With the Russia-Ukraine conflict showing no signs of a peace agreement anytime soon, the world is watching on how Ukraine will respond to the proposal of the World Health Organization to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country’s public health laboratories to prevent “any potential spills” that would spread disease among the population.
While biological laboratories such as these are used to mitigate the threats of dangerous diseases affecting both animals and humans, Moscow has always insisted that these biolabs do more than legitimate research.
Recently, Russia called the meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council to reassert through its envoy Vassily Nebenzia that Ukraine ran biological weapons laboratories with U.S. Defense Department support.
Mr. Nebenzia said that Russia had discovered “truly shocking facts” related to what he said were at least 30 Ukrainian laboratories working on diseases including anthrax, cholera and “the plague,” with funding and oversight by the U.S. military.
He said the “reckless” activity included research related to diseases born by birds, lice and fleas. “We call on you to think about a very real biological danger to the people in European countries which can result from an uncontrolled spread of bio-agents from Ukraine,” he said.
While his claim has been strongly denied by the United States, claiming that Moscow is merely using this as a pretext to use biological weapons in what it calls a ‘special military operation’, what has not been denied is the fact that Ukraine has five biological research centers that are focused on disease prevention and treatment.
Additionally, several of these biolabs had received support from the United States, European Union and the WHO, and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (US DTRA) has been undertaking containment and destruction of pathogens and biochemical agents in former Soviet republics.
While the world can merely dismiss all of these claims as Russian propaganda in prosecuting its conflict in Ukraine, what gives us pause is the involvement of the US DTRA in all of these supposedly civilian research activities.
PH biolabs
In the Philippines, the DTRA funded a $643,000 animal disease diagnostic laboratory in Tarlac City and turned over to the Department of Agriculture (DA), with the aim of supposedly boosting the country’s biosecurity efforts against transboundary animal diseases.
This project would certainly be a welcome development to reverse the dampening bilateral relations between Washington and Manila, had it not been for the fact that it was funded by the DTRA, which is an agency within the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and is the official Combat Support Agency for countering weapons of mass destruction (WMD; chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high explosives).
In other words, a civilian laboratory was constructed on the dime of a foreign military agency, which has the responsibility of managing and integrating the US DoD chemical and biological defense science and technology programs.
This is concerning, because the task of civilian cooperation on bilateral agricultural concerns lies with the US Department of Agriculture, not with agencies within the US DoD, and allowing US DoD agencies to influence civilian agricultural initiatives gives rise to reasonable suspicions on the true objectives of these projects in the Philippines.
As a military agency, DTRA certainly has specific but undisclosed military objectives related to its biochemicals mandate.
It should be noted that DTRA has participated in Syrian civil war, by developing the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System, which was used to destroy alleged Syrian chemical weapons.
Further, DTRA has been involved in the Iraqi occupation, identifying, collecting and securing radiological material, including almost two tons of low enriched uranium (LEU), several hundred tons of yellowcake (a type of uranium powder), and other radioactive sources.
In other words, the funding agency for the PH DA agricultural labs have clear overt and covert military objectives in the Philippines which may not necessarily align with the civilian, even military objectives of Manila.
Shutdown US-funded biolabs
Given the fresh allegations on biolabs at the level of the UN Security Council, the next President should look at these foreign activities in Philippine soil with greater scrutiny than before, as there exist international partners in the civilian sector which can competently provide the same services to our agricultural sector but without the accompanying military risks.
It should be noted that the USDA, through its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, undertakes similar international cooperation by collaborating with foreign partners to control pests and diseases before they can harm the US, ensuring the effective and efficient management of internationally-based programs, and investing in international capacity-building with foreign counterparts to build technical and regulatory skills that prevent the spread of damaging pests and diseases.
With the 2022 elections around the corner, this is a core foreign policy issue which should the determine the fate of the bilateral relations with Washington under a new President.
The country should certainly not be used as a platform for covert biolabs objectives by foreign powers.