Yesterday, the Associated Press reported on the sanitation and water shortage crisis in Haiti. They also followed up on reports that the U.S. military is refusing to evacuate patients in need of medical care because of disputes over who will foot the bill. The military officer to confirm the potentially life-costing move? Canadian Brigadier-General Nicolas Matern:
"The coordinator of humanitarian assistance with the U.S.-run Joint Task Force-Haiti, Canadian Brig. Gen. Nicolas Matern, confirmed that the evacuation flights were halted on Wednesday."
The website of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, confirms that BG Matern, who arrived there on military exchange in 2007, is still Deputy Commanding General for Operations of the XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg.
Interestingly, the Army Times ran a piece featuring the 82nd Airborne Division out of Ft. Bragg, 'Haiti aid mission uses lessons of war,' which describes how the experience of "of dealing with counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the lessons learned there...apply here to the job of distributing food and water and providing medical help." Playing up the 'population-centric' propaganda of the neo-colonial COIN efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Times writes, "Soldiers with the 82nd train for humanitarian missions such as disaster relief, but the focus on counterinsurgency has made troops more sensitive."
Recall, ironically, that whereas the mainstream Canadian media has sanitized the February 29, 2004 - August 2004 role of the Canadian Forces in occupying Haiti, the first-ever CF Counterinsurgency Operations manual cites Haiti several times as a COIN case study. In effect, Canada gave "tacit support" to the Group of 184-backed "rebels/insurgents" who invaded the country from the Dominican Republic, in order to suppress the popular "insurgency" led by supporters of overthrown President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Regarding Matern here is the relevant info about his Iraq deployment from an article Jon Elmer and I wrote for IPS in January 2008:
"Despite the government's official position abstaining from combat in Iraq, Canada has dispatched yet another top general to the command group overseeing day-to-day operations for the U.S.-led occupation and counterinsurgency war. Brigadier-General Nicolas Matern, a Special Forces officer and former commander of Canada's elite counter-terrorism unit (JTF2), will serve as deputy to Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin III, incoming commander of the 170,000-strong Multi National Corps-Iraq beginning in mid-February. Matern is the third Canadian general to serve in the command group of Operation Iraqi Freedom as part of an exchange programme that places Canadian Forces officers in leadership positions in the U.S. military. His deployment is part of a three-year post with the U.S. Army's 18th Airborne Corps, based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.