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Polio Eradication Program Suspended In Pakistan After Aid Workers Shot
Hugh Pickens writes "Jamal Khan reports that the United Nations has suspended its polio vaccination drive in Pakistan after eight people involved in the effort were shot dead in the past few days. The killings dealt a grave blow to the drive to bring an end to the scourge of polio in Pakistan, one of only three countries where the crippling disease still survives. Militants accuse health workers of acting as spies for the U.S. and claim the vaccine makes children sterile. Taliban commanders in the troubled northwest tribal region have also said vaccinations can't go forward until the U.S. stops drone strikes in the country. Insurgent opposition to the campaign grew last year after it was revealed that a Pakistani doctor ran a fake polio vaccination program to help the CIA track down and kill Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in the town of Abbottabad in the country's northwest. The Pakistani government has condemned the attacks against aid workers, saying they deprive Pakistan's most vulnerable populations — specifically children — of basic life-saving health interventions. A total of 56 polio cases have been reported in Pakistan during 2012, down from 190 the previous year, according to the U.N. Most of the new cases in Pakistan are in the northwest, where the presence of militants makes it difficult to reach children. Clerics and tribal elders were recruited to support polio vaccinations in an attempt to open up areas previously inaccessible to health workers. 'This is undoubtedly a tragic setback,' says UNICEF spokeswoman Sarah Crowe, 'but the campaign to eradicate polio will and must continue.'"
Seems like every backward region I've ever been too has been awash in conspiracy theories, urban legends, and superstitious horseshit. Worked down in South America, where every illiterate countryside hick seems to think Americans are trying to steal their organs (resulting in shit like this). Worked in India, where half the hicks think that clean water is just a ruse to poison them. Even worked in a ghetto, where the rumor was that whitey was putting chemicals in menthol cigarettes to make black men sterile.
So it doesn't surprise me that backwater Pakistanis believe that Christians are out to give their kids drugs to make them hate Mohammad (or whatever other crazy crap runs through those heads), disguised as these things called "vaccines." Combine that with a CIA sleight-of-hand and a Taliban which is happy to use any excuse to show it's still relevant, and you get a lot of kids who are now going to die from a disease the rest of the world eradicated long ago.
Fuck, just look at this idiot as the perfect example of what happens when you mix base stupidity with just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
It's all well and good until said hillbillies start killing people or getting them killed.
Pakistan is a beautiful country, particularly in the North. And their food is fantastic, the people are hospitable. It is tragic that the government there has little desire or ability to keep a lid on these extremist wackos. Pakistan is indeed a dangerous country.
Actually I will blame the CIA.
They went and took an urban legend and made it true.
Now when the Taliban says "We killed aid workers because they were spying on us." we can't say they are full of shit anymore.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I hope the families of the slain sue and are successful in getting bazzzilions of dollars out of the idiot Americans.
So the Sikhs that were killed in the wake of 9/11 as "blowback" should sue the Taliban and Al-Queda?
Man, "justice" sure is fucked up where you're from.
Oh yeah, and Americans are idiots.
Ah yes, it is the entire American populace that are idiots. Yep, we were all part of everything you just said. Not one of us opposes it. All of us act together uniformly. No one protests. Man, for people who like to criticize Americans as racist bigots, they sure could look in the mirror from time to time.
My work here is dung.
The problem is that Pakistan isn't run by anyone, or rather there are two parallel governments and much of the country's chaos stems from the friction and competition between the official civil government and the army on one side and the vast labrythine security services on the other.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Children that are best left to die instead of be raised in poverty and misery by brutal misogynist savages.
-- Ethanol-fueled
Ya, blame the CIA the same way you'd blame the police when a bank crook shoots a hostage.
I was wondering how many posts it would take for someone to twist this to blame the US for not dancing in a way sensitive to dictatorial murderers.
The only thing I blame the US for is letting the doctor go to jail instead of rescuing him. This is the US fleeing Vietnam and letting all the South Vietnamese who helped us fall into the hands of the North, writ small.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No.
Very stupid bad people used a very paranoid conspiracy theory for the justification of killing people.
The CIA went and made that conspiracy theory true.
You can't see how that is a very wrong thing to do?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
GP's point is that it's not a "hillbilly conspiracy theory" if the CIA was actually putting agents in among aid workers. If they did that, they are endangering the aid workers by making them a legitimate target of (admittedly informal) counterintelligence.
I'd bet $20 that you didn't blame the U.S. military for the deaths of Iraqi civilians back when Saddam had placed his military bases in among them,* but blamed Saddam instead. You'd have been justified, but you can't have it both ways.
* (Actually, you'd be a little less justified. The costs of placing a base away from a water source in a desert are prohibitive for a cash-strapped nation, and everywhere there's a water source, there are also people who you can't afford to displace. The CIA has no such excuse for using aid workers as human shields. Dick move, CIA.)
Sorry, but no. This operation was equivalent to painting a red cross on your vehicle so you can get closer to the bad guys before opening fire on them. (In fact it was almost precisely that). In doing so, they painted a target on the backs of medical workers for the next 50 years. It's a nightmare come true for Doctors Without Borders and similar organizations, and they have condemned it.