Haiti tests European response
At every disaster you find emergency teams from Europe. In the Pakistani earthquake I flew in a German helicopter. The Swiss arrived early. I found the same covering the tsunami in Asia. The Italian teams, as always, proved they have some of the best rescue workers in the world.
So again this time . There are Welsh firefighters rescuing a two-year old girl. Spanish and French teams have been tearing at the rubble at the Hotel Montana. In a disaster the secret to early success is small mobile teams that arrive quickly and save lives. Initially it is difficult co-ordinating these teams. National search and rescue squads have to deploy at once. They go into neighbourhoods and, like with the Israeli team yesterday, they pull survivors from the rubble where they find them.
It is always chaotic. At every disaster I have reported on the same complaints are heard. Chaos is at the heart of disaster. In Phuket in Thailand they said that bodies were not disposed of quickly enough. In Kashmir I flew into villages that had not received any help ten days after the earthquake had struck. In Turkey it was said there were too many rescue teams and I saw some trying to find a building where there were not dog teams working already. Even in the United States, after Hurricane Katrina, we found ourselves rescuing families from the water.
Of course the aim is to establish co-ordination. It is much harder in Haiti because there is not a functioning government. Delivery of aid is difficult without security. That lies at the heart of the tension between France and the United States. The Americans control the airport and they are setting up a military operation in Haiti so some of their military planes have landed first. That has infuriated the French. A plane carrying an inflatable hospital from France was diverted. The French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, complained the airport had become a "US annexe".
Such tensions, in my experience, are inevitable. The lesson of every disaster I have covered is that co-ordination is best done on the ground. It is not a role for ministers or bureaucrats hundreds or thousands of miles away. It doesn't work like that.
Now the EU's response is complicated by the fact that it is learning to live with new structures. It has . She has said that "rebuilding Haiti is now a priority for the EU" There was also, in her public statements, the suggestion that she was "co-ordinating" the different activities of the European Union with the member states. Now there clearly is a role for the EU in planning for the long-term development of Haiti and that will be discussed at a meeting of development ministers today.
But there is a question as to what role the EU should play in coordinating emergency search and rescue and relief operations. Certainly the EU, as an institution, is not essential for rescue work to be effective. Nations have acted decisively and quickly without referring to international institutions. Iceland despatched 35 members of its search and rescue team. Canada has its Sea King helicopters in action. Brazilian rescue workers are in place. The Chinese had people in Port-au-Prince by 0200 on 14 January.
I suspect a dilemma here for the EU. There is a current obsession to be seen as a "player" on the world stage. This need, in part, lay behind the Lisbon Treaty. It is often easy for that desire to translate into wanting to act as if the EU were a state. It isn't. It has no military capacity. Even if the EU's military was under one command it would be hard to match the US with its aircraft-carrier, hospital ship, logistical power and its ability to deploy thousands of troops while it is fighting two campaigns overseas. The fact that Europe cannot do that does not make it somehow weak or ineffective, as some have suggested.
The question is more where the EU should best put its energy. The EU may be most effective at coordinating medium and long-term development. Today it is set to announce 100m euros (£88m) in reconstruction aid.
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