Outside a polio vaccination center in Quetta
Pakistani officials said at least 14 people have been killed in a bomb attack outside a polio vaccination center in the southwestern city of Quetta on Wednesday. The attack appeared to target police, and came before vaccination teams were due to launch a three-day immunization campaign.
Nobody has stood up to say “we did it!” yet, but al-Qaeda is suspected.
Militants have claimed that polio vaccination programs are a front for espionage or used to sterilize Muslims.
Islamic clerics have told their followers that the West conspires against Muslims, and that they use a substance found in the polio vaccination to sterilize Muslim men.
The clerics also point to the case of a Pakistani doctor who was said to have run a fake vaccination program for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to help track down al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
I think the US has admitted that last item.
Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq, head of Pakistan’s anti-polio program, says fewer people are falling for the propaganda used by Islamist extremists.
“Far fewer parents are refusing the vaccine, while the number of newly infected children so far this year is less than 40,” the polio chief told the German news agency dpa.
However, Pakistan is still at risk, as more than 35,000 children are said to be without the polio vaccination.
Last year Pakistan declared a national emergency when a record 306 cases where tallied, the highest since 1998.
Of polio – a horrific disease.
An excellent example of the harm caused by the use of legitimate work as cover for the more nefarious – the legitimate thing is poisoned, the people that need it left without. Short term gain for long term harm.
Yeah, it’s easy to look at this and think it insane or a conspiracy theory and yet… using mobile clinics for espionage work is actually a quite likely strategy for intelligence services and forcible sterilisation of blacks and Native Americans by the US is a shameful historical fact. I’m not suggesting this is actually happening now, just that if your knowledge of our scientific capabilities is poor, this isn’t an unreasonable opinion to hold.
Do the al Qaeda leaders actually believe this? Who knows. Probably some do and some don’t. But our own historical actions in relation to oppressed populations are coming back to bite us. It’s very hard to say, “We would not do this,” when someone can point to a history book and say, “You did it before.”
There are no excuses for this. That the U.S. sterilized Blacks and Native Americans decades ago is neither here nor there. Attacks on Polio vaccination clinics have been happening repeatedly, and dozens of innocent health care workers have been murdered
What America may or may not have done under the guise of healthcare, including the search for Bin Laden, counts for nothing here.
Less than one percent of Pakistanis pay any taxes. Two thirds of the country has no de-facto gov’t. When General Zia was attempting to produce nukes 40 years ago, he said he’d do anything to make the country a nuclear power even if it meant Pakistanis were reduced to eating grass.
Pakistan’s education system is collapsing, it has no healthcare system, no medicines, chronic shortages of food and fresh water…but it has nukes.
Priorities!
“That the U.S. sterilized Blacks and Native Americans decades ago is neither here nor there.”
Isn’t it? If you’re not white or American it may be very relevant to your response to this. If clinics are being coopted by western intelligence services or you believe they are is that irrelevant to a member of another sovereign nation? Are you saying that people in other countries should take western aid, regardless of the cost? That’s… pretty naive, politically imo.
This is real life, not an ideal world.