Haiti: Security Concerns / PAP Airfield Update
In an interview Sunday on ABC’s This Week, LTG Ken Keen, deputy SOUTHCOM chief and commander of the newly-formed Joint Task Force-Haiti, explained that “our principal mission [is] humanitarian assistance, but the security component is going to be an increasing part of that….And we’re going to have to address that along with the United Nations (UN), and we are going to have to do it quickly.” He went on to note that “we have had incidents of violence that impede our ability to support the government of Haiti and answer the challenges that this country faces.”
In a conference call with reporters later in the day, USAID officials indicated that while some reports of looting at warehouses in past days had proven false, security has become “an issue on which we are very much focused.” Peacekeeping forces from the UN’s MINUSTAH mission are currently in the lead on security efforts, the officials explained, and were receiving support from the Haitian National Police.
There’s little doubt that the pace of aid distribution is fueling the desperation among Port-au-Prince’s residents. With that in mind-and following a high-profile complaint from Doctors Without Borders after a flight of theirs was diverted-a number of news outlets have begun calling attention to the apparent bottleneck at the Port-au-Prince airfield, which airmen from the 1st Special Operations Wing secured late last Wednesday and where they have since labored to maximize throughput capacity.
But in fact, their accomplishments thus far have been remarkable. In a briefing on Sunday afternoon, COL Buck Elton, commander of the Air Force task force at the airfield, described how his forces had initially established control of the airport — which was without electricity and whose control tower had been destroyed — and has since then overseen roughly 600 take-offs and landings. He explained that each departing aircraft was being replaced almost immediately by an incoming one, while noting the airfield’s limited capacity: it can accommodate 1 wide-body aircraft, 5-narrow body, and a handful of smaller aircraft (which can be taxied onto the grass), at a time. He outlined the timetable under which planes are to be unloaded and refueled — the large aircraft are allotted 2 hours on the ground while the smaller planes get 1 hour — but acknowledged that the timetable was vulnerable to delays, as most of the indigenous cargo-lift and transport equipment at the airfield had been destroyed. The crews of military aircraft have taken to unloading their own cargo.
Prioritization for landing slots, Elton explained, is being determined in conjunction with officials from the U.S. Embassy and the Haitian government, who are running a joint flight operations coordination center. Since Wednesday, 50 flights have been diverted, though operations at the airport appear to be growing more efficient: on Saturday, only 3 of the incoming 67 flights were diverted.
In short, the Air Force has very quickly turned an incapacitated facility — which at its peak prior to earthquake sustained only small fraction of the flights it’s receiving today — into a functioning hub for incoming personnel and humanitarian supplies. The disconcerting news is that those supplies are reportedly piling up at the airfield. The greatest transport challenge in Haiti may be on the ground.
Tim Sullivan is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
