagues whose home had fallen into a deep ravine. They carried the couple by foot for six hours on a makeshift gurney of ladders and garden hoses until they reached the embassy health unit.
But we suffered the loss of a number of our embassy personnel and their family members in Haiti, including Victoria DeLong, a Cultural Affairs Officer, and the wife and young children of Andrew Wyllie, a decorated State Department officer working with the United Nations.
Our embassy team was working closely with our staff back in Washington to coordinate offers of assistance. We successively tested an innovative idea with Google and a number of telecommunications companies to collect and map requests for emergency assistance—many of which came in via an SMS text hotline—which were then shared with rescue teams on the ground.
Experts from across the U.S. government were trying to get into Haiti to help. The Federal Emergency Management Agency swung into action, sending doctors and public health specialists from USAID, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Federal Aviation Administration sent a portable airport control tower. Six search-and-rescue teams made up of firefighters, police officers, and engineers arrived from California, Florida, New York, and Virginia.
Next to Ambassador Merten on the tarmac was Lieutenant General Ken Keen, the Deputy Commander of U.S. Southern Command, who had been in Haiti on a planned visit when the earthquake hit. They were standing on the back porch of the Ambassador’s residence when the ground started to shake. Thankfully the residence was largely undamaged and quickly became a gathering place for embassy personnel and Haitian government ministers, as well as General Keen’s link back to U.S. Southern Command in Miami as he managed the military’s role.
Coast Guard officers were America’s first boots on the ground. Eventually more than twenty thousand U.S. civilian and military personnel were directly involved in search and rescue. They restored airports and seaports, provided life-saving health and medical service, and met basic survival needs of the Haitian people. The hospital ship USNS Comfort treated hundreds of patients. U.S. forces were welcomed and cheered, and the people and their government begged them not to leave. Soldiers who served in Haiti between multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan marveled at what a refreshing change it was to feel so wanted on foreign soil.
I saw another familiar face on the runway: National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. He had caught a military jet the day before to help coordinate the complex relief effort. He was literally soaked in sweat in a polo shirt and khakis helping direct traffic on the tarmac. His presence spoke volumes about President Obama’s personal commitment to Haiti. I had stood with the President in the White House two days before, when he publicly pledged U.S. assistance. It was the first time I ever saw President Obama fighting to control his emotions.
My first order of business was to confer with President Préval. We met in a tent on the airport grounds. Immediately I could see why Cheryl thought it was so important that I come in person. The destruction of Préval’s country and the despair of his people were etched on his face.
When the earthquake hit, Préval and his wife were arriving at their private home on a hillside. They watched their house collapse in front of their eyes. His office at the Presidential Palace was also severely damaged. Préval couldn’t find several of his ministers. Others were severely injured or dead. According to reports, 18 percent of Haitian civil servants were killed in Port-au-Prince, twenty-eight of the twenty-nine government buildings were destroyed, and members of the Cabinet and legislators were missing or confirmed dead. The situation was dire and the government crippled.
When Préval first became President, he had little political experience, but by the time the quake hit he had become adept in the deal-making culture of Haitian politics. Still, he remained naturally reserved and found it difficult, even in the aftermath of the quake, to go out among his people, who wanted to see, touch, and talk to their leader.
Sitting in the tent with Préval, I tried to gauge how he was holding up in the face of such an overwhelming catastrophe. We had urgent business to conduct. The international relief effort was choking on the bottleneck of the airport. I proposed that the U.S. military take over operations there as soon as possible so that aid could begin flowing.
Préval wasn’t sure. Like all nations, Haiti prized its sovereignty. And even in an emergency, memories of previous U.S. military interventions were not easily dismissed. I assured him that our troops would not be there to patrol the streets or replace the UN forces working to restore law and order. This was just about getting the airport working again and making sure planes landed and supplies got distributed. Cheryl and our team had prepared a legal agreement for Préval to sign to give the U.S. military temporary responsibility for the airport and port. We walked through it line by line. He recognized that Haiti needed all the help it could get, but he also understood that other countries and his political opponents would criticize him for “selling out” to the Americans. It was one of many painful decisions he would have to make in the days ahead.
Préval signed the agreement. He was putting his personal trust in me as much as in our country. He looked me in the eye and said, “Hillary, I need you to be Haiti for Haiti, because right now we can’t do it.” I told Préval he could count on America, and me. “We will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead as long as you want us.” Soon, with U.S. help, the airport and seaport began handling ten times more cargo, and aid began reaching the people in Haiti who needed it most.
At a second, larger meeting with American and international aid groups, Préval was less cooperative. He disagreed sharply with the recommendation to set up large camps to shelter hundreds of thousands of homeless Haitians. Presciently he worried that if we built these camps, Haiti would never get rid of them; instead he asked that we give people tents and tarps to stay in their own neighborhoods. But the UN team argued that it would be much harder to distribute food and water if people were dispersed. Camps would be much more efficient, which is why they are part of the standard international response to disasters.
When we flew out of Port-au-Prince later that day, we packed as many people as we could onto the plane, bringing two dozen Haitian Americans to safety. Cheryl and I talked about all the work that lay ahead. If we were going to live up to my promise to Préval—to be Haiti for Haiti—this wasn’t going to be a quick relief effort. We had to be ready for a long haul.
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In times of emergency Americans’ first instinct is to help. None of us who lived through the dark days after 9/11 will ever forget how people across the country lined up to give blood. We saw the same generosity on display after Hurricane Katrina, when families in Houston and other communities opened their homes to displaced residents of New Orleans, and after Superstorm Sandy, when people came together to help New Jersey and New York. When the earthquake hit Haiti, the State Department worked with a technology company called mGive to enable Americans to make donations directly to the Red Cross via text message. The effort raised more than $30 million in less than three weeks from more than 3 million Americans. All told, Americans wound up contributing $1 billion to help Haitians after the quake.
