When French civil security becomes a “partner” of UsAid!

(BRUXELLES2) An American, Sarla Chand, aged 66, is pulled from the rubble of the Hotel Montana, on January 14, by the French civil security, under the spotlight of the media. The interview takes place on "the stretcher", microphones and cameras stretched... This photo was sent to me by the American Navy, with this caption: " Chand spend more than 50 hours in the debris before she was pulled to safety by relief workers from France who have partnered with US Agency for International Development to support the massive relief efforts needed in the aftermath of Tuesday's earthquake. Civil security thus becomes one of Us Aid's partners!

Photo credit: US Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Lee Kelsey

One more proof that if the "civil security" intervention of the States certainly has a humanitarian aim, it also has enormous political ulterior motives (1). In addition to motivations that are very specifically internal to American policy (to make people forget the weakness of intervention during Hurricane Katrina, to give Obama a first "real" international success), the massive American intervention is an equally strategic way of marking his presence in Haiti, the only French-speaking state in the Caribbean. Incidentally, it also allows the American army to restore its image by making people forget the very mixed results of the intervention in Afghanistan. But now these pesky Frenchies are also in the game. Because France cannot be totally uninterested in its former colony.