China has inked a top-secret three-year agreement with Pakistan to develop biological weapon warfare projects. These would include several research projects related to the deadly anthrax bacteria which will be secretly used against India from Pakistan or other neighbouring countries. 

Anthrax is a rare but serious illness caused by the Bacillus Anthracis bacterium which China’s Wuhan’s Institute of Virology (WIV) has already isolated. The WIV has already set up operations in Pakistan where it will collaborate with Pakistan’s Defence Science and Technology Organization (DSTO) operated by the Pakistan Army and ISI. 

The media have already reported this news after The Klaxon cited multiple intelligence sources. 

But what has not been reported is that this secret China-Pakistan pact will not be limited to spreading anthrax among the cattle along with India’s border areas but will also isolate and develop other fatal virus and bacterial strains which can be used with deadly effect against arch-enemy India and its allies in the West without China being accused of violating the United Nation’s Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) which came into effect on March 26, 1975. Hence, by using Pakistani soil to carry out such diabolical research, China has obviated any risk of another pandemic which can be traced to its own soil such as the genome of the coronavirus which was earlier nicknamed as the “Wuhan pneumonia” because of its probable origin in that Chinese city. 

Although Pakistan’s military facility at DESTO is being used, the entire project is funded by China. It is formally titled: Collaboration for Emerging Infectious Diseases and Studies on Biological Control of Vector Transmitting Diseases. 

DESTO has engaged in dual-use research projects related to anthrax under a covert biological weapons program, according to western intelligence agencies cited by earlier news reports without naming them. 

So, China has cocked a snook at the entire world by first arming Pakistan and North Korea with nuclear weapons while successive Indian Prime Ministers appeased China by recognising its illegal occupation of Tibet which was used to incorporate Aksai China, and now the Galwan valley and Pangong Tso lake into Chinese territory. Biological weapons developed in Pakistan will ensure India will be weakened for further claims on Indian territory while this country is deluded into thinking this Communist giant has withdrawn from our territory. 

The covert China-Pakistan project has conducted successful soil-sampling tests to isolate Bacillus Yhuriengiensis which has a striking similarity to Bacillus Anthracis - commonly known as anthrax which will first be used to infect cattle and then humans who come into contact with them. 

The Wuhan lab was providing extensive training to Pakistani scientists to ensure the latter developed their own virus database, which can never be traced to China. This secret project was detected from the supervision if civilian universities or government health departments in Pakistan and was structured to allow “unspecified” future operations between the two countries without letting on what the real aim of the project is all about. 

Ironically, the investigative journalist who “broke” this news last week holds a commerce degree and did not explicate on the details of the secret China-Pak pact. Anthony Klan of “The Klaxon” said no Pakistani civilians were allowed into DESTO which will arm the Pakistani Army with several biological pathogens to wreak havoc on India without declaring a war. Apparently, India’s external intelligence agency RAW has no details about the secret pact apart from media reports. 

Laboratories which experiment with such dangerous pathogens have certain levels of security to obviate the possibility of these dangerous pathogens leaking outside and devastating the local populace - which is what may have occurred at Wuhan in China, even though so-called experts discount the point that the corona genome was manufactured in Wuhan. 

And so, China which spends over US$ 300 billion or over 12 per cent of its budget on its armed forces, has over 700 million of its people who are avowed atheists. They are indoctrinated by the Communist Party of China (CCP) (which was founded on July 23, 1921) from kindergarten that there is no God and that it is science and scientists like Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton who should be emulated. Four-year-old infants are taught CCP ideologies and encouraged not to join any religion.  

The Chinese military budget has risen from US$ 131 billion in 2014 to US$ 146 billion in 2016 which was 11 per cent of their budget four years ago -- more than triple that of India on its armed forces. 

Despite declaring there is freedom of religion in China, the converse is true with churches, temples or mosques being razed in purges against religious people like the Uyghur Muslims. Reportedly, thousands of Uyghur Muslims are sent to be brainwashed or indoctrinated into atheistic communists in camps spread across China. 

