|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Uzbekistan: Vozrozhdeniya Island Secure, But Concerns Remain By Kerry Boyd While security seems strong now, some experts worry that the Aral Sea’s dropping water table has made access to the former dumping grounds much easier in recent years, leading to long-term concerns over the risk of theft or even of diseased animals escaping to mainland Uzbekistan. Uzbek troops have secured the areas with biological weapons on the Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbek U.S. Ambassador Shavkat Hamrakulov told a meeting at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The island had been left unguarded after the Soviet Union’s collapse, but now the island is so strongly guarded that it is highly unlikely that terrorists could infiltrate the area and extract material, Hamrakulov said. He added, however, that the island could be a source of deadly materials for terrorists in the future if it is not decontaminated. The Soviet Union used Vozrozhdeniya Island as a storage and test site for biological weapons, including strains of anthrax, plague, tularemia and other diseases, perhaps including smallpox, experts believe. Scientists designed the strains with characteristics — including a resistance to antibiotics — to make them particularly dangerous, according to Jonathan Tucker of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Although Soviet authorities doused the anthrax spores with bleach and buried them in metal containers, the spores formed clumps that protected some viable spores inside, Tucker said. Soviet scientists designed the anthrax to be particularly hardy and virulent, and the remaining viable spores could survive in the ground for decades, he said. Soviet authorities originally chose to use the island because it was remotely located — separated from land by the Aral Sea. In the 1960s, however, the Soviet Union began diverting Aral Sea water in a failed attempt to irrigate the surrounding area and produce cotton, Tucker said. Over the last few decades, the sea has shrunk dramatically and the once small and remote island became part of a large emerging landmass that finally connected to the mainland last year, forming a peninsula. Since the island became accessible many people have visited it to search for scrap metal, but it is improbable, Tucker said, that anyone extracted buried anthrax spores because few people know their location, which takes up an area smaller than a football field, he said. Uzbekistan has received no information indicating that terrorists have been to the island, said Alla Karimova, an arms control expert with the Uzbek Foreign Affairs Ministry. U.S.-Uzbek Decontamination Plans Under the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program, Uzbekistan and the United States have signed agreements that include $6 million in U.S. funds to decontaminate the island and dismantle the biological weapons complex on the island (see GSN, Nov. 28, 2001). The current funds may be insufficient to complete the entire project, but they are certainly enough to begin, Hamrakulov said. The work will probably begin this spring, Tucker said, and the decontamination will probably be complete by the end of the year and then authorities would dismantle the larger biological weapons complex. No Information from the Soviet Union When the Soviet Union collapsed and troops eventually left the island, Soviet authorities left no information or documents about the island, Karimova said. Uzbek authorities learned about the existence of biological agents on the island from media reports, she said. Immediately after the discovery of the biological agents, Uzbek authorities tried to find Uzbek citizens who may have worked on Vozrozhdeniya, but no Uzbek citizens were part of the Soviet biological weapons program on the island, Karimova said. Could Animals Spread Disease? Soviet scientists conducted biological warfare experiments on animals that could not escape when the island was surrounded by the Aral Sea, according to Tucker, who expressed concern that animals could now carry virulent diseases to the mainland. There could be “an animal reservoir” of the plague on the island, Tucker said, because the Soviet Union may have conducted research with plague-infected rodents on the island. Hamrakulov also expressed concern about living creatures, such as insects and small birds, spreading diseases from the island. Uzbek Response to Health Risks and Anthrax Attacks in the United States The Uzbek Health Ministry has worked to prevent diseases from reaching Uzbekistan by establishing facilities to prevent the spread of disease, creating an office to increase preparedness for infection and vaccinating populations deemed at high risk against anthrax, Karimova said. After anthrax began circulating through the mail in the United States (see related GSN story, today), Uzbekistan increased its anthrax vaccination program to include a total of 50,000 people per year, including those in administrative jobs, the postal service, the transportation sector and others in high-risk categories, Karimova said. With U.S. help, Uzbekistan also increased safeguards at water facilities, Karimova said.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
