Pakistani TV channels are showing Boom Boom Afridi asking his viewers in Urdu and Pashto whether they would prefer crutches or a bat for their children. In fact this message is for hundreds of thousands of Pakistani Pashtuns and Afghani refugees living in tribal areas and elsewhere, who are reluctant, or to put it another way, have refused to permit their children to be vaccinated against polio. It is estimated that over 250,000 children in tribal areas alone will not be vaccinated this year. The Taliban are going all out to convince a large number of tribal Pashtuns that the polio vaccine is being administrated on behalf of the West with the objective of sterilizing their children. To counter this false propaganda, the UN has nominated Shahid Afridi, himself a Pashtun from Khyber tribal agency, as Polio Champion for this cricket-crazy nation. Whether Shahid will be able to convince his people, only time will tell. However, things appear to be more difficult this year as some of the tribal commanders who generally do not fight with the Pakistan Army, such as Mullah Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, have also banned vaccination in areas under their control. They have made stopping the drone attacks a condition for permitting polio vaccination in their areas. I wish someone would tell these Taliban commanders that they are intentionally risking the lives of thousands of their innocent children. Unfortunately, we are trapped in an anti-West fever, and no one should be surprised if there is a sharp increase in the number of polio cases in Pakistan. One fears that this virus, if not controlled at this stage, could spill over to other countries. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the three unfortunate countries where polio vaccination campaigns have been hampered by self-appointed religious reformers (in the case of Pakistan and Afghanistan, it's the Taliban and in Nigeria, it's the Boko Haram who have stopped the vaccination program). This is a failure on the part of government, civil society, religious scholars and the media who are lagging behind in this fight against ignorance and darkness.
