Cuba: a virulent accuser

by Felicity Arbuthnot

Cuba has been added to US President George Bush's tragi-comical war on 
terrorism, following accusations that the tiny Caribbean island is 
developing biological weapons. But it is far more likely that this 
particular boot is on the giant US foot, not the miniscule Cuban one.

Cuba has long suffered inexplicable non-indigenous diseases to crops, 
livestock and population in which the US is almost certainly implicated.

Here are just some of the infestations that Cuba has suffered:

1968 — A foreign specialist working for an international agency was 
expelled, having confirmed that he introduced a virus affecting the coffee 
crops.

1979 — An outbreak of African swine fever resulted in the entire pig 
population being slaughtered.

Cuba claimed that the container containing the virus came from Fort 
Gullick, a US base in the Panama Canal Zone, and the testimony of those 
involved subsequently confirmed Cuba's statement.

1981 — After dengue fever broke out, it was discovered that the entire 
personnel at the Guantanamo naval base had been vaccinated against it just 
before the outbreak.

It was the same strain that broke out in New Guinea in 1924 and had never 
been known anywhere else since.

Of 350,000 people affected, 158 died.

Eduardo Arocena, who was an activist for a Cuban émigré group in 
Miami, explained in court that he had undertaken "supervised action.... To 
carry some germs and introduce them into Cuba — unfortunately, the results 
were not quite what we had expected".

1990 — Black sigatoka infected banana plantations throughout the island. 
Never previously known, the disease appeared just as Cuba was undertaking a 
major export drive of bananas.

1991 — The bee disease acariasis was discovered just as that year's 
exports of honey were about to begin.

1996 — Varroasis, another bee disease never known before in Cuba and 
regarded as the most serious type of all, broke out.

1995 — Four small test tubes in a camera bag among the luggage of a 
visiting US scientist were found to contain citrus tristeze virus, which is 
capable of wreaking havoc on Cuba's substantial orange stock.

1996 — A pest resistant to pesticides attacked virtually all cultivated 
plants and shrubs, spreading at incredible speed.

The pest, known as thrips palmi Karney, was previously unknown on the 
island.

1997 — Another pest was found that had been unknown in Cuba and throughout 
the whole of Latin America. It devours rice and produces a syndrome known 
as rice sterility.

This outbreak was linked to a US-registered plane which was spotted 
releasing liquid over a remote corner of the island and which had not 
checked in with Cuban air traffic control.

It was spotted by Cuban Airlines captain Erian Romero Llush, who gave 
evidence to the UN Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva.

He had been a fumigation pilot for 11 years and had undergone a four-year 
course at the School of Fumigation, so he had special knowledge of crop 
spraying and the types of aircraft used. His suspicions were later 
confirmed by laboratory results.

Similarly suspicious germ outbreaks have taken part in Iraq.

Approximately 70 per cent of the country's livestock was wiped out in the 
Gulf War.

However, as cattle populations began to increase in 1996, Iraq was hit by 
an epidemic screwworm infestation.

This virulent microbe attacks only warm-blooded animals, including humans, 
and is capable of eating away a cow in three days.

It spread to 15 of Iraq's 18 governmental regions in days. Indigenous to 
the US, it was previously unknown I Iraq.

Iraq accused the weapons inspectors of spreading the disease, but the 
charge was heatedly denied.

Two years ago, there was rare good news in the country. The chicken 
population had recovered to such an extent that, in a country where rampant 
inflation, the unheard of happened — the price of chicken and eggs dropped 
by about a third.

Still out of reach of most, it nevertheless brought a flickering glimmer of 
hope.

Within two weeks, Newcastle disease — another virulent, non-indigenous 
infection — decimated the majority of the chicken stock.

Ironically, however, the biological weapons sold to Iraq — and 
subsequently destroyed by the weapons inspectors at Iraq's expense — were 
sold to Iraq by the US.

Between 1985 and 1989, according to a 1994 US Senate report, US companies 
licenced by the US Department of Commerce sold a brew of some of the most 
toxic substances on Earth to Iraq.

They included 70 shipments of anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic 
agents from the delightfully named American Type Culture Collection Company 
of Maryland and Virginia.

Other agents exported with impunity were histoplasma capsulatum — which 
attacks the lungs, brain, heart and spinal cord — brucella melintentus — 
a major organ-damaging bacteria — and the e-coli bacteria.

The Senate report concluded: "It was later learned that these micro-
organisms, exported by the United States, were identical to those the 
United Nations inspectors found and removed". Perhaps Iraq should ask for 
its money back.

Perhaps a start to a more realistic "War on terrorism" would be for the US 
to invite the UN weapons inspectors to destroy its own sticks and to desist 
from both selling and spreading them round the globe.

Since the lucrative Iraq market has long dried up, it begs the question — 
who is the US selling to now?

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Morning Star, May 2002, Britain's daily Socialist newspaper.