Over the last few weeks, USNS Comfort has been part of the Haiti zeitgeist, both in America and overseas. The ship appears in hundreds of stories, articles, videos, and blog posts. Her white hull has become a symbol of United States humanitarianism in Haiti. However, the converted oil tanker’s original primary purpose was to support combat operations, not conduct the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions that gained her renown. So I ask the readers, if you were to design the next generation of hospital ship, the next USNS Comfort, what would the vessel look like? Here are some of my own thoughts.
Small, Fast, And Shallow
As previously mentioned on the USNI blog, USNS Comfort arrived off the coast of Haiti slightly over 88 hours after the earthquake. In that time, the converted oil tanker, manned by only a skeleton crew, was stocked with supplies, staffed with medical personnel from multiple services and NGOs, and sailed down the Atlantic coast. In getting the massive ship from a pier in New England to a disaster zone in the Caribbean, the crew proved themselves to be true professionals. Impressive is not strong enough a word to describe their accomplishment, it was Herculean. And, that is the problem.
To maximize effectiveness, rapid arrival on station after a disaster should occur because of the ship’s design, not in spite of it. Hospital ships must be small, fast, and shallow. They must operate in areas with small, damaged, or no ports. They must navigate waterways littered with debris without assistance and anchor in the shallow waters close to shore. Most importantly, hospital ships must be fast. Arriving in the first 24 hours is orders of magnitude more helpful than arriving in the first 48 hours, or 88.
Dedicated Medical Team
Instead of staffing hospital ships with an ad hoc complement of riders, hospital ships deserve dedicated medical contingents. Dedicated medical teams would reduce deployment time and improve mission effectiveness. I am not discounting the importance of NGOs such as Project Hope, but rather suggesting that NGO health professionals should supplement a core medical team that has trained and worked with each other and with the ship. Many will say the armed forces do not have enough medical personnel. They are right, but that does mean we should not do it. Rather, it only means we must train more personnel.
Last week, Melissa Batchelor Warnke, an organizer for the Save Darfur Coalition, commented on a new study on the region in a letter to the New York Times. The study estimated that disease caused 80% of the deaths in Darfur. It is an unremarkable finding. Disease is most often the primary killer in conflict. And, as far as I know, nobody has claimed Darfur is the exception to the rule. Warnke’s letter attempted to preempt those that would argue the study weakens claims that genocide is taking place in Darfur. Warnke points out that “deaths by indirect means — starvation, diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and infection — are as much a product of the campaign of destruction as direct physical violence”. In other words, the natural world can be a weapon of genocide.
This strategy is hardly new and appears in a number of variations. Take an example highlighted in Hugo Slim’s book, Killing Civilians: In 1904, the German colony of South West Africa experienced a revolt by the local Herero tribe. After the German Governor failed to put down the rebellion, the Kaiser sent General Lothar von Trotha to the territory with orders to crush the Herero tribe. The General’s strategy was both eloquent in its simplicity and total in its brutality. Outmaneuvering the rebels, he encircled them except for a small gap in the lines facing Omaheke sandveld. Left with little choice, the Herero people fled into the desert. Next, Trotha’s forces sealed all waterholes around the sandveld and blocked any escape from the desert with 250km of fences, guard posts, and patrols. The Herero tribe was trapped in the unforgiving sandveld with no means of survival or escape. Eventually, Trotha would order his forces on the border of the sandveld to kill all Herero on sight. Thomas Pakenham describes the effect of the General’s strategy: “German patrols encountered the remnants of the Herero people trying to break back west to their land and water, walking skeletons who were shot or bayoneted as a matter of course”. The environment was an effective weapon, before the 1904 rebellion Hereros numbered 80,000 in South West Africa. In 1911, that number was 15,000.
Source
Slim, Hugo. 2007. Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War. C. Hurst & Company, Publishers, Limited.
In August, a video was released reportedly showing Sri Lankan soldiers executing bound and blindfolded Tamils during the last weeks of that country’s long civil war. Last month, the U.N. special investigator on extra-judicial killings declared that the videos are likely authentic and has called on the Sri Lankan government to conduct its own investigation:
“In light of the persistent flow of other allegations of extra-judicial executions committed by both sides during the closing phases of war against the LTTE, I call for an independent inquiry to be established to carry out an impartial investigation into war crimes and other grave violations of international humanitarian and human rights law allegedly committed in Sri Lanka”
The video tape is the latest in a string of allegations of human rights abuses by the Sri Lankan military during the end and immediate aftermath of the civil war. The most prominent event was the forced detainment of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians in camps, often with little food, security or access to health care. Not that the rebels can claim the moral high ground either; during the final government offensive LTTE herded thousands of civilians into the battleground to use as human shields. Still, the allegations have tainted an otherwise undisputed victory against the Tamil rebel group. Given the scope of the alleged abuses, history might well remember the brutal means used by both sides in the war more than the end result.
