May 26, 2012
American rage at Pakistan over the punishment of a CIA-cooperating Pakistani doctor is revealing
Glenn Greenwald in Salon:
Americans of all types — Democrats and Republicans, even some Good Progressives — are just livid that a Pakistani tribal court (reportedly in consultation with Pakistani officials) has imposed a 33-year prison sentence on Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani physician who secretly worked with the CIA to find Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil. Their fury tracks the standard American media narrative: by punishing Dr. Afridi for the “crime” of helping the U.S. find bin Laden, Pakistan has revealed that it sympathizes with Al Qaeda and is hostile to the U.S. (NPR headline: “33 Years In Prison For Pakistani Doctor Who Aided Hunt For Bin Laden”; NYT headline: “Prison Term for Helping C.I.A. Find Bin Laden”). Except that’s a woefully incomplete narrative: incomplete to the point of being quite misleading.
What Dr. Afridi actually did was concoct a pretextual vaccination program, whereby Pakistani children would be injected with a single Hepatitis B vaccine, with the hope of gaining access to the Abbottabad house where the CIA believed bin Laden was located. The plan was that, under the ruse of vaccinating the children in that province, he would obtain DNA samples that could confirm the presence in the suspected house of the bin Laden family. But the vaccine program he was administering was fake: as Wired‘s public health reporter Maryn McKenna detailed, “since only one of three doses was delivered, the vaccination was effectively useless.” An on-the-ground Guardian investigation documented 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.”
That means that numerous Pakistani children who thought they were being vaccinated against Hepatitis B were in fact left exposed to the virus.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 11:05 PM | Permalink
Comments
What if this was 1945 and it was Hitler who was hiding? Would Greenwald's reasoning still be justified?
In all the analogies that Greenwald provides, not one of them involves hiding and abetting a known active mass murderer.
Posted by: ganji | May 27, 2012 1:34:53 PM
you guys are joking, right?
Posted by: chris | May 27, 2012 4:46:37 PM
So, David, How many civilians has the US government killed in 'Af-Pak' since the beginning of its crusade? Less than 3000, you think?
Posted by: Pepito | May 27, 2012 8:45:57 PM
Ganji: the example of Orlando Bosch (and even better, the case of Luis Posada Carriles, Bosch's protege), is *exactly* like Bin Laden's case. They're happily walking down the streets of Miami today, basking in the impunity afforded by having a big Empire on their side. They'd never have to hide.
Posted by: Pepito | May 27, 2012 8:50:06 PM
according to an op-ed published in the Washington Post and written by an MIT professor, 6 millions civilian deaths have occured in the wars fought by the USA since the end of the 2nd world war.
9/11 was not a cause, but the effect of American foreign policy. Had the USA not acted like a lackey of Israel, the rise of Al Qaeda would not have occured. Even HAMAS was nourished by Israelis to counter the PLO.
Posted by: Hyderabadi | May 28, 2012 1:34:27 PM
The vaccines were not fake, and it would be easy for Pakistan to complete the treatment course and bill the US for the service, if this was really a matter of concern for them. Pakistan, ostensibly, is not an enemy state; it is a "major non-NATO ally". Therefore Afidi assisting the US is not the same as him assisting an enemy of the Pakistani state. Virtually all of Pakistan's civilian and mlitary leadership would qualify as traitors if this accusation that is hurled against Afridi were equally applied to them. Bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, again ostensibly, was not a state secret of Pakistan and therefore Afridi's assistance to an ally cannot be considered as espionage under normal circumstances. Unlike the Cubans in Greenwald's piece, Afridi is not accused of terrorism or the bombing of planes. In fact the real analogy to Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada is with Hafeez Saeed and Dawood Ibrahim (and Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri and Mullah Omar). The article is more reflective of Greenwald's knee-jerk reaction than the bipartisan American reaction to Pakistan's curious response post-Abbottabad. Feisal Naqvi in The Express Tribune has a more sensible native opinion to Greenwald's overreaction.
Posted by: Sam | May 29, 2012 3:32:40 AM
http://tribune.com.pk/story/385307/not-guilty-as-charged/
Not Guilty As Charged
Feisal Naqvi, The Express Tribune
"Greenwald, for example, asked his American readers to consider what would their reaction have been if the US had caught a Cuban-American doctor faking a vaccination campaign in order to assist the Castro regime.
The problem is that there is a world of a difference between a “foreign” intelligence agency and a “hostile” agency. Had Dr Afridi knowingly worked for RAW or Mossad, he would have no defence. But, in this case, Dr Afridi was not working for an enemy country: he was working for the United States, our ally. Indeed, not only does Pakistan proudly proclaim its status as a “major non-Nato ally” but it also openly and publicly collaborates with the US in military matters. Do we really want to say that helping the US fight the al Qaeda is the equivalent of waging war on Pakistan? Seriously?"
