Daily Times

Iraq, Libya, and Syria were ruined by the alleged reports that they had weapons of mass destruction. BBC shouted against the proposed US attack on the Saddam regime and faced the fallout of questioning the rumours-based false report. The Pentagon accepted the report was based on false acquisitions but only after running Iraq. Libya and Syria were punished in the name of the “Arab Spring.” Since then, no regrets have ever been seen on the faces of the fascists. There is no compensation for the victims.

Biological and toxin weapons are either microorganisms like viruses, bacteria, or fungi, or toxic substances produced by living organisms that are produced and released deliberately to cause disease and death in humans, animals, or plants. In the early days of COVID-19 in China, the US alleged the creation of a new virus and spreading it in Wuhan to shut down the Chinese economy.

For years now, Russia has been shouting against the US bio lab in Ukraine with evidence, asking the UN Security Council for a thorough probe of the US bio lab. After a long progressive campaign, the 15-nation UNSC voted down on November 2, 2022, a proposal by Russia to create a commission to investigate Moscow’s claims of a joint US-Ukrainian military biological programme.

Russia has been levelling allegations since March that bio labs in Ukraine, sponsored by the US Defense Department, violated the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) 1972, an international law regulating weaponized toxins.

Both within the US and in many countries of the world, legitimate questions and demands arise to reveal the essence of the Pentagon’s biological research in its entirety. Doubts are being raised even by Washington’s close allies.

Kyiv and Washington have been consistently refuting Moscow’s claims terming them “allegations offered with no verifiable proof of such work”. The UN’s disarmament chief, Izumi Nakamitsu, said in March 2022 that “the global body could not investigate, so the UN was not aware of any biological weapons programme in Ukraine.” So, Russia’s claim was put on the UNSC meeting for voting on forming a commission to probe the “allegations.” And, it was voted out.

Only Russia and China voted in favour of the measure, with the other three veto-wielding permanent members of the Council, the US, the UK and France, voting against it. The 10 elected members of the UNSC preferred to abstain. So, the measure was defeated.

The difference between the two resolutions was the proponent. The US could win on the false report to attack Iraq, Libya, and Syria. But, Russia and China cannot even launch a UN probe against the US-Ukraine joint labs. This has endorsed ‘might is right’ once again. But what would be the ramifications?

Matt Field argued in the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” on January 5, 2023, that “despite risk-management gaps, countries press ahead with new labs that study deadly pathogens.” He has written that a little over 17 years ago a motley crew of dignitaries gathered at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, to celebrate the construction of a state-of-the-art biological laboratory, the Biosafety Level (BSL)-4 lab. On hand that day were Anthony Fauci, then the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and two top Republican officials, former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.”

“We are going to be a one-stop shopping centre for all of the bad things that might happen,” Hutchison said, according to the Galveston County Daily News, “but more importantly, we are going to find the cures.”

Matt Field writes: “Two decades later, it’s difficult to imagine the same kind of gathering-Fauci, who retired last month, rubbing shoulders with leading Republican figures in Congress.” Now, many Republicans say Fauci played a role in improperly funding research on coronaviruses in a lab in China, and the party has made probing the origins of COVID-19 and US-government funded pathogen research in China a centerpiece of its agenda.”

While analysts, Western diplomats, and the Pentagon have suggested that Russia’s “allegations” are “disinformation” about the biological labs and are a “false flag,” RT.com reported early in December 2022, quoting the head of Russia’s Nuclear Biological, and Chemical Defense Troops that “Washington has been moving its bioweapons research out of Ukraine. This comes after the research laboratories’ existence was exposed under the Trump presidency.”

During a series of UN meetings prompted by Russia, the US has accepted to have supported the non-military biological labs in Ukraine since the 1990s, including one called the “Biological Threat Reduction Program” that was created to disassemble the former Soviet Union’s programs, to “reduce legacy threats from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons left in the Soviet Union’s successor states.”

The Joe Biden administration seems furious since Russia pointed out the US bioweapons labs in Ukraine, and the US officials had admitted several facts about the existence of their biological programmes, the participation of the US Ministry of Defense in them, the fact of the transfer abroad of Ukrainian biomaterial, as well as the desire of the Americans not to allow Russia into the controlled laboratories at any cost.

Both within the US and in many countries of the world, legitimate questions and demands arise to reveal the essence of the Pentagon’s biological research in its entirety. Doubts are being raised even by Washington’s close allies. For example, during the voting on the UN Security Council resolution on the international investigation of the US activities in Ukraine, the representative of Norway did not join the countries that voted against this Russian initiative.

The US Department of Defense continues to expand its military-biological projects despite the emerging challenges, and several scientists, experts, NGOs and opposition US politicians voicing concerns about them. According to a new strategy released on October 18, 2022, the Pentagon plans to spend $88 billion on research around the world shortly. It reveals plans to increase the number of commercial contractors to deflect suspicions from the US defence establishment. Such actions, the experts believe, will make it even more difficult to conduct a formal international investigation.

The new US strategy is a sheer violation of the Biological Weapons Convention, to which the US and the 10 abstainers at the UNSC November 2, 2022 meeting are signatories. Thus, it’s their responsibility to vote against the spread of bioweapons instead of remaining silent or opting to abstain. Otherwise, the consequences are obliviously obvious.

The writer is a freelance journalist and broadcaster, and Director Devcom-Pakistan. He can be reached at devcom.pakistan@gmail.com and tweets @EmmayeSyed