Guantanamo playing key role in US relief effort (Feature)

By Mike McCarthy Jan 20, 2010, 18:16 GMT

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - The US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, notorious for hosting the prison holding suspects in the war on terrorism, is playing a key role in the American operation airlifting humanitarian supplies to Haiti.

The base on the remote southeastern Cuban coast has served since last week as the staging point for flying in food, water, medicine and other goods since last week's magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Tens of thousands are believed to have perished, and many more have been injured or are without basic necessities.

The international controversy surrounding the prison aside, Guantanamo is usually a quiet place, kind of like a sleepy suburb. But since the January 12 earthquake, the base has been thrumming with activity as supplies and personnel are ferried to Haiti.

Helicopters and planes are buzzing the skies over the base as they take off and land on an airstrip adjacent to the ocean. The base has also served as a hub for many of the American evacuees before they head back to the United States, and a handful of other nationalities. The Spanish ambassador in Port-au-Prince who was injured in the quake was brought here last week for medical attention.

The US military has been leasing the arid land on which Guantanamo rests since the early part of the last century, well before Fidel Castro's revolution turned Cuba into a communist country and US enemy.

Castro has demanded an end to the US presence, but the Americans refuse, arguing that a decision to terminate must be mutual.

Throughout the Cold War, tension here was high. The fence line that separates the two sides could have been described as the western hemisphere's Berlin Wall. US Marines guarded the base's perimeter and their Cuban counterparts to this day keep a watchful eye from observation towers a couple hundred metres away.