Taliban Renounces War on Anti-Polio Workers

Taliban renounces war on anti-polio workers from: The Telegraph - Zubair Babakarkhail in Kabul and Dean Nelson in New Delhi -3:02PM BST 13 May 2013 The Taliban has ended its war on polio vaccination workers and admitted immunization is the only way to protect children from the disease, its leadership said in a statement issued today. The announcement comes just weeks after the Afghan government launched a new campaign to immunise more than eight million  children between six monthsand five years old throughout the country. It said it had trained 46,000 volunteers to conduct the  campaign which is funded by the American aid agency  USAID, the World Health Organisation and Unicef. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are the three remaining  countries in the world where polio remains a serious threat,  but efforts to eradicate the disease have been  sabotaged by the Taliban and other Islamic militants who have  assassinated immunisation volunteers in all three countries. Eleven polio workers were killed in Pakistan last year,  including five women who were shot dead in Karachi in December  last year. Earlier this year a police officer protecting vaccination  campaigners was shot by motorcycle gunmen in Khyber  Pukhtunkhwa. In Afghanistan, a 16 year old girl involved  in an anti-polio vaccination campaign in Kapisa province was shot  six times in the stomach outside her home last December and died later in hospital. In March this year the Afghan  government was forced to abandon its polio vaccination  campaign in Nuristan province where, it said, Taliban opposition had made it impossible.

Opposition to the vaccination programme has been driven  by conservative clerics who claim it is a plot to sterilise  Muslim children, and Taliban commanders who fear  it is being used to gather intelligence in their strongholds.  Those fears increased following the 2011 killing of al-Qaeda  leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad where Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi was arrested for running  a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign to help the CIA collect DNA samples of members of the bin Laden family. But in a sudden U-turn the Taliban leadership issued a  statement offering its support for polio eradication campaigns as  long as foreigners were not involved and that all volunteers respected  local Islamic culture. "According to the latest international medicine  science, the polio disease can onlybe cured by preventive measures  ie the anti-polio drops and the vaccination of children  against this disease. "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan supports  and lends a hand to all those programs which works for the health  care of the helpless people of our country," said a stament  issued by the 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan'. But it warned the World Health Organisation and Unicef to employ  only "unbiased people"in a campaign "harmonised with the regional  conditions, Islamic values and local cultural traditions." It also ordered its fighters to give polio workers "all necessary support". Mohammad Younas Fakor, an independent political analyst, said the  move was aimed at boosting its popularity among Afghans as the  withdrawal of foreign troops draws closer. "I think the Taliban looks  towards 2014, and they know that they will not have any other  option rather than coming to the political process," he said.