JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: Pakistani TV channels are showing Shahid Afridi asking viewers in Urdu and Pashtu whether they would select crutches or a bat for their children. In fact, this message is for hundreds of thousands of Pakistani Pashtuns and Afghan refugees living in the tribal areas and elsewhere, who are reluctant, or have refused to permit vaccination of their children against the polio virus. It’s estimated that over 250,000 children in Fata alone will not receive polio vaccinations this year. The Taliban are on the offensive and seem to have convinced a large number of the tribals that the polio vaccine is being administrated at the behest of the West and that it will end up sterilising their children.
To counter this false propaganda, the UN has selected Shahid Afridi, himself a Pashtun from Khyber Agency, as ‘Polio Champion’. How far Afridi is able to convince the people of the region that they need to vaccinate their children against polio remains to be seen. However, things appear to be more difficult this year as some of the tribal commanders who generally don’t pick a fight with the Pakistani military, such as Mullah Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, have also banned the vaccination in the areas under their control. They have linked allowing the polio vaccination campaign with an end to drone attacks.
I wish someone would tell these commanders that in the absence of polio vaccination, there would be no need for drone attacks! They are intentionally risking the lives of thousands of their innocent children, and to what end?
Unfortunately, we seem to have so much hatred for the West that we take actions that end up harming our very own children. No wonder Pakistan is one of a handful of countries in the world where polio is becoming endemic again. Apart from Pakistan, polio vaccination campaigns have suffered in Afghanistan and Nigeria, and there too self-appointed religious reformers (in the case of Afghanistan, it’s the Taliban and in Nigeria, it’s Boko Haram) have stopped the vaccination.
It’s a failure on the part of government, civil society, religious scholars and media who have fallen behind in this fight against ignorance and darkness.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, July 18th, 2012.
