Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory
From Free net encyclopedia
The Al-Shifa ("Health") pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan was constructed between 1992 and 1996 with components imported from the United States, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, India, and Thailand. It was the largest pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum and it employed over 300 workers, producing medicine both for human and veterinary use. It supplied around half of the needs for Sudan, as well as exporting medicine. It was an open facility, often shown to foreign visitors [1].
Image:Building destroyed al-shifa.jpg On August 20 1998, factory was destroyed in cruise missile strikes launched by the United States in retaliation for the August 7 truck bomb attacks on its embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya (see: 1998 U.S. embassy bombings). The administration of President Bill Clinton justified the attacks, dubbed Operation Infinite Reach, on the grounds that the al-Shifa plant was involved in producing chemical weapons and had ties with the violent Islamist al Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden, which was believed to be behind the embassy bombings. The August 20 U.S. action also hit al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, to where bin Laden had moved following his May 1996 expulsion from Sudan.
Image:Al-shifa pharma débris.jpg
The key piece of physical evidence linking the al-Shifa facility to production of chemical weapons was the discovery of EMPTA in a soil sample taken from the plant during a CIA clandestine operation. EMPTA, or O-ethyl methylphosphonothioic acid, is classified as a Schedule 2B compound according to the Chemical Weapons Convention and is a VX precursor. Although several theoretical uses for EMPTA were postulated as well as several patented process using EMPTA, such as the manufacture of plastic, no known industrial uses of EMPTA were ever documented nor any products that contained EMPTA. It is, however, not banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention as originally claimed by the US government.
Under-Secretary of State Thomas Pickering claimed to have sufficient evidence against Sudan, including contacts between officials at Al-Shifaa plant and Iraqi chemical weapons experts, with the Iraq chemical weapons program the only one identified with using EMPTA for VX production. The National Democratic Alliance [NDA], a Sudanese opposition in Cairo led by Mubarak Al-Mahdi, also insisted that the plant was producing ingredients for chemical weapons. [2] Former Clinton administration counter terrorism advisor Richard Clarke and former national security advisor Sandy Berger also noted the facilities alleged ties with the former Iraqi government. Clarke also cited Iraq’s $199,000 contract with al Shifa for veterinary medicine under the UN’s Oil for Food Program.
The Khartoum attack was noted for its outstanding precision, as successive missiles all but levelled the al-Shifa works with minimal damage to surrounding areas, although one person was killed and ten wounded in the attack. But the factory is today widely thought to have had no connections with weapons-related production or with bin Laden, and the presence of EMPTA at the facility has never been credibly confirmed. It is also widely believed that some sort of activity involving chemical weapons was taking place in or around Khartoum during the 1990s, but these suspicions revolved around much easier to produce mustard gas and other facilities in the area.
Directly after the strike the Sudanese government demanded that the UN Security council conduct an investigation of the site to determine if it had been used to produce chemical weapons or precursors. Such an investigation was from the start opposed by USA, in a surprising reversal of its policy of inspections in Iraq. Nor has USA ever let an independent laboratory analyze the sample allegedly containing EMPTA. As a result there is no evidence the al-Shifa factory was ever involved in production of chemical weapons, and it is known that many of the initial US allegation were wrong [3].
The factory was a principal source of Sudan's anti-malaria and veterinary drugs. Human Rights Watch reported that as a result of the bombing "many relief efforts have been postponed indefinitely, including a crucial one run by the U.S.-based International Rescue Committee where more than fifty southerners are dying daily", In Summer 2001, Werner Daum (Germany's ambassador to Sudan 1996–2000) wrote an article [4] in which he estimated that the attack "probably led to tens of thousands of deaths" of Sudanese civilians. The regional director of the Near East Foundation, who has direct field experience in the Sudan, published in the Boston Globe another article with the same estimate. By that time, however, the U.S. had changed it's sanctions policy to allow commercial sales of medical products to embargoed destinations, so the Sudanese were allowed to buy pharmaceutical supplies from U.S. companies. [5]
The strikes were criticized by many as being motivated at least in part by a desire to deflect attention from President Clinton's ongoing domestic (in both senses of the word) troubles in the Lewinsky scandal, coming only three days after Clinton admitted to his affair with Lewinsky. Nonetheless, opponents to this 'Wag the Dog' theory raise the fact that concurrent strikes against al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan disprove this theory, given that an additional strike would do nothing to divert attention that the Afghanistan strike might have already achieved.
The Sudanese government wants the plant preserved in its destroyed condition as a reminder of the American attack and also offered an open door to the U.S. for chemical testing at the site, however, the U.S. refused the invitation. Sudan has asked the U.S. for an apology for the attack but the U.S. has refused on the grounds it has not ruled out the possibility the plant had some connection to chemical weapons development. [6]