A vital prerequisite for membership of China's CCP is avowed atheism and unflinching loyalty to the nation. The single-party CCP is arguably either the largest or second-largest political party in the world with only India's BJP posing as a rival for membership. Of course, the ideologies of the BJP and the CCP are diametrically opposite. 

The point of this background is that China's action makes it apparent that it has very little respect for human life ever since the People's Republic of China was formed in 1949 while it's official newspaper Global Times claims India knows very well it cannot afford a war with China. 

That may be far from the truth given the bravado of our jawans and India's purchase of the 36 Rafale jets and the latest supersonic jets from the USA, so it does not have to rely solely on its old and trusted arms supplier -- Russia. 

Undaunted by the joint Indo-US-Japan-Australia Malabar joint naval exercises to countenance Chinese belligerence in the Indian Ocean where it has bases and also the South China Sea, China will use bio-weapons first against India from Pakistani soil in an undeclared war. 

Pakistan set up DESTO in 1963 to pre-empt India taking it by surprise in technology. Located at Chaklala cantonment in Punjab, it's Director-General is a two-star general of the Pakistani Army. DESTO's clandestine projects are used mainly against its arch-foe, India. This is why China has signed its secret pact to use DESTO facilities and its army scientists to develop its own database of deadly pathogens to be used primarily against India and its Western allies including its Malabar partners of USA, Japan and Australia apart from contiguous countries. 

The worrying aspect is that DESTO does not have the Security Level-4 which the secretive Wuhan Institute of Virology claimed to possess. Despite the highest level of security, the deadly coronavirus is believed to have escaped from its confines to devastate the world. There is no predicting what diabolical damage this China-Pakistan secret agreement may cause to the world as a whole which seems to be indifferent to this development. 

So, if the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) which was set up in 2015 “accidentally” allowed the coronavirus to emerge from its P-4 lab to jump from bats to pangolins and humans, before devastating the entire world, it clearly shows China’s little respect for human life. This is in line with its avowed official atheism which teaches religion subverts science, nationalism and as a form of superstition that endangers Marxism-Leninism which contributed to the break-up of the Soviet Union. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) cannot be believed when it exonerated the WIV for unleashing the coronavirus. The USA President Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo have not ordered the Chinese consulate in Houston to shut without concrete evidence of its spying and subterfuge. 

And that is what the WIV will do when it uses DESTO to develop and unleash deadly pathogens on India while both WHO and the rest of the world look on unconcerned. China has laid claim to vast swathes of Bhutanese territory apart from the South China Sea through which one-third of world shipping passes. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have to align with Taiwan, Japan, the USA and Australia to countenance a wily and belligerent China. 

So, it is not enough to sip coconut water with Xi Jinping at Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu as Modi did in 2019. Or for Modi to sit with Jinping on a swing when he (Jinping) wants to be king of Asia and perhaps the world. So, we have to change our foreign policy fast and quick if we want to ensure the stopping of another disaster. For that, India will have to outwit both China and Pakistan. 

Latest news indicates that Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has succumbed to Xi Jinping’s aim of taking control of Pakistan’s central economic planning via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to take control of the Islamic State and implement its nefarious secret pact through DESTO. Imran Khan has succumbed to Chinese pressure to sign secret agreements to allow the CCP to literally take control of Pakistan’s sinking economy and through that route further incite anti-India passions. 

Pakistan’s former strongman Pervez Musharaf was able to resist Chinese pressure. But an article published by Ali Salman Andani in Asia Times states with this latest secret pact, China will now be able to take near-absolute control of Pakistan’s power generation, and main infrastructure projects which spells big trouble for India as the Chinese plan to implement a deadly pathogens database for use against India and its allies will get an impetus. 

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author’s. 

  (Dr Olav Albuquerque is a senior journalist-cum-lawyer of the Bombay High Court. He holds MSc., LLM and PhD in Law.)