Understanding the Havana Syndrome

The mysterious Havana Syndrome has entered the news again. Reports of a US official in CIA Director William Burns’s team that visited India in the first week of September complaining of the syndrome’s symptoms has brought it back into focus. Last month, it peeped out of the surface when US Vice President Kamala Harris’s planned visit to Vietnam got delayed when several American officials reported symptoms similar to those first reported by 19 officials attached to the US embassy in Havana, Cuba, in 2016—which explains the source of its name.

The Havana Syndrome presents symptoms that include difficulties in remembering things, severe disorientation, trouble in focussing eyes, and an inability to walk or sleep. It is known to make the afflicted individual extremely sensitive to sound and suffer pain along with a built-up pressure inside the skull, tinnitus and concussion-like symptoms. Unfortunately, experts have no clue about its causes. Is it a virus? Is it a microbe that is not yet known? Or is it a result of a man-made weapon, biological or otherwise? Lack of answers has fuelled US suspicions of Chinese or Russian operatives involved in targeting American diplomats and spies. Theories are flying high and fast—including a panel of the US National Academy of Sciences pointing to a feasible theory of a directed pulse radio frequency energy being used to target the US officials’ brains.

Why is the target exclusively US officials in every case known so far? If it is a hitherto-unknown microbe, what makes only these Americans susceptible to it? And if it is indeed a man-made weapon created by either the Chinese or the Russians to target spies and diplomats from “enemy countries”, are the US officials being used as guinea pigs only for it to be used on others in the future? The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did investigate the Cuban incident in 2017. The final report, however, remains marked for “official use only”. If the US is indeed serious about it, the probe data should be shared for the benefit of all. There cannot be scope for speculation and suspicion in an already pandemic-rattled world.