Fears that a fake Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) vaccination scheme created to hunt Osama bin Laden has compromised the operations of aid agencies in Pakistan have intensified after it emerged that a major non-government organisation (NGO) was forced to evacuate its staff following warnings about their security, British newspaper The Guardian said in a report on Wednesday.
‘Save the Children’ flew eight expatriate aid workers out of Pakistan in late July after receiving a warning from US officials at the Peshawar consulate. Two senior local staff were moved into five-star hotels in Islamabad.Western and Pakistani officials say there were fears that Save the Children staff could be picked up by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) over alleged links to Dr Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor at the heart of the covert CIA vaccination scheme that helped locate Bin Laden.
Save the Children vehemently denies any links to the CIA scheme, which the Guardian first reported in July, and said it was the victim of a broader crackdown on aid agencies in Pakistan caused by CIA tactics. “Dr Afridi never worked for Save the Children and his alleged activities were not in any way connected with us. We did not have a vaccination programme in Abbottabad,” said a spokeswoman, Ishbel Matheson, in London.
The charity did have a passing connection with Afridi, however, which may explain the ISI scrutiny of its activities. Afridi participated in two health-worker training courses run by Save the Children in 2008 and 2010, Matheson confirmed. Pakistan’s ministry of health nominated him for participation, she added. The training courses were part of a US-funded child health programme in the tribal belt along the Afghan border that Save the Children has been running since 2007.
ISI suspicions were also stoked by Afridi himself. A senior western official said Afridi told his wife he was working for Save the Children when he was in fact running the fake CIA programme. The allegation emerged during interrogation. A senior aid worker corroborated that account, saying Afridi may have mentioned Save the Children “during the early stages of his interrogation.” Save the Children said it was horrified that Afridi had abused its name.
“We are shocked by the allegations that our name has been falsely used in this way. Save the Children’s work in Pakistan is helping the most vulnerable children and their families,” said Matheson. Furious aid workers say the CIA’s reckless use of aid work as a cover by spy agencies has threatened the safety of genuine aid workers and endangered multimillion-pound programmes to help Pakistan’s poor.