لراوبر ویب پاڼه لراوبر يو افغان – تازه خبرونه
The use of proscribed weapons by superpowers in prosecuting war in Afghanistan has long been a contentious issue with human rights activists and international jurists. Under international convention, it is unlawful to deploy weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in areas with dense civilian populations. Both the United States and the former USSR have been cited for and in serial breach of international law and convention for deploying proscribed weapons. Reports from the front certify that a cornucopia of weapons of mass destruction, are deployed by the ISAF coalition on a daily basis resulting in the massive destruction of civilian habitat and resultant loss of life. Weapons that are banned and yet find daily usage among the ISAF forces include but not limited to: depleted uranium (DU), white phosphorous, pilotless drones, daisy cutters, thermo-baric and cluster-bombs, and unchartered use of anti-personal mines. The indiscriminate use of proscribed weapons and night raids are seen among the Afghan people as a mockery of international law and inhumane. The ISAF force-command led by the United States under the farcical title Operation Enduring Freedom, as and when unleashing their collective armada of the latest killing technology, seem to forget that the Taliban have no air force or navy, and at best are an amorphous, loosely-knit Resistance entity made up of volunteers who view the ISAF presence as an alien occupational force.
A History of Violation: 1979-1989: During the decade-long war in Afghanistan, reports concerning the Soviet Union’s deployment of chemical and bacteriological weapons surfaced frequently. Journalists covering the war, citing Resistance sources, reported the use of proscribed weapons by the Soviets, yet their findings which provided a clear picture of the persistent, efficient and effective use of chemical weapons by the Soviets were largely ignored or discounted by the U.S. and other Western governments as lacking in verifiable evidence. In April 1979, Soviet helicopters fired rockets filled with toxic smoke and non-lethal agents to suppress the uprising in Herat. Beginning 1980, the Soviets tested and deployed in Afghanistan at least two generations of chemical and bacteriological weapons, including all the previously known lethal agents in the Soviet arsenal as well as a family of previously unknown lethal “super nerve agents” which have become the backbone of the Russian chemical arsenal. This report, corroborated by a former Chief of the Chemical Department of the 99th Rocket Regiment of the DRA Army, Brigadier General Watay, prior to his defection to the Resistance, can be found in the following publication: (Chemical Warfare, E.M. Spiers, 1986, pp. 105-112).
Historical accounts of Soviet use of chemical and bacteriological weapons in warfare were reported initially during their bloody campaign against the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asian regions:
At the end of the 1920s, during the suppression of the rising in the Caucasus, chemical shells were used to destroy the defenders and the civilian populations of the mountain villages. In the 1930s, during the actions against the Basmachi tribesman in Central Asia, Soviet aircraft sprayed ypyrite…mustard gas. (Soviet Military Archives).
The reluctance of Western governments to address and confront the Russians over the issue of the deployment of proscribed weapons, as codified under international law, is disconcerting. When the March 1988 prison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja by Saddam Hussein killed an estimated 5,000 civilians, outrage, condemnation, and a demand for sanctions was the immediate response from the international community. It would seem reasonable to assume, therefore, that a double-standard exists for the dispensation of concern and justice…one for the powerful nations and another for the less powerful.
At the conclusion of Najibullah’s decisive battle for Khost in April of 1991, Afghan journalist Sayed Noorulahq Husseini, and myself, were searching through a former Soviet garrison supply center at Matun Baba, and thereby discovering nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) warfare protective equipment. This equipment was unique to Soviet and DRA chemical warfare forces personnel to protect themselves in the event of contamination while engaged in the deployment of these proscribed chemical and bacteriological weapons. An interview conducted personally with a Dr. Azim (who described symptoms and methodology of deployment) while reporting from Khost, provided a trained eyewitness to Soviet use of illegal weapons in Afghanistan. (See: Soldier of Fortune Magazine, ‘Khost Busters’, Bruce G. Richardson, 1991, p.63). This information, supported by photographs of the Soviet MSP-18 decontamination kit was reported to the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, as well as Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) upon my return to the United States. At the time, I was informed by an official staff member that ‘due to the fact you do not have documentary evidence to substantiate your allegations, the information is of little use to this Committee,’ notwithstanding the fact that I had provided photographic evidence (Soviet MSP-18 Decontamination kit) to corroborate my allegations. (See: Afghanistan, a Search for Truth, Bruce G. Richardson, 2009, pp. 195-198).
An excerpt from a recently published book entitled Biohazard, written by a former Soviet scientist engaged in biological weapons design and production, further substantiates charges of Soviet usage of illegal weapons in Afghanistan: (See: Biohazard, Ken Alibeck, 1999, pp. 268-269).
Author Ken Alibeck: The late-Twentieth Century specter of total war has been replaced by the growth of ethnic, nationalist, and religious conflicts. Biological weapons can play an important part in such conflicts, often compensating for the weakness or ineffectiveness of conventional forces. Several months before Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 I was told by a senior officer in the Fifteenth Directorate that the Soviet Union used biological weapons during its protracted struggle with the Mujahideen. He said that at least one attack with glanders (Pseudomonas mallei) took place between 1982 and 1984, and there have been others. The attack, he claimed, was launched by ILyushin-28 aircraft based at military airfields in Southern Russia. When I mentioned this conversation during one of my de-briefing sessions, an American (CIA) intelligence official in the room was visibly startled. She told me ‘there had been periodic reports of disease outbreaks among guerrilla groups in Afghanistan during the war, and no one had come up with an explanation.’
I grew more convinced after reading an April 1998 article in ‘Top Secret’ that disclosed that the army facility in Sverdlovsk had manufactured ‘anti-machinery’ biological weapons in the 1980s for use in Afghanistan. I knew of no projects involving such agents when I became deputy director of Biopreparit, but one of the bacterial strains investigated in the 1970s for its corrosive properties came from a bacterial genus known as Pseudomonas.
Although it has been subsequently given an alternative, scientific name, glanders was known at the time as Pseudomonas mallei.
The pathogen can be lethal to humans, but we considered it an excellent battlefield weapon. Sprayed from a single airplane flying over enemy lines, it could immobilize an entire division or incapacitate guerrilla forces hiding in rugged terrain otherwise inaccessible to regular army troops, precisely the kind of terrain our soldiers faced in Afghanistan.
The author, Ken Alibeck, graduated from the military faculty of the Tomsk Medical Institute, where he majored in infectious diseases and epidemiology. He holds a PhD in microbiology for research and development of plague and tularemia biological weapons and a Doctorate of Science in biotechnology for developing the technology to manufacture anthrax on an industrial scale. He joined Biopreparit in 1973 and was its first deputy chief from 1988 to 1992. He has briefed U.S. Military intelligence on biological weapons. Since his defection to the U.S., the author has been engaged in biodefense.
The method of deploying pathogens, as described by the author, remains identical to that which had been described to me by Dr. Azim during our interview at Khost in 1991. (Afghanistan, a Search for Truth, Bruce G. Richardson, 2009, p.198).
Politically expedient sloganeering such as Operation Enduring Freedom aside, most would agree that there is no such ‘Enduring Freedom’ for the Afghan people and find it unfathomable, curiously evasive if not disingenuous, that the U.S. intelligence official was “startled” by the disclosure during the author’s debriefing that the Soviets used pathogens in Afghanistan, especially in light of the fact that many journalists had repeatedly warned the government to include my own personal report to the U.S. Committee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Congress of such deployment. As evidence mounts over the use of proscribed weapons in Afghanistan, the two nations most often cited in serial violation of numerous treaties (Hague and Geneva, etc.) and conventions and historical precedent… are the United States and Russia.
