Coronavirus stimulus bill funds State Dept/USAID operations that once helped trigger polio outbreak in Syria
A look at recent USAID schemes from Pakistan to Syria shows US empire can be very hazardous to your health.
by Max Blumenthal
Part 4 - A devious CIA/USAID operation triggers polio in Pakistan
Contrary to Annie Sparrow’s partisan screeds, the most likely cause for the spread of polio to militia-held bastions of Syria was the infiltration of foreign jihadists. According to an analysis by Jennifer Cole of the Royal United Services Institute, genetic sequencing linked a polio outbreak in northeastern Syria “to one of Pakistani origin…” At the time, 92 percent of the world’s polio cases occurred in Pakistan.
“Efforts to eradicate the disease in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria – the only three countries where the disease remains endemic, with ‘wild’ or naturally occurring strains still circulating – have long been challenged by Islamist militants who claim that the vaccinations are a Western plot to make their children infertile, to spread AIDS, or that health workers are undercover Western spies,” Cole explained.
The fear among Pakistani jihadists that Western vaccination drives served as a cover for spying was firmly grounded in reality. In 2010, the CIA staged a fake vaccination campaign against Hepatitis B near a villa outside Islamabad that it suspected was the residence of Osama bin Laden. The plan called for herding children from the villa, vaccinating them, and testing the needles for DNA that resembled that of the al-Qaeda leader, thus determining whether he was sheltering inside.
To spearhead the devious operation, the CIA turned to Dr. Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani doctor the agency had recruited through USAID. The vaccination drive was planned in USAID warehouses by Afridi and staff members of Save the Children, a USAID partner NGO that was running cover for the CIA, according to Afridi.
Soon after bin Laden was captured in May 2011, Afridi’s cover was blown by a local journalist, he was jailed, and Save The Children was expelled from the country. As word of the sham vaccination effort got out, jihadists from Pakistan to Nigeria began slaughtering polio vaccination workers in droves. Suddenly, the disease was spreading like wildfire.
“Forevermore, people would say this disease, this crippled child is because the U.S. was so crazy to get Osama bin Laden,” lamented Leslie Roberts of Columbia University’s School of Public Health.
It was little more than a year after the CIA helped unleash polio on Pakistan that the agency began funneling arms to anti-government militants in Syria through its Operation Timber Sycamore. As parts of the country transformed into havens for the same jihadist fanatics who had been murdering vaccination workers in Pakistan, polio returned and threatened to spread into neighboring states like Turkey and Jordan.
And all along, USAID was blindly dumping resources into these disease-infested regions, helping to consolidate jihadist control under the guise of “stabilization.”
Now, thanks to the coronavirus stimulus package, the same State Department programs that have spread chaos across the Middle East have received a massive shot in the arm.
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