Concern are growing that the Pakistani Taliban’s opposition to foreign vaccination programs, including the polio immunization, could put hundreds of thousands of people in jeopardy. Yet as Western officials fault the Taliban, seemingly to the exclusion of everyone else, they overlook the backstory of vaccination opposition.
Islamist factions have a long history in Pakistan’s tribal areas, yet vaccinations haven’t been a big issue until recently. The suggestion that the Taliban are just anti-medicine or anti-technology is disingenuous, and the origin of the vaccination hysteria isn’t so hard to discern.
Dr. Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani doctor jailed for treason (much to the chagrin of his US handlers) operated a phony vaccination program in early 2011 on behalf of the CIA, collecting the DNA of children to look for relatives of terrorists. The US was good with the program, because it was involved in the assassination of Osama bin Laden, but it also forced aid agencies out of Pakistan and led to this hysterical belief that every Western vaccination program is a front for CIA spying. Afridi gave real doses of vaccinations to the children, but it was such an afterthought that they never bothered to provide any follow-up doses, so effectively none of the children were actually vaccinated.
Going forward, this means that while officials will be blaming “the Taliban” for every polio death in Pakistan, no small measure of blame must also be saved for the US intelligence scheme that set the stage for this panic. Those children could be getting vaccinations from Dr. Afridi right now if he hadn’t decided that collecting DNA was a better use of his time.
ICasualties reports several coalition and Afghan soldiers and civilians killed in a crowded area in Kunduz on Monday, July 16.
What the hell does that have to do with THIS?
There was no other story about Afghanistan to make a comment on today. Pakistan and Afghanistan are involved in the same war and there was an unsubstantiated report at icasualties of a possible suicide attack with several casualties in Kunduz. I thought I could generate some interest and get more information about the incident. This is not meant to be critical of Antiwar which has had very good coverage of the Afghan war recently.
Icasualties reports 22 coalition dead in Afghanistan in July, 2012. At least 15 were American soldiers.
And again?
The question you should be asking is what results did they obtain by those samples? Were they looking to see how well their handywork of the last 30 yrs. infecting everyone with stealth of spirochetes that carry the God Like Protein in vaccines was killing them too, or how many more antigens it will take to drop them in the mix they already have? The crimes against humanity the criminals have committed are like no other this world has ever seen. That is the only thing vaccine makers can say they have done for the people.
not have vaccination is not the end of the world, Afghans have the right to refuse.