Updated at 12:51 p.m. on Jan. 29.
Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah rallied the troops at USAID's disaster relief center this week. (Credit: USAID)
As humanitarian efforts in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, begin to hum along and Washington's attention shifts from relief to recovery, there is a growing appetite in some quarters of Capitol Hill for an ambitious nation-building project.
Senators from both parties made clear at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing this morning that piecemeal, "willy-nilly" (to quote Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.) reconstruction efforts won't be enough to rebuild -- and in many ways, build from scratch -- the island nation.
The witnesses, who included Paul Farmer, deputy special envoy to Haiti for the United Nations and the founder of Partners in Health, and James Dobbins, a former special envoy to Haiti under President Clinton, ran off the laundry list of problems that faced the country even before the Jan. 12 earthquake: an underfunded and unresponsive government, 75 percent unemployment, an addiction to foreign aid, overcrowding in Port-au-Prince and a woeful infrastructure and education system.
But committee members seem eager to take the reins to make sure Haiti's reboot is done right. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., went so far as to suggest placing Haiti in a receivership, similar to the provisional international administrations set up in East Timor and Kosovo in the late 1990s.
"I don't know how you get this done with any semblance of normality in terms of the approach," said Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass. "This has to be a kind of... D-Day invasion."
While Dobbins worried that Haitians would balk at a heavy-handed reconstruction effort, he noted that the country is a promising candidate for nation-building. Haiti is surrounded by relatively prosperous neighbors who have an interest in its stability. There is a large Haitian diaspora that remitted $1.9 billion in 2008. And since the departure of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, there has been a decrease in "partisan rancor," he added. Nor is it as dangerous as U.S. nation-building projects of years past.
"Haiti is no Somalia, Iraq or Afghanistan," Dobbins said.
But while lawmakers may be eager to start plotting a new course for Haiti, the humanitarian relief mission is still getting off the ground. The U.S. Agency for International Development continues to run 12-hour shifts in its disaster response center, a pair of cramped, windowless rooms on the ninth floor of its headquarters.
The agency is beginning to shift from sending emergency food rations -- "high-energy biscuits" that taste like ground-up granola -- to beans and rice. The capital's main port, badly damaged by the quake, has been repaired enough to accommodate ships bearing supplies.
Still, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, who was just five days removed from his swearing-in when the quake hit, warned that the humanitarian crisis has not passed. On Monday, he visited USAID's disaster response center with Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, to fire up the troops.
"It's important,” he said, "that people don't take their eye off the ball."
CORRECTION: The original version of this report gave an incorrect photo credit. It was provided by USAID.
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