Officials: No U.S. flags fly at Haiti bases - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Officials: No U.S. flags fly at Haiti bases

Despite the significant U.S. military presence in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, the U.S. flag is nowhere in sight at the Port-au-Prince airport or any other forward operating bases because of concerns over host nation sensitivities, a U.S. military spokesman confirmed late Thursday night.

According to a report by a recent American civilian visitor, the U.S. flag is not on display at the airfield where U.S. Air Force air operations specialists and FAA air traffic controllers are working with Haitian authorities to manage air traffic, and Air Force aircraft and support personnel are omnipresent.

There is no official prohibition from doing so there or at any of the U.S. operating bases supporting relief operations in Haiti — either by the military or the State Department, officials said. But, said Army Col. Billy Buckner, a spokesman for Joint Task Force-Haiti, “We have just chosen not to do so.”

The rationale is the desire to build strong relationships with locals — a strategy Buckner said many of the task force’s commanders have practiced in Iraq and Afghanistan — and is rooted in the well-documented local anger that erupted in the days immediately following the earthquake over what was perceived as a U.S. effort to give its own citizens priority for evacuation from the crowded, chaotic airport.

According to a State Department spokesman in Haiti, a U.S. flag went up at a temporary consular station set up in those first few days on the airport tarmac. At the time, there were no Haitian flags flying at the facility.

“Apparently, the prime minister [Jean-Max Bellerive] saw this” [flag] and thought it appeared as though the U.S. was taking over the airport, said spokesman Charles Luoma-Overstreet.

He said Bellerive mentioned this to U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten.

Merten, who relayed the story to Luoma-Overstreet, agreed that it wasn’t a good idea, given the heated situation, and told the consular officials to take down the flag. The officials adopted a lower-key U.S. emblem for the table at the consular station, Luoma-Overstreet said.

Luoma-Overstreet said the temporary consular station is gone, and he said the State Department has not issued a directive prohibiting the flying of the U.S. flag anywhere in Haiti, including the airport.

But the anger that erupted at the airport is precisely the sort of unrest that military officials are trying to keep at bay as residents of the impoverished island nation try to recover from the devastation, Buckner said.

“We are respectful as the invited guests of the Government of Haiti,” Buckner said. “Our commanders are smart and intuitively understand their mission here in Haiti and clearly the sensitivities that come with supporting the mission. In most cases, they have operated in a [counterinsurgency] environment in Iraq and Afghanistan and know how to interact with the people. Bottom line is our commanders are using their best judgment to focus on the mission.

“It is no mystery that U.S. forces are on the ground, and we proudly wear an American flag on our right sleeve,” Buckner said.

The U.N. has overall responsibility for the Haiti relief mission. U.S. service members in Haiti, however, are not wearing the familiar blue helmets of U.N. peacekeepers and are operating under U.S. command.

More than 12,000 U.S. military personnel are supporting relief operations following the powerful Jan. 12 earthquake, which killed an estimated 230,000 people, according to Haitian officials.