Threatened polio immunisation campaign

EDITORIAL: Daily Times

The targeted killing of four women polio vaccinators in Karachi and one woman near Peshawar has rendered the polio immunisation campaign a high-risk enterprise. Two male immunisers were also wounded in the attacks in Karachi. A day earlier, a worker with the local government-World Health Organisation (WHO) programme was killed in the city. Earlier still, a paramedic was killed and a Ghanaian doctor associated with WHO was wounded along with his driver in Karachi. The current attacks took place in Pashtun-dominated areas in Karachi, indicating the probable hands behind the dastardly act. Although the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan governments expressed their commitment to continue the campaign, WHO has announced the suspension of the campaign. Condemnations have come from the US and the UN and throughout Pakistan. Karachi and some cities of interior Sindh saw protests against the attacks. The security forces have launched an operation in Karachi against suspects and reportedly killed two people and seized weapons. Meanwhile reports while writing these lines say attacks against women immunisers are continuing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. That underlines the importance of proper security arrangements for immunisation workers if the suspension by WHO and continuation of the critical campaign are to be saved from the savage clutches of the dark and backward looking forces that are holding our society hostage to their antediluvian agenda. The Taliban have been resisting the polio immunisation campaign for years. The programme was launched in Pakistan, one of only three countries in the world still polio-endemic, in 1994 with WHO’s help. It had relatively smooth sailing until 2005, when Mullah Radio began fulminating against it on his illegal FM channel. His example spread to other Taliban-run illegal FM stations, all of them initially painting the immunisation campaign as a conspiracy to make Muslims infertile and thereby reduce their population. New arguments were mustered against the polio immunisation campaign over the years, but they reached the peak of hostility after the Osama bin Laden raid. Now the Taliban have managed to declare a ban in Waziristan, which has put 240,000 children in the tribal areas at risk. The irrationality of the Taliban mindset is nowhere better on display than in this motivated offensive against a healthcare programme that will ensure our children are safe from the crippling disease. The polio virus is threatening to carry over borders into neighbouring countries and perhaps further abroad, which could bring in health restrictions against Pakistani citizens seeking to travel internationally. The targets selected, women and men associated with the work and unable to defend themselves against such attacks, prove that the Taliban, apart from attacking military facilities like the attack on the Pakistan Air Force base in Peshawar following earlier assaults against the Mehran base in Karachi and the Kamra air base, are now also focusing on soft targets. Apparently the authorities had received prior warnings of possible attacks against the polio immunisation teams, but no security was provided to them. This is one more failure of the security authorities, for which Interior Minister Rehman Malik received more than his fair share of flak in the National Assembly from even his own party MNAs. Pakistan will not be able to ensure a better future for its people or its children unless the whole country is united and mobilised in support of the security forces’ efforts against the terrorists. A tiny minority of fanatical extremists and their tacit or explicit supporters in society and sections of the media have managed to so muddy the waters regarding whether or not this war is ours, etc, that the national will required to combat the menace is conspicuous by its absence, the brave souls who still stand up against the fanatics and terrorists notwithstanding. The struggle against the terrorists is for the very soul of Pakistan. Let it not be said with hindsight that we were found lacking.