The Needle and the Damage Done: Toxic Fallout from the CIA's Human Shield Operation
When I
first saw the stories
about the CIA’s super-cunning covert op – setting up a fake vaccination
scheme to try to get DNA from Osama bin Laden's children in Abbottabad –
I immediately thought: How many innocent people are going to die or
suffer needlessly from this unconscionable tainting of medical
programmes by Terror War subterfuge?
How many people will now turn away
from ostensibly genuine humanitarian efforts, wary of being used by
foreign spies infiltrating their country?
How many more genuine medical
relief and health care workers will now be targeted as agents of
militarist agendas in troubled lands already rightly suspicious of the
murderous spy games being played in their midst?
Now Médecins Sans Frontières has voiced the same concerns, in public blast on Thursday which called the CIA's toying with the lives and health of vulnerable children "grave manipulation of the medical act."
The CIA recruited a Pakistani doctor and
health visitors before the operation in May that killed Bin Laden in
Abbottabad in northern Pakistan, to try to ascertain whether the
al-Qaida leader was living in the compound. The doctor, Shakil Afridi,
set up a vaccination drive for Hepatitis B in the town in order to try
to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound and obtain DNA samples from
those living there. ..
However, on the ground in Abbottabad the
Guardian discovered that while the vaccine doses themselves were
genuine, the medical professionals involved were not following
procedures. In an area called Nawa Sher, they did not return a month
after the first dose to provide the required second batch. Instead,
according to local officials and residents, the team moved on, in April
this year, to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived.
These vaccines are not effective unless the full course of doses is
administered. The CIA thus suborned genuine medical professionals,
without their knowledge, and then left the children being used as --
dare we say it? -- human shields for the spy agency still at grave risk
of contracting Hepatitis B. Having established their front in the
poorest part of town, luring in the most vulnerable, they simply "moved
on." What of the children of Nawa Sher? Who cares? They're expendable.
The Guardian story spells out the larger implications:
"The risk is that vulnerable communities –
anywhere – needing access to essential health services will
understandably question the true motivation of medical workers and
humanitarian aid," said Unni Karunakara, MSF's international president.
"The potential consequence is that even basic healthcare, including
vaccination, does not reach those who need it most."
"It is challenging enough for health
agencies and humanitarian aid workers to gain access to, and the trust
of, communities, especially populations already sceptical of the motives
of any outside assistance," said MSF. "Deceptive use of medical care
also endangers those who provide legitimate and essential health
services."
The impact of the fake vaccination drive
may be keenly felt in Pakistan, where the public already sees an
American conspiracy everywhere. Polio campaigns could be at particular
risk, as Pakistan has the biggest polio problem in the world.
But again, none of that matters. These are non-people, unpersons, Untermenschen.
The only thing that matters is that American elites are made to look
tough, willing to do "whatever it takes." The Guardian quotes the usual
anonymous Obama Administration official defending the use of innocent
children as human shields for black ops:
The US official said: "The vaccination
campaign was part of the hunt for the world's top terrorist, and nothing
else. If the United States hadn't shown this kind of creativity, people
would be scratching their heads asking why it hadn't used all tools at
its disposal to find Bin Laden."
Yes, inquiring minds want to know: why didn't the United States abuse and exploit and endanger even more
innocent children to find bin Laden? (Aside from the thousands of
children killed in the post-9/11 Terror Wars, of course.) Thank god the
Peace Laureate and his people have more "creativity" than his cloddish
predecessors!
Oh, and what was the upshot of this "creativity"? I mean, sure, they
put the poorest children in Abbotabad at grave risk of suffering, and
yeah, they endangered vaccination and health programs and medical
workers all over the world -- but hey, the fake vaccine thing worked,
didn't it? It helped them get bin Laden, didn't it?
Er, no. Like so much else in the Terror War -- indeed, like the
Terror War in its entirety -- the CIA human shield operation in
Abbotabad was a busted flush. The whole thing was designed to suck blood
from bin Laden's children to get the DNA that would confirm his
presence in the house -- but it didn't even do that. As the New York Times reports:
The American official said that the
doctor managed to temporarily gain access to the compound, but that he
never saw Bin Laden and was not successful in getting DNA samples from
any Bin Laden family members.
Endangering children, increasing mistrust and instability around the
world, militarizing medicine, polluting every notion of a greater common
good or human fellow-feeling -- and all for absolutely nothing (aside
from the perpetuation of the pointless dominance of a witless, brutal,
all-devouring elite): that pretty much sums up the foreign policy of our
rotting, blundering, bankrupt empire.