Biological Time Bomb

Military expert Vladislav Shurygin on the threats that U.S. laboratories in former Soviet republics pose to humanity.

Following recent unrest in Kazakhstan during mass riots and a takeover of government facilities, there was an attempt to capture the central reference laboratory at the Masgut Aikimbayev National Scientific Center for Especially Dangerous Infections. Officials denied that this occurred, but experts still have questions, and the story has highlighted a serious problem. The center in Alma-Ata and similar facilities in former Soviet republics are financed by the U.S. military establishment. At the same time, they fall into a “gray” legislative zone. Checking biolaboratories located along Russia’s perimeter with international observers isn’t possible. They don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons or even the World Health Organization. The U.S. has accused China of leaking the COVID-19 virus from a research center in Wuhan. But at the same time, the U.S. has built its own research network for far more dangerous infectious diseases such that, in the case of a leak or accident, there’s no way to prove anything.

The Masgut Aikimbayev Center is a complex of laboratories of the second and third levels of biosafety that, as described on its official site, works on “ensuring biological security of the country, the development and implementation of scientific foundations for monitoring, prevention, [and] risk assessment of human contamination by especially dangerous infections in Kazakhstan to prevent and reduce diseases of humans and animals.” In these laboratories, it’s legally possible to cultivate infectious agents like viruses for the West Nile fever, Equine encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya, plague bacteria and, of course, the infamous SARS.

The construction of the central reference laboratory in Almaty, where the repository for the most dangerous pathogens is located, is completely financed by the U.S. Kazakhstan and the U.S. signed the agreement creating this laboratory on Dec. 13, 1993, right after the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act took effect (named for Republican Sen. Sam Nunn and Democratic Sen. Richard Lugar). In accordance with the official goals of the program’s authors, the U.S. was supposed to provide assistance to former soviet republics for eliminating weapons of mass destruction. This program was best known for financing the disposal of nuclear missile arsenals, but it also extended to chemical and bacteriological weapons of mass destruction.

Essentially, this established American control over nuclear, chemical and biological arsenals in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Nunn-Lugar Act covered Ukraine, Georgia, Tajikistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Kazakhstan. Construction of certain “reference laboratories,” began across Russia’s entire perimeter, which launched extensive biological research into subjects quite different from “monitoring” and “disposing” dangerous biological components.

Today, 12 American biolaboratories are located in Armenia alone. Experts count 25 of these facilities in Ukraine. They started to appear here in 2005, right after the Orange Revolution. Ten reference laboratories are located in the territory of Uzbekistan, the first of which appeared in 2007. In 2013, an American reference laboratory appeared in Azerbaijan, which focuses on the study of pathogenic microorganisms in people and animals. No fewer than three are located in Tajikistan. A similar laboratory was opened in in Kazakhstan in 2016.

In the Kazakhstan village of Gvardeysky in Kordai District in the Jambyl Region (only 1,000 km from the Russian border, approximately 621 miles), the very same Masgut Aikimbayev National Scientific Center for Especially Dangerous Infections is using American financing to build a laboratory for the highest, fourth level of protection (Biosafety Level 4), enabling work with pathogens for which there is no actual protection or where protection is merely theoretical. The laboratory is supposed to be operative in 2025. Experts question why this facility is in Kazakhstan, who will work there and what will they work on. They also want to know why the U.S. is connected to this project.

In contrast, there are only two facilities with a similar level of protection in Russia — in the 48th Central Scientific Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense in Sergiev Posad, and the facility at the Novosibirsk scientific center, Vector.

Everyone clearly remembers how the highest leadership in the United States blamed the COVID-19 pandemic on China in 2020, saying officially that the pandemic could be traced to a leak at biolaboratory in Wuhan. However work on far more dangerous pathogens is occurring in similar American institutions organized around Russian borders, At the same time, security standards that are mandatory in the U.S. don’t apply to the work beyond America’s borders, and these facilities are accountable to neither the public nor international organizations. Should a leak occur in one of these numerous laboratories, no one will hold the bureaucrats in Washington accountable. What’s more, it’s unlikely anyone would find out about any leak.

Currently, biological weapons are essentially the only type of weapon of mass destruction that isn’t regulated at an international level. The greatest powers’ nuclear arsenals were controlled through intergovernmental agreements and mechanisms set up for their operation over a period of decades. Chemical warfare agents fall under the scrutiny of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapon, a very effective group that consistently achieves significant reductions in participating countries’ chemical munitions reserves. But the organization does not deal with pathogenic organisms. Similarly, an institution like the WHO does not have the authority to monitor and supervise American laboratories in the former Soviet Union.

No matter what information about the biolaboratory has been confirmed, there are no guarantees that there won’t be a security breach I such facilities in some former Soviet republic should there be any unrest. The consequences may be unpredictable, but the U.S. won’t bear any responsibility. Indeed, the issue of an international agreements network to regulate work with biological weapons is now especially urgent. Perhaps it’s necessary to create an intergovernmental organization analogous to the OPCW in this field.