The US Congress and the Obama administration are incensed by the 33-year prison term handed to Dr. Shakil Afridi accused by Pakistan of spying for the CIA. In its usual response, the lawmakers in Washington have voted to cut aid to Pakistan for the umpteenth time and some in Congress are proposing to honor Afridi as a hero for his help in killing Osama bin Laden. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has also chimed in and demanded Afridi's immediate release.
As Washington rises to defend Dr. Afridi, no mention is being made of the potential damage his actions have inflicted on Pakistan's most vulnerable children. The CIA-inspired fake vaccination scheme in Abbottabad to collect bin Laden family's DNA samples has reinforced the fears and doubts in the minds of the parents of the children who really need to be vaccinated. It has also raised suspicions against charities such as Save the Children Fund with which Dr. Afridi claimed affiliation. This misguided effort by Afridi and the CIA has put at risk the heath and well-being of millions of young lives in Pakistan and other developing nations where polio and other similar diseases still persist. Here's how a piece by Maryn McKenna published in Wired magazine describes the outrage:
"I felt, and still feel, that the maneuver which was belatedly acknowledged by the CIA was a cynical attempt to hijack the credibility that public health workers have built up over decades with local populations. I especially felt it endangered the status of the fraught polio-eradication campaign, which over the past decade has been challenged in majority-Muslim areas in Africa and South Asia over beliefs that polio vaccination is actually a covert campaign to harm Muslim children an accusation that seems fantastic, but begins to make sense when you realize some of those areas have perfectly good reasons to distrust vaccination campaigns."
Even without the outrageous scheme by Afridi conducted in collusion with the CIA, the US demands are still hypocritical if one looks at the prison sentences handed out by US courts to Israeli Mossad agent Jonathan Pollard and Pakistani ISI agent Ghulam Nani Fai in the United States. Both are US citizens.
Some argue that Pakistan should bear the responsibility for CIA's actions because of the country's failure to find bin Laden. While I agree that Pakistan failed badly in capturing bin Laden, there is no evidence to support the assertion that Pakistani government was deliberately hiding bin Laden.
As to the failure to find a most wanted fugitive, one must not forget that it took the FBI 16 years to find crime boss Whitey Bulger. On December 23, 1994, after being tipped off by his former FBI handler about a pending indictment under the RICO Act, Bulger fled Boston and went into hiding. For sixteen years, he remained at large in the United States. For twelve of those years, Bulger was prominently listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. On June 22, 2011, Bulger was arrested outside an apartment in Santa Monica, California.
Shuja Nawaz, a scholar with the Atlantic Council in Washington, put it well when he told Voice of America that Pakistanis "see it as the subversion of a Pakistani citizen and his willing participation in an act that was to support the United States intelligence operations inside Pakistan."
Haq's Musings: American Hypocrisy on Dr. Afridi's Sentence
As Washington rises to defend Dr. Afridi, no mention is being made of the potential damage his actions have inflicted on Pakistan's most vulnerable children. The CIA-inspired fake vaccination scheme in Abbottabad to collect bin Laden family's DNA samples has reinforced the fears and doubts in the minds of the parents of the children who really need to be vaccinated. It has also raised suspicions against charities such as Save the Children Fund with which Dr. Afridi claimed affiliation. This misguided effort by Afridi and the CIA has put at risk the heath and well-being of millions of young lives in Pakistan and other developing nations where polio and other similar diseases still persist. Here's how a piece by Maryn McKenna published in Wired magazine describes the outrage:
"I felt, and still feel, that the maneuver which was belatedly acknowledged by the CIA was a cynical attempt to hijack the credibility that public health workers have built up over decades with local populations. I especially felt it endangered the status of the fraught polio-eradication campaign, which over the past decade has been challenged in majority-Muslim areas in Africa and South Asia over beliefs that polio vaccination is actually a covert campaign to harm Muslim children an accusation that seems fantastic, but begins to make sense when you realize some of those areas have perfectly good reasons to distrust vaccination campaigns."
Even without the outrageous scheme by Afridi conducted in collusion with the CIA, the US demands are still hypocritical if one looks at the prison sentences handed out by US courts to Israeli Mossad agent Jonathan Pollard and Pakistani ISI agent Ghulam Nani Fai in the United States. Both are US citizens.
Some argue that Pakistan should bear the responsibility for CIA's actions because of the country's failure to find bin Laden. While I agree that Pakistan failed badly in capturing bin Laden, there is no evidence to support the assertion that Pakistani government was deliberately hiding bin Laden.
As to the failure to find a most wanted fugitive, one must not forget that it took the FBI 16 years to find crime boss Whitey Bulger. On December 23, 1994, after being tipped off by his former FBI handler about a pending indictment under the RICO Act, Bulger fled Boston and went into hiding. For sixteen years, he remained at large in the United States. For twelve of those years, Bulger was prominently listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. On June 22, 2011, Bulger was arrested outside an apartment in Santa Monica, California.
Shuja Nawaz, a scholar with the Atlantic Council in Washington, put it well when he told Voice of America that Pakistanis "see it as the subversion of a Pakistani citizen and his willing participation in an act that was to support the United States intelligence operations inside Pakistan."
Haq's Musings: American Hypocrisy on Dr. Afridi's Sentence