Posted by: Sam | May 29, 2012 3:41:28 AM
What would the US have done if a private citizen had been caught spying for the ISI? I'm willing to bet exactly what Pakistan did: put him in prison for a long time.
It doesn't matter whether the intelligence agency is from a "friendly" or a "hostile" country. Spying is spying and treason is treason. Pretending to be a doctor and running a vaccination campaign in order to help the CIA is absolutely treason against Pakistan, whether the object was to catch Bin Laden or not (also, Afridi supposedly didn't know that the target was Bin Laden, and he was willing to help anyway).
Posted by: Kabir | May 29, 2012 8:59:58 AM
Glenn Greenwald's column was not really about Dr Afridi or Pakistan. He is an American liberal fighting his own political battles IN the United States. He is not going to defend Dr Afridi in any way because that might look like defending an interventionist militarist foreign policy that he disapproves of. But keep in in mind that for him, and his audience, its all about America and what American does or should do....what the Pakistani establishment does is only of interest insofar as it relates to American policy or can be used to attack or defend an American policy. Greenwald, in short, is entirely "Americocentric" and is not a good guide to the merits or otherwise of ISI's strategems in the Afridi case.
btw, I do think the fake vaccination thing was a mistake, but I think the notion that this (or the Nigerian Pfizer thing mentioned by Greenwald) will seriously jeopardise mass vaccination is Eurocentric and (in empirical terms) mostly bullshit. Mass vaccination is a government led project in Pakistan, as in Nigeria, and wherever the writ of the government is intact they are usually able to make it work. Where their writ does not run is a different matter. Corruption and incompetence within the system are far more of a problem than Afridi's stunt. Keep in mind that foreigners are not the face of the vaccination campaign in either country. I believe that neither the Nigerian nor the Pakistani government or population will cut off their own nose to spite the CIA's of Pfizer's face (and if they do, what does that tell you about their intelligence?). Greenwald may be doing good work, but its work in an intra-American struggle.
Posted by: omar | May 29, 2012 9:57:06 AM
"What would the US have done if a private citizen had been caught spying for the ISI?"
Not a hypothetical. That is exactly what Ghulam Nabi Fai was accused of doing, and he's currently serving a 2 year jail term for his troubles. However, it is equally obvious that the US knew of his activities for a long time and turned a blind eye when it suited them. It was only when they wished to send a message to the ISI that they suddenly found religion. And this is exactly what the ISI is also doing in Afridi's case; sending the US a message; except that their rationale is on a much more shakier ground. Assisting in the taking down of leading terrorist is not the same as money-laundering to promote terrorism.
Posted by: Sam | May 30, 2012 2:46:48 AM
I am not holding my breath, but maybe Greenwald should write another piece about the Dr Afridi farce now:
http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2012/05/30/what-happened-to-the-rule-of-law-us-pakistan-and-doctor-afridi/
The above, btw, is what a more balanced post by someone who actually knows a thing or two about what is going on, would look like. Greenwald, by comparison, is just fighting his war against FOX news using whatever weapon he happens to find. That is valid enough, but not as a guide to what is happening in Pakistan in this case..
Posted by: omar | May 30, 2012 5:02:15 PM
Honestly, Omar? Myra MacDonald writing a balanced post about Pakistan in her blog? She comes from a long line of female Western journalists who quiver when handed a Siachin rose by a tall, dark and handsome mustached fauji; like Christine Fair before she began to feel jilted. Victorian Englishwomen would have similar feelings for Arab sheikhs in flowing robes, and so this is not a recent phenomenom.
Here, she once again serves as the useful idiot to legitimize the ISI's patently obvious attempt at plausible deniability over Afridi's incarceration. She doesn't as much bat an eyelid at General Durrani's chutzpah in equating the "daughter of Pakistan" with the "good doctor". Such remarkable restraint on her part! I can see her next touting in her "fair and balanced" manner the fantastical claim that Pakistan's tax collection has increased by 25%.
Posted by: Sam | Jun 1, 2012 1:13:19 AM
Sam, you are getting carried away.
Posted by: omar | Jun 1, 2012 9:46:57 AM
Carried away like The Express Tribune columnist Kamran Shafi who voiced his deep disquiet over the not-so veiled threat on Afridi's life issued by Durrani, the former head of the ISI? “I think Dr Afridi will get another chance to administer a polio vaccine; the next time in the Promised Land.” Something else that Myra chose to overlook in her "balanced" post.
I have read Myra's blog for a long time and it is obvious that she is enthralled by the men in khaki of the Deep State. Shaukat Aziz's attempted seduction of Condoleezza Rice didn't come from nowhere; but she was made of sterner stuff than these little known journalists and academics who revel at the attention and become "experts" on Pakistan.
Posted by: Sam | Jun 1, 2012 11:09:19 AM
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