CAIRO — I thought carefully about my wording before I asked UNICEF executive director to call his contacts in the CIA and ask them to publicly apologize for what they had done and pledge not to do it again. Responding in a matter-of-fact tone, he told me that he understood my strong emotions, but made no promises.
I took a deep breath and asked him directly in a voice that I tried to keep calm: So you are going to talk to your friends and acquaintances?
(I used these words intentionally because the man was a former U.S. National Security Adviser and a candidate to become CIA director before he withdrew from that race, ultimately winding up at the helm of UNICEF.)
The powerful American fell silent in apparent disgust, before changing the topic. He probably did not talk to anyone after that, and UNICEF never released any statement to criticize the actions of the CIA agents.
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It was the summer of 2011 and I was working as UNICEF’s head of communications in New York. That week, reports began to emerge of the collapse of polio vaccination campaigns in Pakistan, which was, and still is, one of the last strongholds of the dreaded disease.
The vaccination campaigns collapsed after US intelligence agents used a Pakistani physician who claimed to work with the vaccination campaign to enter a house suspected of being the hideout of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his family.
The physician succeeded, which ultimately helped the Americans in the killing of bin Laden.
But such U.S. tactics also blew up the vaccination campaign that was slowly overcoming local doubts and fears, some of which were cultural or religious.
I recommended that UNICEF release a statement condemning what had happened and explaining the devastating consequences of this operation on a costly vaccination campaign. I asked the director to contact the U.S. administration and ask it clearly and strongly never to repeat such acts in any other country, and not to hide any of its agents under the guise of working in vaccination campaigns or with humanitarian organizations.
Two years later, the US administration pledged not to plant its agents among humanitarian and vaccination campaigns. But the serious damage had already been done, and Pakistan and Afghanistan are still strongholds for polio epidemics.
Too late!
The U.S. is typically much more sensitive to maintaining the integrity of such vaccination campaigns for two main reasons: first, the danger of this virus to all children in the world (especially those under the age of five), as it cannot be contained in one country for long.
There are alleged connections between vaccination campaigns and Western spy plots
Second, vaccination campaigns, especially in the countries of the South and the poorest regions, cost about a billion dollars annually. Therefore, eradicating the virus is in the interest of every country in the world, in addition to the moral and economic considerations.
Despite such efforts, many children are sickened by the disease every year for many reasons, including people’s skepticism, false and misleading information about the virus, and the alleged connection between vaccination campaigns and Western spy plots — which was reinforced by the bin Laden killing.
Polio in Gaza
This background is necessary to understand the vaccination campaign underway currently in Gaza amid Israel’s relentless bombing and blockade. The campaign began earlier this month after a 10-month-old child was infected with the virus, the first case there in 25 years.
These efforts are undoubtedly motivated in part by moral reasons, but they also stem from the world’s concern — especially in neighboring countries — about the virus becoming endemic in the Palestinian enclave.
The infected child will spend the rest of his life with a paralyzed leg
The infected child will spend the rest of his life with a paralyzed leg, with the only hope now that he will survive the Israeli war that has killed at least 15,000 children, and left hundreds of thousands of the remaining children as potential victims of psychological and physical illnesses and easy targets for bacteria and viruses.
A Gazan mother volunteering in the vaccination campaign summed up the tragic situation. She told the BBC that they were trying to vaccinate children even knowing they could die from Israeli fire, bombs and missiles at any moment.
Among the main reasons for the polio return to Gaza is the deterioration of health services, the contamination of drinking water and the destruction of sewage systems.
If the virus had not been transmitted across borders, maybe we would not have witnessed all this interest in the vaccination campaign in Gaza. And if the United States (and Israel) cares about civilians and innocent people in the region we would not have witnessed such repeated tragedies.
Twin tracks
It is important to analyze, criticize and expose all these ambiguities in the standards and motives surrounding the polio outbreak, and document what is happening. At the same time, we must strive hard to ensure that the vaccination campaign in Gaza continues to reach hundreds of thousands of children with all the required doses.
We can work on both tracks at the same time: a track that documents the grave historical responsibility of countries and governments for the virus continuing to ravage the bodies of children, especially if most of these people are poor and come from the “others”, i.e. countries of the Global South, and are portrayed as somehow expendable.
And another track is to work hard, exploiting all arguments, including the interests of these countries and governments themselves and their better-protected citizens, to ensure the complete eradication of this virus, once and for all.
After we succeed in this, we can then all focus on using the documentation gathered to expose those involved, redress the damage, demand compensation and ensure that this grave injustice is never again repeated.
