person:shakil afridi

The CIA Aided Polio’s Comeback–but #Media Have Forgotten the Story
▻http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/05/07/the-cia-aided-polios-comeback-but-media-have-forgotten-the-story

#Polio had been battled to near-extinction after decades of effort, but this year the WHO confirmed 68 new cases and declared it an international public health emergency. Nearly 80 percent of those cases are in Pakistan.

Why is this? According to the New York Times’ Donald McNeil Jr. (5/6/14), “Polio has never been eliminated there, Taliban factions have forbidden vaccinations in North Waziristan for years, and those elsewhere have murdered vaccine teams.” McNeil also quotes a WHO spokesperson towards the top of the piece: “So we’re saying to the Pakistanis, the Syrians and the Cameroonians, ’You’ve really got to get your acts together.”’

The Times underlined the emergency today in an editorial, explaining that Pakistan has such high numbers “largely because Taliban factions have forbidden vaccinations in conservative tribal areas and attacked healthcare workers elsewhere.”

There’s a crucial piece of information missing here—one that these outlets know full well. In 2011, the British Guardian (7/11/11) reported that the CIA used a fake vaccination drive led by Pakistani Dr. Shakil Afridi to gain entry to bin Laden’s compound and gather DNA to confirm his presence there. As McNeil himself reported in 2012 (7/9/12), that revelation led to suspicion and banning of vaccination teams in the tribal areas of Pakistan. At the time, the WHO argued that, while it was a “setback…unless it spreads or is a very longtime affair, the program is not going to be seriously affected.”

Then the killings started; the #Times reported several times on killings of polio vaccination workers in Pakistan, noting in June 2013 that these attacks “escalated” after the revelation of the #CIA plot. And the following month, McNeil reported that after Dr. Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison for treason, “Anger deepened when American lawmakers called Dr. Afridi a hero and threatened to cut off aid if he was not released.”

Fast forward to this week, and CBS Evening News (5/5/14) likewise avoided the CIA connection in reporting the most recent story, as anchor Scott Pelley noted: “Most cases are in Pakistan, where vaccine workers have been murdered on suspicion that they’re spying for the United States.”

The PBS NewsHour (5/6/14) was one of the only outlets that mentioned the CIA issue, in a report by correspondent Jeffrey Brown:

BROWN: Dr. Anita Zaidi, a pediatrician, cited a fake vaccination campaign that the CIA used in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

ZAIDI: Which has hugely damaged public health programs, not only in Pakistan, but in many, many countries, because people ask all kinds of questions. They now think that they might—the vaccine programs might be actually spy operations.

This story was well-reported in the past, particularly by the Times; why the silence now that the problem has been declared an international emergency?

#oubli #New_york_times

Pakistan Battles Polio, and Its People’s Mistrust - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/health/pakistan-fights-for-ground-in-war-on-polio.html

Pourquoi l’UNICEF et l’OMS n’ont pas réagi au scandale de l’utilisation par le régime étasunien de la campagne de vaccination pour traquer OBL.

In the middle of last year, it became known that in 2011, the C.I.A. had paid a local doctor to try to get DNA samples from children inside an Abbottabad compound to prove they were related to Bin Laden. Even though the doctor, Shakil Afridi, who is now serving a 33-year sentence for treason, was offering a hepatitis vaccine, anger turned against polio drops. Leaders of the polio eradication effort could not have been more frustrated. They were already fighting new rumors that vaccinators were helping set drone targets because they have practices like marking homes with chalk so that follow-up teams can find them. Now, after years of reassuring nervous families that the teams were not part of a C.I.A. plot, here was proof that one was. “It was a huge, stupid mistake,” Dr. Bhutta said. Anger deepened when American lawmakers called Dr. Afridi a hero and threatened to cut off aid if he was not released.

The W.H.O. and the Unicef, afraid of offending the United States, did not protest publicly. Unicef’s executive director, Anthony Lake, is a former White House national security adviser, which put the agency in an awkward position, an agency official said on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue."

Arrêt sur images - les talibans, la polio, et la CIA
►http://www.arretsurimages.net/vite.php?id=14905

Je sais que vous n’avez en tête que Tapie et Depardieu, mais parlons d’autre chose. "Polio : le Pakistan victime du poison taliban", titre Libé sur une double page. Je ne connaissais rien de la question, je lis. "Neuf vaccinateurs ont été tués par les insurgés à Karachi et dans le nord-ouest du pays, régions où cette maladie demeure endémique", sous-titre Libé. Mais qui donc, quels monstres humains pourraient avoir l’idée de tuer des vaccinateurs antipolio ? L’article donne la réponse : parce que les vaccins seraient soupçonnés par les talibans extrémistes de faire partie d’un complot visant à diminuer la virilité des occidentaux. Et pas seulement. Il paraît qu’ils contiendraient aussi du gras de porc. Voilà pourquoi ils tuent. Haro sur les obscurantistes.

