The hidden perils of covert action
By Christopher R. Albon, July 13, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - 11:37 AM
Share
United States-Pakistan relations have been in free fall since the successful raid by Special Operations Forces on May 2nd killed Osama bin Laden and several others in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Now an investigation by the Guardian has revealed details of an intelligence operation in the months prior to the raid that attempted to use a fake vaccination campaign to confirm the terrorist leader's whereabouts. The operation, which reportedly failed, attempted to use the pretext of a free Hepatitis-B vaccination to collect DNA on those living inside Bin Laden's suspected compound, hoping to match it with the DNA of his relatives. However, while few details about the operation are known, one thing is certain: its existence will cause serious damage to legitimate domestic and international health campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Immunization programs in Pakistan already have a hard time convincing many to get vaccinated. In 2007, a polio-vaccination campaign in northern Pakistan failed to immunize 160,000 children, due to rumors that the vaccine was an American attempt to sterilize children. The rumors were at least partially spread by local clerics, who claimed that the polio-immunization drive was "a conspiracy of the Jews and Christians to stunt the population growth of Muslims." Some vaccination teams were even beaten after locals heard the rumors. In another case, a Pakistani doctor was killed in 2007 after working to fight anti-vaccine propaganda in Bajaur agency. And the risk to health workers has increased drastically in recent years. According to the Aid Worker Security Database, which tracks attacks against national and international humanitarians, only two aid workers working in Pakistan reported being the victim of attacks in 2004, while by 2010 that number had risen to 28. Furthermore, the Red Cross claimed this month to have observed a spike in attacks against humanitarians, fueled in part by anger over the Abbottabad raid. Simply put, it has never been more dangerous to be a health worker in Pakistan.
Similar distrust towards health workers exists in Afghanistan. Taliban fighters have always had an uneasy relationship with vaccination teams and aid workers, suspecting they are government or Western spies. In 2007, Taliban fighters kidnapped one vaccination worker in Uruzgan province during a polio-vaccination campaign. They beat him and only released him after he promised to stop vaccinating children. It is not just vaccination efforts that are harmed by the rumors: less than a year ago a group of international and Afghan aid workers were hiking back from a three-week medical mission in the Hindu Kush mountains when they were captured and executed by gunmen. A Taliban spokesman took credit for the attack, claiming that the aid workers were spies.
Insecurity has a serious negative effect on health care in rural communities. The greater the personal risks, the greater the appeal for both national and international health workers to stay within the safety of major cities, venturing out only in large convoys. This so-called "bunkerization" diminishes the ability of health campaigns to target rural communities -- often those most in need of primary health care. The best way to overcome bunkerization is through building relationships with communities and local elites, allowing for the free movement of health workers in a region -- exactly the kind of thing undermined by the CIA's apparent operation.
Given the precarious relationship between health workers, militants, and civilians in many areas of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the existence of a fake vaccination program ran by the CIA is likely all the evidence many need to accuse all vaccinators and health workers of spying. The end result will be fewer families willing to have their children vaccinated, and more attacks on health workers providing any manner of medical care to communities. Some people will no doubt say that the operation was a reasonable and necessary attempt to confirm bin Laden's location, and that nobody was directly put at risk as a result. Tell that to the next vaccination team in Abbottabad.
Christopher R. Albon is writer and researcher on public health in armed conflict, health diplomacy, and human security. Writes at Conflict Health, UN Dispatch, the US Naval Institute, and elsewhere.
AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images
EXPLORE:AFPAK, FLASH POINTS, AFGHANISTAN, AFPAK CHANNEL, PAKISTAN, PUBLIC HEALTH, SECURITY, TERRORISM, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY 
Covert action was and is the only option
Covert action was and is forced on U. S. by Pakistani government’s close association with the terrorist outfits. Immunization is the least of the problems for Pakistan when Pakistani State itself is SPONSORING terrorism.
Gen. Zia planted the Islamist poison seed and the tree from that seed is now bearing the toxic fruit. The Army and the ISI and even the civilian democratic leaders will ensure that Pakistan never gives up terrorism as a state policy to blackmail enemies and allies alike. Terrorism has yielded such handsome dividends to Pakistan in the form of international aid. Terrorism has become a second nature to Pakistan, so to speak.
It was Gen. Zia who ushered in a new era of Islamic fundamentalism, bigotry and blasphemy laws in Pakistan targeting minorities, together with nurturing radical, armed Islamic groups, bent on waging jihad across the world. Officers recruited in his era are today three-star Generals and the Pakistani Military is largely motivated by the ideology of the “Quranic Concept of War” articulated by Zia’s protégé Brigadier (later Major General) SK Malik. Describing anyone who stands in the way of jihad as an “aggressor”, Malik held that “the aggressor is always met and destroyed in his own country”.
The malaise of Islamic radicalism runs deep across Pakistan’s entire establishment - civilian and military as well as society.
Lawyers showered the suspected killer of a prominent Pakistani governor with rose petals when he arrived at court and an influential Muslim scholars group praised the assassination of the governor who was recommending to reform Pakistan‘s sharia laws.
The Pakistani parliament’s joint session convened on 5/13/11 after Osama’s killing and ended after adopting a unanimous resolution condemning the American raid on the Abbottabad compound in which al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed.