For our country, stepping up in an emergency is not just the right thing to do. It’s also a smart strategic move. In the aftermath of a disaster like the Asian tsunami of 2004, when we provided extensive humanitarian relief, we built up valuable reservoirs of goodwill. In Indonesia, the epicenter of tsunami damage, about eight in ten people said our emergency assistance improved their view of the United States, and approval of America more than doubled from an Iraq-era low of 15 percent in 2003 to 38 percent in 2005. We saw the same phenomenon in 2011, when the United States rushed to provide assistance to Japan after its earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown known as the “triple disaster.” Approval of America among the Japanese soared from 66 percent all the way to 85 percent, the highest among any nation polled.
While many of us respond to urgent needs in a crisis, it can often be harder to summon the resolve to step up and help when it comes to slow-motion tragedies like poverty, hunger, and disease rather than dramatic, attention-grabbing emergencies like a tsunami. Helping Haiti in the immediate aftermath of a devastating earthquake was one thing. But what about before the disaster, when Haiti was plagued by the worst poverty in the Americas? Or afterward, when it faced years of difficult rebuilding? What role should the United States play in those efforts?
Americans have always been charitable. In the early days of our nation, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about the “habits of the heart” that made our democracy possible and brought frontier families together to raise barns and sew quilts. My mother was one of tens of thousands of Americans who sent care packages to hungry families in Europe after World War II. They included staples like powdered milk, bacon, chocolate, and SPAM. I am continuously impressed by the philanthropic spirit of the so-called Millennial Generation. According to one study, nearly three-quarters of all young people in America volunteered for a nonprofit organization of some kind in 2012.
Yet in debates about foreign aid, especially long-term assistance rather than short-term relief, many Americans ask why we should be generous abroad when there is so much work to do at home in our own country. In a time of tight budgets and big domestic challenges, there are certainly hard choices to make, but it’s helpful to be clear about the facts. Polls show that Americans significantly overestimate the percentage of the federal budget allocated to foreign aid. In November 2013, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that, on average, Americans believe that 28 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign assistance, and more than 60 percent of people say that’s too much. But in reality we spend less than 1 percent of the budget on foreign aid. When people learn the truth, opposition is cut in half.
For decades, there has been a philosophical tension in our approach to international development. Should foreign assistance be purely altruistic, to help alleviate suffering wherever the need is greatest, or is it intended as part of our strategy to compete for hearts and minds in extended ideological struggles like the Cold War? Or to address the despair and alienation that fuel current radicalism and insurgency? President Kennedy inspired a generation with his call to service in “a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself,” as he put it in his inaugural address. Yet he never lost sight of the strategic context. The idea for the Peace Corps began with a brief campaign speech at 2:00 in the morning at the University of Michigan in October 1960. “How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana?” he asked the crowd of students who had gathered in the middle of the night to hear him speak. “On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete.” Even at 2 A.M. he was thinking about how development might advance the interests of the United States.
I’ve always thought the debate between “aid for aid’s sake” and “aid for strategic ends” was somewhat beside the point. We need to do both. President Obama and I were committed to elevating development alongside diplomacy and defense as core pillars of American power, but inside the administration we had many of these same debates. As the White House began putting together the first Presidential Policy Directive on development, I argued that we needed to draw a clear link between our aid work and U.S. national security. There were some development professionals who disagreed with that view, but the President eventually accepted the premise that natural disasters, poverty, and disease in other countries were also threats to U.S. strategic interests.
Haiti provided a prime example. Helping the country get back on its feet made sense for both humanitarian and strategic reasons.
It was impossible not to be moved by the plight of poor Haitians crowded into the slums of Port-au-Prince, with few economic or educational opportunities and a series of corrupt, erratic, and dictatorial governments. The Haitian people have enormous talent and perseverance, but they have had to endure crushing poverty and disappointment that would sap anyone’s spirit. It should offend our conscience to see children growing up so
close to our shores in such dire conditions.
And allowing a bastion of poverty, drug trafficking, and political instability to fester just seven hundred miles from Florida—a little more than the distance between Washington and Atlanta—is a dangerous proposition. Every year waves of refugees flee Haiti trying to make it to the United States through dangerous, shark-infested waters in rickety boats and rafts. Compared to military intervention and caring for massive influxes of desperate refugees, smart development assistance is a bargain.
Even before the earthquake Haiti was a priority for me. When I became Secretary I asked Cheryl to take a fresh look at our policy toward Haiti and come up with a strategy for high-impact economic development that would make a difference in the lives of Haitians. I also saw this as an opportunity to road-test new approaches to development that could be applied more broadly around the world. After all, despite its challenges, Haiti had many important ingredients for success. It was not riven by religious or sectarian divides. It shares an island with a stable and democratic country, the Dominican Republic, and enjoys proximity to the United States. It has big diaspora communities in both the United States and Canada. In short, Haiti has so much going for it that other desperately poor countries do not. If we could help Haitians build on these advantages, they could unlock great potential.
On the day the earthquake hit in January 2010, Cheryl and her team were finalizing a report to send to the White House with a full set of recommendations for Haiti, based on priorities laid out by the Haitians themselves. In the following weeks everyone’s focus was on emergency response. But soon it would be time to think about long-term reconstruction and development needs. So I told Cheryl to dust off her report and get to work.
Hard Choices Page 67