Today, the Department of Defense’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) was released online. The QDR details the future thinking and direction of the US military for the next four years. The 2010 release describes itself as “truly a wartime QDR”, examining the doctrine of a military involved in two major conflicts in Central Asia and smaller operations around the globe. In addition to outlining the DoD’s thinking on the combat operations, the review highlights two areas relating to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
Strengthening Civil Affairs
The QDR correctly points out that non-state violent groups flourish in regions with ineffective governance. Improving the capacity of governments to provide basic services, including health, to populations can deny those areas to enemies of the United States. This mission is the purview of civil affair units. In recent years, civil affairs have been almost entirely manned by reserved personnel. To improve civil affairs capacity, the QDR calls for expanding the DoD’s civil affairs teams with “the first active duty civil affairs brigade to support general purpose forces”. In other words, the DoD is enlarging its soft power forces.
Strengthening Allies
The review places particular emphasis on the United States’ “unmatched capabilities and a willingness on the part of the nation to employ them in defense of our interests and the common good”. The stewardship role referred to in the QDR is largely operationalized through strengthening and supporting US allies, especially in Oceana and Asia.
Poignantly given the earthquake in Haiti, humanitarian disasters are mentioned as one such area where the US could have a national security interest in strengthening weakened governments against natural disasters. The DoD envisions achieving this goal mainly through assisting foreign militaries: “In some nations, the military is the only institution with the capacity to respond to a large-scale natural disaster. Proactive engagement with these countries can help build their capability to respond to such events”. Comparatively, little space is dedicated to working with foreign civilian institutions and NGOs.
The DoD discusses at length partnering with Asia and Oceanic states to improve their capacity to respond to humanitarian crises and natural disasters. Africa and South America are only briefly mentioned regarding the same topic. Clearly the disaster diplomacy that occurred in Asia after the tsunami is still part of the DoD’s institutional memory and is driving the focus on DoD health diplomacy in Asia as opposed to other regions.
Overall, the QDR offers a glimpse of a military shifting increasingly towards soft power while still hoping to maintain its traditional hard power focus. Whether they can achieve expertise in both will be the question of the decade.
Greetings from Durban, South Africa. The most frustrating consequence of moving is disconnecting from the global conversation. I admit it, I am a news junkie. My typical reading list includes almost a dozen newspapers and hundreds of other sites and blogs. For the first week, the only news I can get in my cottage home was from the South African Broadcasting Company’s (SABC) morning show. Unfortunately, their global news segments just a few minutes, covering a maximum of five stories.
Haiti has featured prominently in SABC broadcasts since I started watching. That much is appropriate, and expected. But, more striking is the impressive exposure the USNS Comfort has had on SABC. Almost everyday, the US Navy ship is mentioned and shown working in Haiti. The broadcasts include both segments of interviews with the health workers onboard, or B-roll of the ship off the coast.
It was with great pleasure and pride that I watched SABC show clip after clip of US servicemen in Haiti and US Navy ships off her coast. Keep up the good work, the world is watching.
In three hours I leave for South Africa. The trip spans three days, so I am going to be out of the loop for a bit, mostly likely until the weekend. No blogging until I am setup down there.
For the past few days I have been posting news stories and accounts of armed forces providing disaster relief in Haiti. However, the original format I chose (organized by country) has become unwieldy. Instead, on this page I will be post links to stories about military disaster relief in Haiti listed chronologically. This format will be easier for me, and for readers.
Note: This post is now closed. The new one is here.
ur hearts and prayers go out to all Haitians tonight. While still early, cable news is reporting possibly 100,000 casualties. The number is beyond comprehension. Right now Haiti needs our support. You can donate $10 to the Red Cross Haiti relief by texting HAITI to 90999.
Armed forces are playing a major role in the relief effort, especially in these early stages. Below is a list of military aid operations in Haiti by country. It is quick and dirty, but the situation is developing too fast for something more. If you find events I am missing, please email me here. I will update as I can.
Christopher Albon Ph.D. candidate at UC Davis researching human security, health diplomacy, and public health consequences of armed conflict. He currently lives in Durban, South Africa. Homepage, Contact, Twitter.