Pakistani parliamentarians did not appear to be bothered about Osama living in Abbottabad for the past five years and perhaps in other parts of the country since 9/11.
Osama bin Laden was a hero in Pakistan even prior to his death and remains one now as well.
Nobody forced Pakistani government to facilitate relocation of Osama bin Laden from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Democratic government of Pakistan chose to do so of its own free will.
Nobody forced Pakistani Army and Intelligence to create what ex-CIA official Bruce Reidel called ‘this jihadist Frankenstein’ monster in 1990s. Pakistani Army and Intelligence chose to do so with the full financing provided by Pakistan’s democratic governments at the time.
US ambassador Anne Patterson to Pakistan, wrote in a secret review in 2009 that ‘Pakistan's Army and ISI are covertly SPONSORING four militant groups - Haqqani‘s HQN, Mullah Omar‘s QST, Al Qaeda and LeT - and will not abandon them for any amount of US money‘, as diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show.
Ambassador Patterson had NO reason to mislead her own State Department and U. S. government.
Terrorist government of Pakistan
Pakistani government has U. S. under the barrel of a gun - US can NOT use its aid leverage to force Pakistan to stop supporting terrorist groups who kill US/NATO troops in Afghanistan day in and day out because US needs Pakistan’s help in ferrying supplies to those very US/NATO troops. This is blackmail - pure and simple.
Following are verbatim quotes from what Gen (rtd) Jack Keane said at a discussion on Afghanistan organized by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank on June 30, 2011:
1. "The truth is, the ISI aids and abets the sanctuaries in Pakistan that the Afghan (Taliban) operate out of. They (ISI) provide training for them, they provide resources for them and they provide intelligence for them. From those sanctuaries, every single day Afghan fighters come into Afghanistan and kill and maim us".
2. "There's a direct relationship of ISI's complicity and the deaths of American soldiers and the catastrophic wounding of those soldiers. The chief of staff of the Pakistani military is complicit. He used to be the director of ISI. He put the guy in there who is in charge now and he has full knowledge of what I'm just describing".
3. "This partnership has got to be based on that harsh reality. There are two ammonium nitrate factories in Pakistan. 80 per cent of the explosive devices that are used to kill our soldiers, kill Afghan security forces and kill Afghan people come from Pakistan."
4. "All of what I just said to you, when we confront them with this, they lie to us. They lie to us just like the Soviet Union used to lie to us“.
Recruiting terrorist State of Pakistan to fight terrorism that Pakistani State itself created, was the biggest blunder of Bush presidency for which U. S. has paid dearly with no end in sight.
The real mistake in this covert action was letting it become public knowledge. Covert actions such as this are sometimes necessary in order to achieve strategic notional objectives, but they must remain secret (or top secret). As sson as they are declassified, all efforts in the future are destroyed and (as the author notes) many legitimate humanitarian endeavors are also endangered.
Come on dotheads, post some new comments, you are copying and pasting same old comments on all articles here.
These comments may be applicable for Pakistan of the eighties, once CIA was fighting its Jihad against USSR....
Not anymore, it is your false propaganda, on every article about Pakistan, you try to mislead the other readers...
Have some iota of shame and get your facts corrected.
In any case, this type of covert action by CIA remains questionable and highly condemable
78% of Pakistani kids with polio were given polio vaccination
http://www.naturalnews.com/032587_polio_vaccines_Pakistan.html
It will be even harder the next time the U.S. goes shopping the veiled death and disease around as free vaccinations.
The fake vaccination program was irresponsible.
Just as the highly illegal torture and abduction program operated by the CIA was irresponsible (and criminal in addition to being a betrayal of our nation's values), the fake vaccination program used by the CIA irresponsible...some actions are going too far...by posing as humanitarian workers and running a fake vaccination program the CIA has endangered the lives of real humanitarian workers and guaranteed less children will get vaccines in Muslim countries.
and some not so hidden like 9/11
Using an entire country weaponized against the Soviets and as Brzezinski says to cause the Soviets to occupy the country and by weaponizing a religious fervor and set it lose on the world can have consequences.. maybe even to create an excuse to try and do what the Soviet's couldn't do..and with Iraq take over in order to surround Iran perhaps... whcih brings us to another tale of covert woe and another plight at the end of a tunnel... Secrets are killers.
The hidden perils of covert action
lisa ann, reporter of the Cosmopolitan, reported: Pakistani leaders have enabled the Americans to effectively cut them out of the picture in Afghanistan and the sub-continent. You see the creation of an American covert intelligence network on Pakistani soil, which will allow the US to negotiate directly with the Taliban (bypassing Pakistan), alongside a converging of US/Indian agreements that endorse Mumbai charges against Pak officers, and lean toward a US/Indian agreement to resist Chinese penetration of Pakistani northern provinces. American/Indian destabilization missions within Pakistan are the stuff that regional conflagrations are born of. If the Pak Army is truly as patriotic as so many claim, then they will take immediate actions to eradicate this existential threat within their midst. None of which could have been arranged without the connivance of the top military and establishment leaders. The great house-cleaning must begin there.
May/June 2013
-
Profile
-
FP Power Map
-
Think Again
(8)
SHOW COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE