Syria: From Fermenting Uprising to Delivering Polio
SYRIA IN CONTEXT, 11 Nov 2013
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey - Pravda
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
— Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832
In Syria, now, apart from funding weapons to a reported thousand different factions of foreign terrorists from perhaps eighty plus countries, NATO, the US, UK and their Middle East cohorts have seemingly delivered polio.
Prior to interruption by the devastating uprising – designed largely from within the US Embassy in Damascus (i) before Ambassador Robert Ford fled across the border for a flight to the safety of Maryland – Syria had one of the highest polio vaccination rates in the region, with the World Health Organization estimating that eighty three percent of children were vaccinated. By 2012, a year in to the engineered destabilization, the figure had dropped to fifty two percent.
Prior to the current outbreak announced this week, affecting, so far, a reported twenty two children: “The last virologically-confirmed indigenous case was reported on 29 March 1995, although a virologically-confirmed case was also reported in November 1999. Genetic sequencing confirmed its relation to a virus strain circulating in India and it was considered an importation. No polio cases have been confirmed in the Syrian Arab Republic since then”, stated the WHO.(ii)
The Gates Foundation records that: “Polio remains endemic in just three countries – Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.” The Global Eradication Initiative notes that: “Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan repeatedly re-infect one other, with Afghanistan appearing to receive a higher share of the poliovirus importations.”(iii)
Contributing to Pakistan’s polio problem is the fall in take-up of inoculations after the CIA organized a fake vaccination programme in and around the town of Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden was believed living with his family, prior to his US assassination in May 2011 (if it was, in fact, him – many questions remain.)
The fake programme was aimed at obtaining DNA from bin Laden family members. A senior Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi was recruited to: “organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the ‘project in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.”(iv)
Understandably, subsequently, not alone in Pakistan, but regionally, people are reticent to trust those introducing unknown substances to the bodies of their children. “Trust me, I’m a doctor” has a bit of catching up to do in the inoculation confidence building arena.
The resultant tragedy is not alone a setback to eradicating a devastating illness, but that suspicion is such that, according to the WHO, eighteen people connected to the vaccination programme were killed and seven injured, between July 2012 and May 2013, in an ongoing tragedy. Yet when Alfridi was sentenced to thirty three years in jail by a Pakistani Court, the US was so enraged that $33 million was withheld in aid to Pakistan.
Pakistani fighters in increasing numbers are now reported as traveling to Syria: “The network sending Pakistani Sunni fighters to Syria is jointly run by the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) and the banned sectarian group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi,both of which are affiliated with al-Qa’ida. … Abdul Rashid Abbasi, a close associate of TTP chief Hakimullah Mehsud, said … fighters already in Syria are under the command-and-control structure of al-Qa’ida in Syria.”(v) Moreover, they are believed to be in the East of Syria, where the polio has been identified. (Polio can be “carried” from affected areas, by those who never actually develop the disease.)
It is also surely a redundancy to point out (again) that if the above carefully researched and referenced article is correct, NATO, the US-UK regime and their allies are funding that great collective bogeyman al-Qa’ida.
However, back to the polio outbreak: “High-ranking sources from the World Health Organisation here say indications are that the polio outbreak reported from Syria can be traced to Pakistan”, states The Hindu, adding that the conclusive test results will not be returned until early next week. (vi)
Further: “Before this, the virus from Pakistan was found in Egypt, Palestine and Israel, according to the WHO. Pakistan was responsible for the international spread in 2011 and the virus from Pakistan caused an outbreak in western China, according to the WHO.”
Syria is attempting a further inoculation outreach, in near impossible circumstances on the ground, further appallingly hampered by a crippling embargo which affects the entire health system.
Sometimes it truly seems as if the demented Armageddonists and George W. Bush’s “Crusaders” have shaped a “New World Order” which has regressed to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine and Death.
Fundamentalism R US.
NOTES:
i. http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-and-conspiracy-theories-it-is-a-conspiracy
ii..http://www.emro.who.int/polio/countries/syrian-arab-republic.html
iii.http://www.polioeradication.org/Infectedcountries/Afghanistan.aspx
iv. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna
v. http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/pakistani-fighters-joining-the-war-in-syria vi. http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/south-asia/syria-polio-outbreak- could-be-from-pakistan-who-sources/article5296956.ece
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