Pakistan's Polio Crisis - Behind Times

The fight against polio was always going to be a formidable one; that much was common knowledge before the recent drive began. The state, the departments and the personnel involved were all aware of the inherent risk and undertook their work knowing that some sacrifices needed to be made. Yet, the fact that you are beset by occupational hazards should not mean one should resign themselves to them, which is exactly what the police department in Karachi is doing. On Monday, a policeman was gunned down Nazimabad, Karachi, while escorting a polio team. The incident itself would have been unremarkable in Pakistan’s tragic news cycle, had the police official not been a 20 year old trainee tasked to guard a team of two polio workers all by himself, when barely a week ago another policeman was shot in orange town while escorting polio workers.
As the details filter through, the police department’s actions look increasingly questionable. Why was a trainee given a job which perhaps ranks amongst the most dangerous in Pakistan right now? In a duty that envisages tactical progression through urban landscape, requires experience and excellent marksmanship, why was a person chosen who had not even passed the academy? Furthermore, a single policeman is absolutely useless for this job; a single person cannot even guard both ends of a single road, let alone the multiple attack avenues available in an urban environment, such as rooftops, windows and street corners. While the policeman was wearing a bulletproof vest, he lacked basic protective gear such as a helmet; and was therefore shot in the head. The police had deployed multiple polio teams in the area all guarded by a few constables each, when a singular team, comprising of a heavy police contingent would have been safer – slower, yet safer. The superior officer who ordered this deployment not only sent the young constable to his death, but also endangered the lives of the polio workers – who fortunately managed to escape the attackers in this instance.
Such negligent actions by the police department, in the light of recent attacks on polio teams and the militant threat of reprisal is nothing short of criminal and should be pursued accordingly. Police methods seem ill-thought out and behind the times. As the military is flushing out militants from their tribal strongholds, urban metropolises like Karachi are destined to be the new hotbeds of extremism, and to some extent they already are. The Karachi police needs to reorganize, learn urban warfare, utilise modern surveillance technology and establish special militarized police squads. While all this may be in the future, for now, what the severely undermanned Karachi police isn’t short of, is the capacity think and plan contingencies- doing which would have prevented this horrible tragedy.