For the Clintons, Haiti Has Been a Life-Long Commitment *update*

As I’m surfing the net looking for news of Secretary Clinton’s arrival in Haiti, I came across this story in the WaPo which demonstrates just how important Haiti is to both President Bill Clinton and the Secretary. Here is an excerpt but definitely go check out the whole article- it’s several pages:

The Clintons’ enthrallment has lasted for more than 30 years. They decorated their homes with Haitian art. They flew back again and again. Hillary Clinton once said that theirs was a “Haiti-obsessed family.” At a dinner in Rwanda with African leaders in 2008, Bill Clinton talked more about Haiti than Rwanda.
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When the Clintons learned that sites in Port-au-Prince they had visited as tourists were destroyed in the earthquake and locals they had come to know were injured or unaccounted for, Bill Clinton said he was “personally emotionally affected.” His wife, he said, became “physically sick.”

The Clintons are at the center of the global relief effort. Bill Clinton is the U.N. special envoy to Haiti and, together with former president George W. Bush, is leading America’s humanitarian and long-term recovery efforts in Haiti. Hillary Clinton is among the top officials responsible for the nation’s work aiding Haiti and its paralyzed government, and plans to fly there Saturday. “The two agencies in the world that can run these things are the United States and the United Nations, and the Clintons sit atop this package,” said former senator Tim Wirth, president of the U.N. Foundation.

Three months into her term last spring, Hillary Clinton addressed the Haiti Donors Conference in Washington, where she spoke of her family’s “deep commitment to Haiti and the people of Haiti.” She told of visiting the Haitian town of Pignon as first lady, meeting a country doctor who ran a health, women’s literacy and micro-credit center to help his countrymen gain a foothold in the global economy.

“For some of us, Haiti is a neighbor and, for others of us, it is a place of historic and cultural ties,” Clinton said. “But for all of us, it is now a test of resolve and commitment.”

[snip]

Still, Clinton has been regarded as a harbinger of hope to the Haitian people. He recently visited Milot, a town in northern Haiti, where he drew a large and unexpected crowd of locals in a soccer field. They recognized the former president.

“He kind of charged into the crowd,” said Paul Farmer, a public-health expert and deputy U.N. envoy to Haiti, who accompanied Clinton on the trip. “He was so happy. It sounds corny, but I’ve seen that again and again. He has this real connection.”

Last summer, Clinton took a walk with Haitian President René Préval down a street in Gonaives that had just been reconstructed following the 2008 hurricanes. Hundreds of neighbors gathered around them and Clinton spent so much time talking with the locals, aides said, that it took one hour to walk a quarter-mile.
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“He is regarded as someone who’s fundamentally sympathetic to the Haitians, someone who has argued they have a right to dignity and respect — and to chose their own leaders,” Farmer said….

You can read the rest of the interview here.

This from the NYT:

Bearing toilet paper, soap, bottled water, and other supplies, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew toward Haiti’s ruined capital on Saturday to meet with the country’s president and to convey President Obama’s pledge to help the Haitian people.

Mrs. Clinton was to arrive shortly before 2 p.m. on a Coast Guard cargo plane carrying supplies, as well as American relief workers. She was scheduled to meet with President Rene Préval , whose residence collapsed in the earthquake on Tuesday, as well as American officials managing a massive rescue effort, who are racing against the clock to unearth any last survivors.

[snip]

“There are some things that only we can do,” Mrs. Clinton said to reporters on her plane en route to Port-au-Prince. “Our highest and best use is to identify those needs that only we can meet.”

The relief effort was gaining traction, Mrs. Clinton said, with the establishment of 14 distribution centers to deliver food and water to the two million people that the United States estimates need emergency aid.

The military is also beginning to use a container port in Cap Haitian, in northern Haiti, she said, which will greatly increase the volume of aid flowing into the country. The earthquake rendered the port in the capital unusable and bottlenecks in landing planes at Port-au-Prince’s airport have constricted the amount of supplies being shipped into the country.

But Mrs. Clinton cautioned that the situation was still dire, with a government that is not functioning and mounting reports of security problems. She said she hoped the Haitian government would pass an emergency decree — something it did after tropical storms devastated the island in 2008 — which would give it the legal power to impose curfews and other measures.

“The decree would give the government an enormous amount of authority, which in practice they would delegate to us,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton said she was concerned by a report on CNN that a group of doctors from Miami at a makeshift hospital were forced to flee, leaving behind their patients, after gunshots were heard in the vicinity. With Haiti’s police force decimated and barely visible on the streets, 7,000 United Nations peacekeepers constitute the only genuine security presence.

…

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