Lack of security cooperation increases pandemics and disproportionately causes low-income citizens to suffer.

In January 2006, flying birds were the major concern for the chief of the checkpoint at Zakho, a small town located at the Turkey-Iraq border.1 Having served throughout history as a major market and a significant node in the circulation of goods, the town was now being recast as an important fortress in the unveiling global battle against a different form of circulation, that of the H5N1 virus. The virus was a particular form of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), which, the officials declared, could claim the lives of thousands of humans and non-human alike. The H5N1 virus—more commonly known as the avian influenza—was one of the recent examples in the series of “emerging infectious diseases” that the World Health Organization designated in its 2007 Report as a primary threat facing the global community in the 21st century.2 Zakho carried crucial strategic importance in this battle because it was the first time the flu was diagnosed outside the boundaries of East Asia. As stated by a United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization official, the failure of security measures at the border of Turkey would mean “a constant reservoir of the disease would lie at the edge of Europe.”3 Fear of penetration by foreign bodies such as illegal immigrants was supplemented by the fear of contagion by unruly flying birds at the borders of Fortress Europe. Invoking memories of the 1918 pandemic, the international community was called to arms; the United Nations searched for recruits for “an international culling task force” that would provide “a reliably robust, incorruptible public service to go around killing chickens.”4 The global call to cull translated into a full-scale mobilization in Turkey and the neighboring countries. With dizzying speed, millions of chickens were culled over the course of a few weeks regardless of their being infected or not. The number of animals killed to render life more resilient reached 2.5 million between 2006 and 2008.5 For many, the death of the birds meant a loss of food and income in a country where 28 percent of the rural population (33 percent of the country) raised poultry for self-sufficiency purposes.6 According to a 2009 report prepared for the Turkish State Planning Institution, the bird flu crisis would act as the main contributing factor to the end of poultry production in family-owned farms,