Il faut arriver au huitième (et antépénultième) paragraphe de l’article, pour apprendre qu’il pourrait exister une autre motivation. "Ce qui a aussi décuplé l’hostilité des talibans à l’égard de la campagne, écrit Libé, c’est « l’affaire Shakil Afridi », le médecin pakistanais condamné à trente-trois ans de prison sous l’accusation d’avoir participé à une fausse campagne de vaccination contre l’hépatite organisée par la CIA en 2011 afin de s’assurer de la présence d’Oussama Ben Laden à Abbottabad (nord-ouest du Pakistan)". Ah tiens ? La CIA aurait participé à une fausse campagne de vaccination ? Mais oui. À la recherche de Ben Laden, les Américains avaient imaginé ce subterfuge, pour parvenir à prélever l’ADN des enfants du fondateur d’Al Quaida. Au grand désespoir de Médecins Sans Frontières, d’ailleurs, qui avait condamné cette ruse, prévoyant (à raison) qu’elle risquait de fortement compromettre les futures campagnes de vaccination.

Personne n’est dans la tête des assassins de vaccinateurs. Personne (ni vous, ni moi, ni sans doute Jean-Pierre Perrin, l’auteur de l’article de Libé, grand reporter chevronné du journal), ne sait si c’est la peur de l’impuissance sexuelle, la phobie du gras de porc, ou le souvenir des ruses de la CIA, qui arment leurs mains. Et bien entendu (ceci précisé afin de prévenir tout débat inutile dans le forum) c’est très mal de tuer des gens qui vaccinent contre la polio. Comme d’habitude, il n’est question ici que des informations que donnent les journaux, et dans quel ordre, et à quelle place ils les donnent. Et donc, dans un article sur le sujet, sans doute le rappel de cette ruse de la CIA pourrait-il être effectué à une place un peu plus voyante que le huitième (et antépénultième) paragraphe.

“Bin Laden doctor” jailed for “fighter links”
►http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/05/201253015503713861.html

A Pakistani doctor who helped the US find Osama bin Laden was imprisoned for aiding fighters and not for links to the CIA, as Pakistani officials had said, according to a court document.

Last week, a court in the Khyber tribal region near the Afghan border jailed Shakil Afridi for 33 years.

At the time, Pakistani officials told Western and domestic media the decision was based on treason charges for aiding the CIA in its hunt for the al-Qaeda chief.

“When the verdict came out on May 23, it said he was being charged for treason because of his involvement with the CIA,” Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said.

However, the judgement document made available to the media on Wednesday states that Afridi was jailed because of his close ties to the banned group Lashkar-e-Islam.

“Americans lashed out at Pakistan, but when the ruling came out today, it made no mention of the CIA,” Hyder said.

“People are asking all sorts of questions - whether the Americans overreacted, or the Pakistanis overreacted.”

Pakistan jails doctor over bin Laden hunt
►http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/05/2012523111832779910.html

A Pakistani doctor accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden has been sentenced to 33 years in prison, Pakistani television channels and a local government official say.

The official said on Wednesday that Shakil Afridi was charged with treason for running a fake vaccination campaign that helped the US intelligence agency track the al-Qaeda chief in a northwestern city, where he was killed in a US special-forces raid.

#CIA tactics to trap Bin Laden linked with polio crisis, say aid groups | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/02/aid-groups-cia-osama-bin-laden-polio-crisis

An alliance of 200 US aid groups has written to the head of the CIA to protest against its use of a doctor to help track Osama bin Laden, linking the agency’s ploy to the polio crisis in Pakistan.

The country recorded the highest number of polio cases in the world last year, a health catastrophe that threatens to spiral out of control.

In July the Guardian revealed that the CIA used a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, in the hunt for Bin Laden. In the weeks before the 3 May operation to kill Bin Laden, Afridi was instructed to set up a fake vaccination scheme in the town of Abbottabad, in order to gain entry to the house where it was suspected that the al-Qaida chief was living, and extract DNA samples from his family members.

#ONG #santé