A follow-up to yesterday's article on the campaign by clerics in regions of Pakistan against polio vaccinations for their children. More barbarism today as Dr Abdul Ghani Khan, a senior government official promoting the vaccinations, was killed by a roadside bomb:
"KHAR: A senior government official was killed on Friday when a remote-controlled roadside bomb exploded in Salarzai, a village about 50 kilometres northeast of Khar, the main town in Bajur Agency, when he was returning from a jirga (tribal council) to convince people to immunise their children against polio, local administration officials said."
"The blast killed Dr Abdul Ghani Khan, chief surgeon at the main government hospital in Bajur, at the scene and injured three others in his car, the officials said.... Dr Amir Khan, medical superintendent (MS) at Khar District Headquarters Hospital, said that residents of Mullah Said Banda in the Salarzai area had earlier refused to get their children vaccinated against polio and added that Dr Ghani was visiting the area to allay misperceptions about the vaccination."
"Paramedic Hazrat Jamal, who is one of the three injured in the explosion, said that the residents of Mullah Said Banda were against the polio campaign. “As soon as we reached there, an armed prayer leader warned us against visiting the area. Some locals said: ‘On one hand, our enemy (a reference to the United States) is bombing us for no reason while on the other hand you are coming here disguised as polio campaigners to spread vulgarity,' he told Daily Times at the hospital."
A barbaric, conspiratorial mindset seems to be in the rise in Pakistan, and it seems to be spreading from village areas to cities. Murdering Pakistani doctors and medics who want to give polio vaccines to children? What sort of "clerics" and "leaders" murder doctors, and let their own young contract polio?
The use of a remote-controlled roadside bomb is also significant. Who's training people to construct and detonate IEDs?
This sort of barbarism - and the manipulation of illiterate people by so-called "religious" leaders - surely this is part of what the (poorly named) "War on Terror" is about. Why is the Musharraf government reluctant to take on the ignorance and violence of Lashkar-e-Toiba-type terrorist groups? And is our own government vigilant against these Lashkar elements making their way to the U.S.?
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