Women and children wait for vaccinations in Afghanistan. Gates Foundation, 2011
A terrible atrocity in Pakistan today:
Gunmen shot dead five women working on U.N.-backed polio vaccination efforts in two different Pakistani cities on Tuesday, officials said, a major setback for a campaign that international health officials consider vital to contain the crippling disease but which Taliban insurgents say is a cover for espionage.
Not only the Taliban, but some elements of the Pakistani government, have been on this kick about distrusting doctors and health workers since a doctor was accused of cooperating with the CIA to help zero in on Osama bin Ladn and assassinate him. That doctor, Dr. Shakil Afridi, is now in prison and being mistreated, and there have been campaigns to try to get him released.
Humanitarian organizations are usually so careful about not cooperating with the sides in conflicts, particularly the states (I feel they are less careful with rebels), that it's an unfounded charge to claim that polio vaccinations are a cover for spying. What's to spy on, anyway, poor villages eking out a subsistence? Situations with malnourished kids, abused mothers and drug-addicted fathers? Is the secret that there is no secret?
I'm also reminded of the Heart of Darkness -- and Apocalypse Now, which is adapted on it. There's this monologue:
Kurtz: I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies!
I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.
The UN released a tepid statement:
"We call on the leaders of the affected communities and everyone concerned to do their utmost to protect health workers and create a secure environment so that we can meet the health needs of the children of Pakistan."
But the dyanamics here aren't about people "doing their utmost". The humanitarians should pull out. They should stop creating the semblance of normalcy. That puts the onus on the government of Pakistan and the Taliban to realize their isolation and lack of resources. It doesn't do the children any good if they are vaccinated, but then their tiny arms pile up -- or even the bodies of their helpers, some barely past childhood themselves, pile up:
The women who were killed Tuesday — three of whom were teenagers — were all shot in the head at close range. Four of them were gunned down in the southern port city of Karachi, and the fifth in a village outside the northwest city of Peshawar. Two men who were working alongside the women were also critically wounded in Karachi.
Two women were gunned down as they literally gave the drops to children.
A man was also executed earlier who had helped with the polio vaccination.
This is a terrible situation -- 56 new cases of polio were registered in Pakistan. It has begun to reappear again in India, Tajikistan and elsewhere in Central Asia.
So do you risk not innoculating children because five people are gunned down? There is conflicting information about whether the program is suspended or not -- the UN needs to clear that up ASAP and in fact, the program should be at least temporarily suspended. Nobody should be supplying the Tailban with fresh victims to make their point.
The Taliban are like the men described by Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness, who had a heart of darkness himself. They were absolutely ruthless -- as he realized with diamond-like clarity -- and in fact really were fighting for ideals, even their families.
So leave them with that and let them contemplate and take the consequences for their brutality, I say.
Just in case you want to think about sanctions instead of in fact softening the sanctions regime as the UN is busy doing now:
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for both attacks by telephone to The Associated Press.
