Savage Primitivism

Pakistan represents one of the most socially and culturally backward countries of the world.  Perhaps its neighbour Afghanistan represents a nation even more unfortunately mired in the distant past.  Both are exemplars of social-political dysfunction, religious intolerance and institutional corruption.  Pakistan is one of three countries - Afghanistan and Nigeria the others, where polio is endemic.

The United Nations has been determined to eradicate that dread disease among Pakistan's children.  Transmission of the disease is at its highest level in the six months that begin at the present time.  The World Health Organization, overseeing the eradication campaign, realized that almost a million children had been missed in the nationwide drive to inoculate all children. 

Those children live in inaccessible, tribal no-go areas on the north-west frontier, which is belligerently self-administered and where resistance to any Western-inspired initiatives, whatever they happen to be are considered to be a gross interference in Muslim affairs, and haram (forbidden).  The Government of Pakistan is loathe to enter into the tribal areas to avoid confrontations.

Even though its military is interlaced with Islamists in complete sympathy with the Pakistan Taliban and their dwindling numbers of al-Qaeda guests.  The top authority in North Waziristan threatened to stop payments to tribal elders, halt development work and civil service recruitment as well as the issuance of ID cards and passports if resistance to vaccination continued.

One might be forgiven for assuming that the response came in the form of well-organized assassinations against five health-care workers; two teen-age girls, two mature women and a man on Tuesday, followed by another three targeted killings on Wednesday; a total of nine dedicated health-care workers murdered of late by the Taliban.

As a price that must be paid the Taliban leaders insist that they will not allow those polio vaccinations to take place until and unless U.S. drone strikes cease.  The immunization campaign is at an impasse.  The Taliban view themselves as instruments of the divine, doing God's work.  In doing God's work there is nothing sacred on Earth. 

Not the life of a 15-year-old schoolgirl who agitates for safety and security for young Pakistan girls wanting to attend school, and not the lives of Pakistani children, threatened by a dread disease that is easily eradicated using polio vaccination administered by other, teen-age Pakistani girls who take the situation seriously enough to risk their lives, and then dying for their efforts.