If there was a Nobel prize for self-contradiction, the Pakistani Taleban would win it hands down.
On one hand, they tell Islamabad there is no chance of peace in the country “unless Pakistan changed its political and legal system and officially embraced Islamic law.” On the other, they gun down or blow up volunteers carrying out the anti-polio campaign — an utterly anti-Islamic act.
The Holy Qur'an says “… if any one slew a person — unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land — it would be as if he slew all mankind: And if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved all humankind.” Such is the value of a single human life in the system the Taleban are supposedly striving to establish.
Saturday’s killing of 12 members of the security escort for a polio vaccination team in northwest Pakistan reminds us of medieval barbarity — a blast was followed by firing in which rescuers were targeted in the one-hour attack.
Relentless efforts to make tribal people understand that the anti-polio campaign is not a secret plot to sterilize Muslim children have not given desired results. And the CIA must share the blame for the failure. The fake campaign led by Dr. Shakil Afridi to nab Osama bin Laden and the horrific denouement of that drama is still fresh in minds.
People find no reason to believe that the current anti-polio drive, being carried out with the help of NGOs, is not a clandestine operation by US intelligence agencies to make a DNA database of the entire tribal population because most of the wanted elements disappeared in that area after the fall of the Taleban in neighboring Afghanistan.
Perhaps things would have been a lot less awful if the government had not given a long rope to NGOs who are despised generally because of their Western leanings. The heartbreaking part of the gory episode is that ordinary teachers hired by NGOs for the campaign lose their lives.
The CIA must spend the same amount of money and energy on clearing misgivings in people’s minds as it spent on killing Al-Qaeda chief. Washington can’t be a mere spectator after carrying out its surreptitious operation in the dead of the night.
There is no alternative to success for the multibillion dollar vaccination campaign as Pakistan is one of the last three countries in the world where polio remains endemic and the only one of those three where reported cases are increasing. The disease can kill or paralyze within hours.
The abyss Pakistan finds itself in today is America’s creation. Islamabad is paying in blood a price for supporting George Bush’s war. Bush and his neocon friends washed their hands of it after ending their terms. But Pakistan continues to bleed.
• [email protected]
