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elusive. Testimony from Ken Alibek, a senior figure in the USSR's former
antipersonnel program, has yielded some information on antianimal ac-
tivities, but it has proved difficult to corroborate. According to Alibek,
“anti-agricultural weapons were generally produced by more primitive
method...Foranti-livestock weapons, cultivation generally involved
live-animal techniques.” 15
Alibek's knowledge of this program was probably limited, as it is be-
lieved to have been run by the Ministry of Agriculture. Codenamed Ecol-
ogy, it was allegedly composed of three sections, the first developing
anticrop BW (see Chapter 10), the second focusing on antianimal BW,
and the last concentrating on combined antipersonnel and antianimal
agents. Alibek believed it to be “one of the most successful programs.”
Ecology might have utilized the same mechanisms for agent and tech-
nology acquisitions, funding, and standard operating procedures as the
antipersonnel programs in the Soviet Union. 16
A number of Soviet facilities, which appear to have served as R&D cen-
ters, test sites, or production centers, have been linked to antianimal ac-
tivities. There appear to have been at least two research centers. The first,
the Scientific Research Agricultural Institute (NISKhI), was established in
1958 in the settlement of Gvardeyskiy, outside the city of Otar, about 180
kilometers from Almaty, in Kazakhstan. The second was the Scientific
Research Institute for Animal Protection in Vladimir. It has been asserted
that this facility “researched and developed antilivestock weapons: Afri-
can swine fever, FMD, Rinderpest, etc.” 17
A production facility has also been connected to this program. The ani-
mal vaccine production facility at Pokrov has been described by its former
director as “one of the biggest virus mills in the Soviet Union,” and may
have been capable of producing tens of tons of viral agents per year. 18
Two other facilities have been identified as test sites. Alibek has stated
that he believed antianimal BW were tested at a scientific institute and
test site at the Otar railway station in Kazakhstan; and researchers at the
Monterey Institute of International Studies have asserted that the agents
produced at NISKhI were tested at the State Research Center of Virology
and Biotechnology (Vector), near Novosibirsk, in Siberia.
There have been accusations that BW derived from this program were
used sometime between 1982 and 1984 to target the horses of the muja-
hideen in Afghanistan. Although both the occurrence and details of these
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